Two Words, One Answer.
Natick Collection
 Natick Dictionary (1903) $48.95 This book is a real "find." Whoever you are, now that you happen to have come to this book's website, please take a moment to digest how interesting this book is. It is a useful, user-friendly dictionary into the Native American language spoken in Eastern and Central Massachusetts, prior to the coming of the Pilgrims and Puritans. An actual DICTIONARY. Not just a list of towns with Native American names, or a phrase book, but a whole dictionary. This is a serious, major "find," if you or someone you know has an interest in this kind of thing, and happen to live in the eastern Massachusetts area.This language was sometimes called Natick, sometimes Massachuset(t), or sometimes Wampanoag. Edward Everett Hale wrote an introduction for this volume, which helps place the topic in historic perspective. James Hammond Trumbull, the dictionary's compiler, was the State Librarian of Connecticut for many years, in the 19th century. He was one of the leading authorities of his time, in various subjects of New England antiquarian interest, and was awarded several honorary degrees from Yale University. He published many other books, leaflets and articles on the topic of the native tongues of pre-colonial New England. If you'd like to see more of his works, look online for a copy of "Bibliography Of The Algonquian Languages," by James Constantine Pilling. You can sometimes find a used copy for sale.Trumbull's primary source for this dictionary was John Eliot's so-called "Indian Bible," printed in 1663. If you'd like to seek out a copy, you will probably have to find it on microfilm, unless you have access to a really amazing library. The title of the microfilm is listed today as "Mamusse wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblium God naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament [microform] / ne quoshkinnumuk nashpe Wuttinneumoh Christ noh asoowesit John Eliot," by University Microfilms International, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If that's too much of a mouthful, (or keyboardful, as the case may be), try doing keyword searches in a large library's OPAC for the terms "Eliot," "Massachuset," "Bible," and "1663." Observe the way I just spelled "Massachuset," with one "t" and no "s" at the end. Sometimes a library's cataloguer might have spelled it with two "t"s, but they shouldn't have put in an "s." You might need to try a few different spellings, but you should be able to get it in three or four tries.One thing to be careful about -- Trumbull occasionally tries to make speculative connections between these words and the languages of Asia, or the Phoenicians, or the ancient Hebrews. He doesn't do this too much, but it happens now and then. In many ways Trumbull was a creature of his times, of course, and in his field of study, that means that he was prone to speculating rashly about the origins of Native American tongues. Trumbull passed away long before anyone knew about the land bridge across the Bering Staits, so you should try to cut him some slack on this issue. No one really had a clue, about how long the people of this continent had been here. Just try to stick close to the actual dictionary function of this interesting book, and don't get too caught up in the ill-informed etymological speculations.The dictionary itself is almost 350 pages long, and each word is carefully cross-referenced to the biblical verse it appears in, in Eliot. The alphabet used is basically our own, although there are a few differences. There is no letter for b, c, d, f, g, l, v, x, or z. Some of these may seem wrong to Massachusetts residents -- there is obviously a "c" in the Massachusett tongue, as we can see from the word "Massachusetts" itself, along with Cochituate, Scituate, etc. However, this a question of orthographic convention, and Trumbull's decision not to include a "c" is as good as any. He does sometimes have "ch" as a "letter." He considers the two symbols to be inseparable in proper Natick. The only other alphabetic oddity is the existence of a letter for "double o," which looks like the symbol for infinity. This is alphabetized right after "o."Again, the main use of this book would be to grapple with Eliot's "Indian Bible," but you might also want to try using it to make sense of local place names, named by this areas original inhabitants. Try John C. Huden's "Indian Place Names of New England," or anything by R. A. Douglas Lithgow, if you'd like a compilation of local indian place names. Or, of course, you could just get a local map from AAA. If you're going to try to use this for Eliot's bible, you may also want to know about his "Indian Grammar Begun: Or, an Essay to Bring the Indian Language into Rules, for Help of Such As Desire to Learn the Same." That book is available from this online bookstore. You might also want to look online for the Mashpee Wampanoag Language Revitalization Project, under the leadership of Jessie "Little Doe" Fermino, which has been trying to bring this ancient tongue back to life. Lastly, I'd like to strongly recommend that you look for "Native Writings in Massachusett," by Ives Goddard and Kathleen Bragdon. It's a beautiful two volume set, with a lot of amazing things to offer. |
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