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Mikasuki
Hitchiti, Hitchiti-Mikasuki
Native to	United States
Region	Georgia, SouthernFlorida
Ethnicity	Miccosukee,Seminole
Native speakers	290 (2015 census)[1]
Language family	Muskogean Eastern Mikasuki
Early form	Hitchiti?
Dialects	Hitchiti†
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mik
Glottolog	mika1239
ELP	Mikasuki
Mikasuki is classified as Vulnerable by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA.

TheMikasuki,Hitchiti-Mikasuki, orHitchiti language is a language or a pair of dialects or closely related languages that belong to theMuskogean languages family. As of 2014^[update], Mikasuki was spoken by around 290 people in southernFlorida.^[2] Along with the Cow Creek Seminole dialect ofMuscogee, it is also known asSeminole. It is spoken by members of theMiccosukee tribe and of theSeminole Tribe of Florida. The extinctHitchiti was a mutually intelligible dialect of or the ancestor of Mikasuki.

Hitchiti was one of the many Muskogean languages spoken by peoples of what is now the southeastern United States, and is considered by many scholars to be the ancestor of the Mikasuki language. It was spoken in Georgia and eastern Alabama in the early historic period, with speakers moving into Florida during the 18th and 19th centuries. Hitchiti was the language oftribal towns such asHitchiti,Chiaha,Oconee, Okmulgee,Sawokli, andApalachicola. Based on the number of place names that have been derived from the language, scholars believe it could have spread over a much larger area than Georgia and Florida during colonial times.^[3]

It was part of theMuskogean language family; it is often considered a dialect of theMikasuki language with which it was mutually intelligible.^[4] The Hitchiti and the Mikasuki tribes were both part of the Creek confederacy. The Mikasuki language was historically one of the major languages of theSeminole people, who developed as a new ethnic group in Florida. It is still spoken by many Seminole andMiccosukee in Florida, but it has become extinct among theOklahoma Seminole.

LikeMuscogee, Hitchiti had an ancient "female" dialect. The dialect was still remembered and sometimes spoken by the older people, and it used to be the language of the males as well. Their language with the "female" dialect was also known as the 'ancient language'.^[5]

The language appears to have been used beyond the territorial limits of the tribe: it was spoken in Native American villages on theChattahoochee River, such asChiaha (Chehaw),^[6] Chiahudshi, Hitchiti, Oconee, Sawokli, Sawokliudshi, and Apalachicola, and in those on the Flint River, and also by theMiccosukee tribe of Florida. Traceable by local names in Hitchiti, the language was used by peoples over considerable portions of Georgia and Florida.

Scholars believe that theYamasee also spoke Hitchiti, but the evidence is not conclusive. Other evidence points toward their speaking a different language, perhaps one related toGuale.

Some sources list Hitchiti as an extant language in the 1990s.^[7]

The Seminole and Miccosukee were made up of descendants of members of theMuscogee Confederacy, who had migrated to Florida under pressure from European-American encroachment. The Seminole formed by a process ofethnogenesis in the 18th century. American settlers began to enter Florida and came into conflict with the Seminole. TheSeminole Wars of the 19th century greatly depleted the numbers of these tribes, especially theSecond Seminole War. The United States forcibly removed many Seminole toIndian Territory (now Oklahoma). The Seminole and Miccosukee had gradually moved into the center of Florida and the Everglades, from where they resisted defeat even in the Third Seminole War. The US gave up efforts against them.

In the 20th century, the Florida Seminole and Miccosukee split apart, with the former moving onto reservations. The Miccosukee lived in communities that were affected by the early 20th-century construction of theTamiami Trail, which brought tourists into the Everglades.

The Miccosukee achieved federal recognition as a tribe in 1962. Both tribes have speakers of Mikasuki today.

As of 2002, the language is taught in the local school,Miccosukee Indian School, which has "an area devoted to 'Miccosukee Language Arts'".^[8] Circa 2005 the dominance of English language media was seen as a factor inhibiting Miccosukee.^[9]

As of 2011, theUniversity of Florida Department of Anthropology is home to the Elling Eide Endowed Professorship in Miccosukee Language and Culture, for Native American languages of the southeastern United States.^[10]

Presentations in the language have been featured at theFlorida Folk Festival.^[11]

The orthography, where it differs from the IPA, is shown in angled brackets.

There are three tones: high, low and falling. Vowel length is distinctive:eche[itʃi]'mouth' vs.eeche[iːtʃi]'deer',ete[iti]'eye' vs.eete[iːti]'fire'.

Mikasuki is written using the Latin alphabet. The vowel characters on the left represent the sounds on the right, transcribed phonetically:

The consonants characters are:

High tone is indicated with an acute accent (´), low tone with a grave accent (`), and falling tone with an acute accent followed by a grave accent. A long vowel with falling tone is represented by two accented vowel letters (áà). When the vowel is short, the grave accent is placed over the next consonant (áǹ):

Anepenthetic [ə] vowel appears in kl, kw and kn clusters in careful speech.

Nouns are marked with suffixes for various functions, some examples:

Free pronouns exist (aane'I',chehne'you',pohne'we') but are rarely used. Verb suffixes are the usual way of marking person.

• Boynton, Sylvia S (1982).Mikasuki grammar in outline (PhD thesis). University of Florida.OCLC 9252451.ProQuest 303232611.
• Derrick-Mescua, Mary Tyler (1980).A phonology and morphology of Mikasuki (PhD thesis). University of Florida.
• Ethridge, Robbie (2003).Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press.ISBN 0-8078-2827-0.
• Hann, John H. (2006).The Native American World Beyond Apalachee. University Press of Florida.ISBN 978-0-8130-2982-5.
• West, J.; Smith, N. (1978).A Guide to the Miccosukee Language. Miami: Miccosukee Corporation.
• West, John David (1962). "The Phonology of Mikasuki".Studies in Linguistics.16 (3–4):77–91.OCLC 29208642.

• A Global Linguistic Database: Mikasuki
• Miccosukee place names
• Mikasuki, Omniglot
• Miccosukee Indian Language (Mikasuki, Hitchiti)
• OLAC resources in and about the Mikasuki language

• Agglutinative languages
• Muskogean languages
• Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast
• Tonal languages
• Seminole culture
• Indigenous languages of Oklahoma
• Indigenous languages of Florida

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 21
• CS1: unfit URL
• Articles lacking in-text citations from May 2009
• All articles lacking in-text citations
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from July 2024
• Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2014
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• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles containing Mikasuki-language text
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