[Aztlan] Another Hitchiti/Itza Maya language connection

[gdaniels99 tds.net]

In regards to "traditional knowledge or physical evidence":

Archaeologists have found corn pollen in south Florida near Lake Okeechobee
at a site
called Fort Center and it dates to about 800 BC. That's about 1500 years
before corn is found anywhere else in the southeast. And no
archaeologist has yet been able to debunk this evidence.

I would suggest corn falls under the category of "physical evidence."

Fort Center is believed to have been built by the ancestors of the Calusa. I
just read yesterday in the FAMSI report that the Calusa spoke a Muscogean
dialect. This seems strange considering how far they were from the Muscogean
heart land and the fact that the Timucua were the leading linguistic group
throughout most of Florida. So why was there an isolated group of Muscogean
speakers down in south Florida?

I would suggest that finding a historic era tribe speaking a Muscogean
dialect in the same area where the earliest evidence for corn is found
should also be filed under "physical evidence."

And it's also interesting that the Hitchiti migration legend states they
"emerged from the reeds along the seashore and walked towards the rising sun
until they came to what they thought was the ocean but discovered it was a
large lake instead. Eventually they followed a river north and settled."
Considering the Hitchiti were living in south Georgia during the historic
period there's only one place where they could have arrived at a seashore,
walked towards the sunrise and came to a lake so large they mistook it for
the ocean: Lake Okeechobee in south Florida. Thus this sounds like an
ancient tradition of reaching south Florida by boat. And coincidentally,
arriving at a place (Lake Okeechobee) where archaeologists would find the
earliest evidence of corn agriculture and a tribe of natives, the Calusa,
who spoke a Muscogean dialect. (Interestingly, the Calusa name for Lake
Okeechobee was Mayaimi...which is where the city of Miami gets its name. And
the name of the main river through their territory was named Mayakka.)

So I would file the Hitchiti migration legend  under "traditional
knowledge."

Is it then an absolute coincidence that these very same people have words in
their language that appear to have a mesoamerican origin?

Thus, we have physical evidence (corn), oral traditions, and linguistic
evidence that suggest these
people arrived from some place else by boat. (If they came by land you'd
expect to find corn north of Florida much earlier NOT later.) If we were in
a court of law this would be enough evidence to convict you.

I would also note that most of the Muscogean tribes wear turbans. Mayan
slaves also wore turbans. Could it be that some slaves decided to escape
from bondage and flee? They obviously would not have owned anything that
could later become an artifact....or even if they did own things it's most
likely they would escape under cover of night and would not have been
spending hours packing canoes with all their belongings. Perhaps just some
baskets of corn seed and off they went. Slaves would have plenty of reason
to risk such a voyage and plenty of reason not to maintain any contacts from
where they left.

-Gary C. Daniels
http://www.LostWorlds.org <http://www.lostworlds.org/>



On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Nick Hopkins <nickhopkins at live.com> wrote:

>  Listeros--
> Just a couple of quick comments on the putative Itzá/Nahuatl/Hitchiti/etc.
> issue.  The bottom line is that if these similarities are the result of
> language contact and lexical borrowing, they would have to be rather recent.
>  Otherwise the words would have suffered the natural processes of language
> change and no longer resemble each other as closely as the terms cited do.
>  If they were truly ancient they would be as distinct as native vocabulary
> within the different languages that make up Muskogean or Mayan (or
> Uto-Aztecan, etc.).  That would hold true whether they were borrowings or
> mutually inherited terms from some common ancestor.
>
> The close resemblance of the words puts the time-frame somewhere near
> historical times, and if there had been intimate contact between North
> American and Mesoamerican groups in recent times you would think there would
> be some traditional knowledge or physical evidence of it.  (I know, some
> people might argue that there is.)
>
> I know that there is evidence of prehistoric contact between peoples of the
> Caribbean and Southeastern peoples.  For instance, Timucua (Central and
> North Florida) borrowed two words for ritually important items from Taino
> (Cuba and Hispaniola): tobacco and yaupon (Ilex).  But I don't think there
> is any way, given current knowledge, that we can factor in Itzá or Nahuatl
> or Totonac.
>
> There are always "chance resemblances" between languages, so isolated
> similarities are not sufficient evidence to make a strong case for contact
> or genealogical relationship, especially in the absence of physical
> evidence.
>
> Nick Hopkins
>
> > Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:07:00 -0400
> > From: gdaniels99 at tds.net
> > To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
> > Subject: [Aztlan] Another Hitchiti/Itza Maya language connection
> >
> > It's strange enough that the word "chiki" is used in similar ways by the
> > Totonac & Itza Maya of Gulf Coast Mexico and Hitchiti of Southeastern
> U.S.
> >
> > But I've also stumbled upon another connection:
> >
> > Chichen Itza means "mouth of the well of the Itza" in Itza Maya language.
> > Chi = mouth
> > Chen = well
> >
> > Something similar occurs in Hitchiti:
> >
> > Chi = mouth
> > Chahni = well
> >
> > Thus in Hitchiti "chichahni" means mouth of the well.
> >
> > Also, in Itza Maya adding "-ha" to the end of a word denotes "water."
> > Interestingly, there are quite a few rivers in Georgia with Hitchiti
> names
> > that end with "-ha" (for instance, altamaha.) I haven't been able to find
> > any information regarding what the "ha" suffix in Hitchiti means. Does it
> > also denote water?
> >
> > Has there ever been a study comparing Hitchiti to languages on the gulf
> > coast of Mexico?
> >
> > -Gary C. Daniels
> > Publisher, LostWorlds.org
> > http://www.LostWorlds.org
> >
> >
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