We are building a Tutelo-Saponi language lesson and dictionary site here. Tutelo and a few words of Saponi are the only languages recorded of the languages (dialects?) spoken by the Siouan people of the NC/VA Piedmont, generically referred to as Saponi by the British Colonial government. Survivors were adopted by the Six Nations, where they are referred to as Tutelo, though it’s unsure if this is another generic usage, meaning the survivors had members deriving from the larger confederation of nations, or if it was just the Tutelo who went there.
We are developing these lessons as a way for those of us who believe we descend from these tribes to learn this language. Several thousand of us have contributed to the www.saponitown.com forum and about 20,000 posts made in the past ten years. Records are scanty, so legal certainties are difficult to impossible to obtain, but we have found patterns of surnames, migrations, family lore, etc. that lead us to the conviction that descendants of these people are numerous and dispersed far and wide across the continent.
If you’ll notice the “Dictionary and Sound Files” dropdown on the right, you can search for a word in English and find the Tutelo translation. You can also find some pronunciation sound files.
Tanya Harrison is our resident linguist. She has some special gifts with language — it seems her brain never stopped soaking up languages the way all of ours do when we’re small children. If she doesn’t have a new one to learn she’ll make one up! She’s studied Olivieri’s dissertation, has digested the grammar and is putting it all together for us. There are only about 700 Tutelo words recorded, but by understanding the grammar, tons of other words can be inferred, like all the variations of a verb. Where there are no Tutelo words, she’s looking to the closest more fully recorded languages, like Biloxi, for a likely word to borrow.
Currently, we’re at an early stage of putting this together, but hope it’s starting to come together. Join us!