page_title: Yamasee
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Yamasee / Language
caption_attribution_description: English: Tribal territory of Yamasee during seventeenth century Deutsch: Stammesgebiet der Yamasee im siebzehnten Jahrhundert
context_page_description: The Yamasee were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans who lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida. The Yamasee engaged in revolts and wars with other native groups and Europeans while living in North America, specifically from Florida to North Carolina. The Yamasee, along with the Guale, are considered by many scholars to be Muskogean from linguistic evidence, such as the Yamasee term 'Mico,' meaning chief. After the Yamasee migrated to the Carolinas, they began participating in the slave-raiding culture of the English which was a large cause of the Yamasee War, which they are perhaps most well-known for.
context_section_description: The name "Yamasee" perhaps comes from Muskogee yvmvsē, meaning "tame, quiet"; or perhaps from Catawban yį musí:, literally "people-ancient".
  Little record remains of the Yamasee language. It is partially preserved in works by missionary Domingo Báez. Diego Peña was told in 1716-1717 that the Tuskegee also spoke Yamasee.
  Hann (1992) claims that Yamasee is related to the Muskogean languages.  This was based upon a colonial report that a Yamasee spy within a Hitchiti town could understand Hitichiti and was not detected as a Yamasee.  Francis Le Jau stated in 1711 that the Yamasee understood the Creek.  He also noted that many Indians throughout the region used Creek and Shawnee as lingua francas.  In 1716-1717, Diego Peña obtained information that showed that Yamasee and Hitchiti-Mikasuki were considered separate languages.
  Inconclusive evidence suggesting the Yamasee language was similar to Guale rests on three pieces of information: 
  a copy of a 1681 Florida missions census states that the people of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de la Tama speak "la lengua de Guale, y Yamassa" [the Guale and Yamasee language];
  a summary of two 1688 letters, sent by the Florida governor, mentions prisoners of the "ydioma Yguala y Yamas, de la Prova de Guale" [the Yguala and Yamas language of the province of Guale]; and
  the Guale called the Cusabo Chiluque, which is probably related to the Muscogee word čiló·kki "Red Moiety."
  The Spanish documents are not originals and may have been edited at a later date.  The name Chiluque is probably a loanword.  It seems also to have been absorbed into the Timucua language. Thus, the connection of Yamasee with Muskogean is unsupported.
  A document in a British Colonial Archive indicates that the Yamasee originally spoke Cherokee, an Iroquoian language, but had learned another language.
caption: Tribal territory of Yamasee during the seventeenth century
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