The Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) is a region of eastern North America, the history of which we have come to know primarily through the lenses of history, ethnohistory, and archaeology—not the linguistic families found there. David V. Kaufman’s book aims to elucidate interactions among the Native peoples of the LMV based on shared phonetic, phonological, and morphological features of their respective languages and to synthesize these social and cultural insights with the extant archaeological evidence. Kaufman points out that linguists and archaeologists are infrequent collaborators, and that is a problem. In the absence of an Indigenous writing system, it seems to be a foregone conclusion that there is no way to meaningfully relate the distribution of artifacts to languages and that the specialized skills necessary to analyze this form of communication are beyond the reach of nonlinguists. This book has disabused me of the former notion, but questions and concerns remain concerning the latter.
The book is divided into two parts. Part I introduces us to the physiography, archaeology, history, peoples, and languages of the LMV. Although they provide essential context for what is to come, chapters 1 and 2 have the ragged edges of a transposed dissertation. The breadth and depth of Kaufman’s engagement with the archaeological records in chapter 2 depend heavily on a few regional syntheses published before 2010. Because most readers will find themselves reliant on Kaufman’s expertise with respect to the languages of the LMV, a more thorough treatment of the environment and archaeology would have inspired more confidence.
Kaufman hits his stride when it comes to language and linguistics. “Peoples, Migrations, and Languages” introduces us to the Atakapa, Biloxi, Chitimacha, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Natchez, Ofo, and Tunica peoples and languages, as well as the pidgin Mobilian Trade Language (MTL). Critically, Kaufman also considers what oral histories reveal about past migrations, which is a central aspect of his study.
Part II (chapters 4 through 7) focuses on language contact in the LMV—the data collection, methods, and theory used to discern trends related to diffusion, migration, and interaction. Reminiscent of James Deetz’s discussion of factemes and formemes, Kaufman makes a compelling argument that linguistic anthropologists and archaeologists engage in similar types of comparison and assessment and that phonetic and phonological features, morphological features, word borrowing, and calques “should be treated as seriously as material remains as evidence for such contact” (p. 154).
This book is intended for linguists, anthropologists, and historians, as well as for “anyone with a general interest in Native America” (p. xiv), which is an ambitiously broad audience considering the highly technical nature of the study. Having not engaged regularly with linguistic anthropology since graduate school, I must hang my hat on Kaufman’s synthesis of the data. Despite John R. Swanton’s long list of bona fides, linguistic expertise being chief among them, his Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico (1911) has always struck me as a black-box synthesis of history, ethnohistory, translations, traditional stories, and language. We must either accept or reject the patterns, affiliations, and conclusions offered us. Although I appreciate Kaufman’s efforts to invite us into that specialized discourse, I feel no better equipped to assess his logic and conclusions than Swanton’s. I must remain a passive consumer of Indigenous language scholarship.
The lasting contribution of Kaufman’s study is his consideration of what the diverse languages spoken in the LMV reveal about macrosocial interaction in the region. We frequently imagine that interaction itself is shaped by language—that the people, families, communities, societies, and cultures comprising an interaction sphere all speak the same language; that a literal language barrier separates this extra-regional network from other contemporaneous ones; and that trade languages and multilingualism are conditions unique to the margins of overlap. If so, the ethnic and language diversity that characterizes the LMV would seem to disqualify it. By labeling the region a sprachbund, a language area, Kaufman presents a solution. Language contact among people with relatively equal power encourages groups to maintain their own language identity and accommodate their neighbors through a combination of learning and borrowing of nonbasic vocabulary.
In the end, Clues to Lower Mississippi Valley Histories rewards the persistent reader with a unique perspective on the dramatic events that shaped the LMV in the last thousand years or so—a history that embraces the ethnic and linguistic diversity found there today. Kaufman has opened my eyes to the extant body of knowledge relating to Indigenous languages—the published and unpublished word lists, dictionaries, vocabularies, grammars, narrative texts, and notes. He further succeeds in highlighting the history of interactions among various Indigenous groups and makes key associations that historians and archaeologists alike would do well to consider when constructing their own histories of the region. The shortcomings of the first two chapters inadvertently reinforce Kaufman’s point that neither archaeology, history, nor linguistics is equipped to tackle these questions alone, and I am optimistic about the potential for future multidisciplinary collaborations in this space.
