page_title: Taensa language
section_title: Document
hierarchical_section_title: Taensa language / The fraudulent invention / Document
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Daniel Garrison Brinton. Original owned by the American Philosophical Society.
context_page_description: The Taensa language was the Natchez language-variant spoken by the Taensa people originally of northeastern Louisiana, and later with historical importance in Alabama. The language is also well known in linguistic and historical circles for the fact that two young co-conspirators published purported studies of the Taensa language in 1880-1882 that were later proven fraudulent, unequivocally in 1908-1910 by John R. Swanton.
  Some French missionary priests reported that they learned Natchez in order to speak to the Taensa; Mooney's summary of the people and missionary efforts describes the Taensa language as a variant of the Natchez.
  The language has received academic attention in largest part for the fact that two young men, one a clerical student named Parisot, published purported "material of the Taensa language, including papers, songs, a grammar and vocabulary" in Paris in 1880-1882, reports which led to considerable interest on the part of philologists and linguists of the time. The work proved to be a "fraudulent invention... of some one... from whom the manuscripts had originally come" or perhaps of the student Parisot.
context_section_description: In the 1880s two French students published a grammar and other material of what they claimed to be the hitherto undocumented language of the Taensa people of Louisiana. Jean Parisot, who submitted the documents for publication in Paris, was a nineteen-year-old student at a seminary in Plombières, France. The Grammaire et vocabulaire de la langue Taensa, avec textes traduits et commentés par J.-D. Haumonté, Parisot, L. Adam was published in 1882 in Paris and caused a stir among linguists.
  The material included an outline of the grammar, vocabulary and fragments of text in the Taensa language. Parisot claimed that it was from Spanish sources written in Louisiana. When the material was published, two eminent French Americanists, Lucien Adam and Julien Vinson, supported the work.
caption: Daniel Garrison Brinton was taken in at first, but then exposed the hoax.
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