Caddoan Languages

The Caddoan languages were traditionally spoken in various locations in the Great Plains. In his article on Caddoan, which appears in The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment (1979), edited by Lyle Campell and Marianne Mithun, Wallace L. Chafe suggests that they were originally spoken in the area where Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana now converge, and this remained the area where Caddo was spoken until well into the nineteenth century. When first contacted, speakers of Wichita and Kitsai were living in central Oklahoma, Pawnees in Kansas and Nebraska, and Arikaras were semi-sedentary and living in the Dakotas. The Caddos, Wichitas, and Pawnees were each actually groups of smaller bands or tribes who shared a common language. The late nineteenth century was the period of Indian Removal, when thousands of Native Americans living in the Plains saw their lands expropriated to be made available for homesteaders, and many were moved into Oklahoma, which constituted “Indian Territory.” As a result, speakers of all these languages, apart from Arikara, ended up in rural parts of northern or central Oklahoma. Arikaras found themselves at the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota, where, with the Siouan-speaking Mandans and Hidatsas, they constituted the Three Affiliated Tribes. The Caddoan languages have relatively simple phonological systems of three to five oral vowels that developed from /i a u/, which distinguish short from long forms, and (apart from Caddo) fewer than a dozen consonants, including usually only one nasal, /n/. Wichita and Caddo also have a distinctive pitch accent, and Wichita and Pawnee, at least, have some three or four-element consonantal clusters (these are simplified in Arikara). Nouns are lightly inflected though they exhibit an absolutive suffix, the form of which varies from one language to another. Verbs are heavily inflected, marking aspect, plurality of arguments, direction of action (instead of using adpositions), and many other features, and verb roots are often discontinuous with each part consisting of just a few segments (or even only one). The Caddoan languages are polysynthetic in structure, incorporating noun elements within their complex verbs. Word-coinage is favored over borrowing for expressing new items of acculturation. Caddoan languages are highly endangered and it is likely that no one uses them today as their means of everyday conversation. As of 2013 Wichita had one remaining fluent speaker. Kitsai died out about 1940. Only partially fluent speakers of Arikara or Pawnee apparently remain, and fluent speakers of Caddo are few, though all of these groups have language revitalization programs in place.