Some pictures for illustration:
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This is a translation by me of an internet version of a Wampanoag myth-derived fairy tale into their 1600s Massachusett language. The original was probably published in "Spirit of the New England Tribes" by Simmons in 1986, my birth year.
"Crab Text": Page E//.
Please show some respect. Wampanoag, Narragansett, and other Native Americans treat these as myths by necessity. The ancient tradition is to only tell them in the winter, though I also work on them in the summer because of the limited time I have to work on this language. I use these fairy tale texts because myths are the most etymologically insightful and native of texts for a language.
This is the prose English.
2 Moshup was trying to build a bridge between Martha's Vineyard and the mainland. A crab bit his toe, causing him to leave footprints all over the area.
This is the 1600s Massachusett. It's actually more like the English glossed with a few idiomatic divergences. I give: one gloss < then a more exact gloss.
Moshup WETUCKS
try-Make-Past-Subjunctive QUTCH-EHT-UP-OK
to build <
house-Make-Base-Past EK-ITT-EA-UP
a bridge TOYUSK
between NASHAU-E
Martha's Vineyard NOPE
and KAH
the mainland <
big-place-thing^Citation KOHT-OHKOMUK-OOUK^C98
.
A crab <
"crack-snake^from Powhatan language TUTT-ASCUC^P
bite-Past SOGKEPOOW-UP
his WU
toe PAHCHA-SEET
,
causing him to leave <
leave-make-Past-Passive NUKKON-EHT-UP-AN
footprints <
foot-thing-s^Invented word SSEET-ADT-ASH^I
everywhere <
long-Past-place-of QUINN-UP-OHK-E
Locative ETT
place <
at-thing^Invented word AYEU-ONK^A
.
Written and possibly translated Saturday, June 9th, 2018.
1600s Powhatan is the language of the Jamestown colony. It and Roanoke language were not as well documented as their close relatvie, 1600s Massachusett. I try to use as many of their words and word parts as possible. I'm doing these translations as a form of scientific exploration. I'm trying to encourage interest in 1600s Massachusett and I think it's a very important but understudied language.
The Passive -an should probably be before Past -up as -up always seems to be last on a verb. I've been reading a lot of the Psalms in 1600s Massachusett the last year, among other texts. I think the Passive is rare. Causative I probably see all the time and is common in word-building.
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It seems that Moshup was originally a giant god and culture hero like Glooskap of the Leland's 1884 Mi'kmaq fairy tales (also Eastern Algonquian). These fairy tales were told, in the 1700s and 1800s, by Wampanoag who had converted to Puritan Anglican Christianity. They present Moshup as a friendly giant ancestor from long ago. Actually, they're very inconsistent in the way they present him. The original concepts are obscure. The clearest picture seems to be in Leland 1884, which a few days I finished reading cover to cover.
The 1800s Mi'kmaqs and others seem to have made some changes but also left some original things the same. The last two years have seen me read very extensively of mostly 1600s accounts of mostly the Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth Native Americans.
Some months before finishing Leland 1884, I read Chamberlain's 1884 Kojiki from cover to cover, perhaps sans footnotes. The Kojiki is the oldest and core text of Shintoism, the Japanese native religion(s). Both make an interesting comparison for comparative mythology and (especially name or onomastic) etymology with the Middle Welsh Four Books of the Mabinogion, which I also recently read cover to cover in English.
I highly recommend all of these books and their careful study as a way to understanding these peoples in the past and today. My own studies include a BA in Linguistics from Michigan Technological University and Michigan State University and many years of private study and extensive travel and work, however.
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