Which Witch is Which?

Mohegan, Algonquian or Algic? How to tell which Algonquian language people are teaching.

Quick summary: Páskhikinuk tells me most of my article was way above his head, so here’s the low down for those who don’t want to read it. (It did turn out longer than I would have liked.) Mohiks is a dialect of the Mohegan-Pequot language. Mohegan and Pequot are not necessarily the same. The other dialects are Montauk, Nehantick (Niantic), and Shinnecock. Separate dialects means they are not the same language. There’s a misleading trend to call the language group by all of it’s dialects (Mohegan-Pequot-Montauk-insert_here), so I’ve went back to using the old word: Secotogue. Some people (not all) are doing this to mislead. Learn the linguistic line basics so you can avoid the pitfall. Not everyone is being dishonest on purpose, but this much confusion is only hurting things.
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This website doesn’t normally worry about the technical side of languages because we’re more centered on learning how to speak the language than we are the linguistic data. However I found some language classes claiming to teach Mohegan and… They aren’t lying… exactly. It’s important to clear things up a little to those who are just as confused as I have been. I promise not to go into too much detail.

In this article I will address the language family of which Mohegan-Pequot or Mohiks¹ is a part. I will talk a bit too much about different groups, subgroups, and even why these groups are as they are.² Finally I’m going to briefly address the problem that has me writing this with a simple solution on what to do about it.

The Whole Family

Let me start by introducing you to the family, the Eastern Algonquian language family, and all of the clusters that belong to it. It isn’t the top of the family, but it is the branch we need to worry about today. It and all of it’s children spread from the eastern seaboard nearly to the other side of the continent with patches inbetween. Here is an excellent map by Will Oxford, University of Manitoba, to give you an idea of how widespread this group was.³

Great-ancestor Languages

We are not talking about one single Algonquian language, nor a tribe. This is a classification of languages and the people who spoke them. You might also see it spelled as Algonkian. It’s sometimes known as Algic. That’s the term we’re going to stick to.

The languages in the Algic group are put there because they all have something about them that shows they come from the same language source; an ancestor language. There are about 30 languages that belong to the Algic family. Many of the languages are not spoken anymore, although larger revitalization efforts than mine are working to change that.⁴

Ancestors

The Algic family is divided into a number of geographic groups shown on the map below. These are the Algonquian families: 1. Central Algonquian 2. Plains Algonquian and 3. Eastern Algonquian. When you take a good look at the map, how they’re put together makes sense. Gotta keep all our marbles in one place. Can’t have them rolling around.

Eastern Algonquian versus it’s sisters is that all of it’s child languages are genetically linked. Genetically linked languages are not related by blood. We are not born with language. We learn it. To be genetically linked as a language means some common ancestor has culturally passed things down through the generations.⁵ It just so happens here that many of the Eastern Algonquian tribes were related by blood. This is not always the case with genetically-linked languages.

Great-Grandparents

Genetic or not, we have to dive deeper. That Eastern Algonquian language group is looking a bit too frisky. So we divide again, splitting things into more neat geographical sections. Because our goal is to get to the Mohiks level, we’re focusing solely on the Eastern Algonquian grandparent.

Eastern Algonquian is divided into four parent groups, illustrated in another excellent map by Will Oxford. (see below)⁶ Once again these are geographical groupings: 1. Northeastern Algonquian (NA); 2. Southern New England (SNEA); 3. Delawaran (DA); and 4. Southern Algonquian (SA).

It’s SNEA we want. We’re coming for you, SNEA.

Well, first the map:

This is also the layer where people start to muddy things or get confused, or both. The wading pool isn’t as deep, so the waters aren’t very clear here from all the foot traffic and debate. Linguists have their opinions just like everyone else, so sometimes information will conflict itself. Data shifts as time goes forward. Sprinkle in a mix of old information clinging because either it was right all along or someone didn’t get the memo and it gets worse.

In the map, you can see the yellow area is divided by four: Quiripi, Massachusett-Narragansett, Loup, and Mohegan-Pequot (also known as Secotogue, which is the term we will use from here forward). Julian Granberry divided into five sections, give each group a set of dialects. Dialects are the language you and I speak: the end result. Like Southern American English or Ebonics. They weren’t grouped by geographics, but by the type of dialect they are. For Granberry the groups were Quiripi, Massachusette, Loup, Secotogue, and Narragansett⁷ This makes good sense to me, so I’m going with it.

Dialect Types

Dialects are basically the working, living language you and I speak in our day. I speak Southern English quite thickly if you get me upset enough. Southern English is a dialect of American English, which is a child language of English. That’s not so hard, is it?

This is where it’s important to know which witch is which. If you had four children, you would hopefully be able to tell them apart and you’d expect most people who came to your house to be able to do so as well. Even if they’re identical twins, most people can tell them apart unless those kids are being sneaky.

So the dialects are divided into four group types or classes, and they’ve been given alphabet letters to identify them. These are L, N, Y, and R. These letters are pretty darn important. They tell us how many of the words are put together — a key difference from dialect to the next.

You see, almost all of these languages, probably due to the cultural environment and their geographical proximity, were similar enough to each other that a speaker of one language, say Naticoke, could understand the speaker of another in the groups. This does not mean the dialects were exactly alike. If they were, then they’d pretty much be the same dialect now wouldn’t they. The differences are big enough that should you not be a native speaker, you would have trouble understanding more than the dialect you were learning.

Goddard stated:

…the word for ‘dog’ was ‹anùm› in the ‘Cowweset’ dialect, ‹ayím› in ‘Narriganset’, ‹arúm› in ‘Qunnippiuck’, and ‹alùm› in ‘Neepmuck’.⁸

This is only a small difference. There are about three other bigger ones on top of there being completely different words for some things.

The further you spread out from one region, say from the Pequot area, the more the language changes. This is true even today. In some cases comparing two of these might be the same as comparing American English to some regions of South Ireland. The two are English. The sounds are very very different in places, making it very hard to understand.

This is very important if you are wanting to learn how to speak one of the Algonquian languages. It can be done, but it will require effort because most of us would be coming at it from English or another non-Algic language. This is shown by the early documents left by colony missionaries, who composed material for the tribes they encountered. At least one of them had mixed dialects. They were probably understood by the native people, but linguistically they’re a mess.

Granberry’s language and dialect groups are as follows:

N-Dialects – Massachusett language containing

• Saugus
• Natick
• Wampanoag
• Nausett
• Aquinah
• Cowesit

Y-Dialects – Secotogue language containing

• Pequot
• Niantic⁹
• Mohiks
• Montauk
• Shinnecock

R-Dialects – Quiripi (Wompano) language containing

• Quiripi (Quinnipiac)
• Naugatuck
• Schaghticoke
• Tunxis
• Mattabesac
• Siwanoy
• Unquachog

L-Dialects – Loup language containing

• Nipmuk
• Pocomtuck

N/Y Dialect

• Narragansett is the red-headed stepchild who can’t seem to be either Y or N, however it tends to stay in the N dialect group more. They have better cookies.

At this point you’re probably wanting to know why you need to know all this stuff if all you’re wanting to do is talk to your spouse using dirty Mohiks words. If you’re looking to learn, you need to know because other people aren’t being specific enough. I personally have run into one individual who told me they were definitely teaching “Mohegan”, but it turned out what they meant was a different dialect in the Secogotue group and not the Mohiks dialect at all. In fact, it turned out their dialect wasn’t even in the right dialect group and I have to wonder why they didn’t know that. If I joined their class, I’d be farther off the track than I want to be. I don’t want that to happen to you.

Siblings and Cousins

Mohiks is a dialect. Montauk is another. Looking at Goddard’s statement about the word for dog, you might decide that all you have to do is change a letter and you’re golden. Mutu¹⁰; not always. Take the word for turtle. In Mohiks, the word is toyuhpáhs. A cool thing I learned is that after much research, the Montauk restored word for turtle is máhtcik. It would take more than changing one sound in the words to make them switchable between the two languages. And that’s dealing with only one out of the four differences.

I’m including another map below.

This happy family of languages are extremely tied to one another. In some cases, they were a lot alike. Quiripi, which we only had some information on¹¹, was very close to Mohiks. It’s theorized that Niantic was also just as close. Narragansett was not as close, but it still was very similar. Montauk as well.

Mohegan-Pequot is a hyphenated name of two languages because of it’s political history. The Mohegan tribe was formed when there was a political split from the Pequot, and the Grand Sachem Uncas took his followers away. This happened just before the colonists began to get a firm hold onto the land. Then there was an undertoe by linguists that Pequot and Mohiks were still the same language or at least close enough they might as well be. However Mohiks had developed some differences that none of the other languages have¹² so I prefer to consider the dialects separate but married. Other languages are hyphenated together by academia, but for other reasons.

Although Quiripi is one of the closest in makeup to Mohiks, it isn’t in the same alphabet group. If I personally had to take a wild guess on which language would have been the absolute closest to Mohiks without anyone to correct me, I would lay my money on Niantic because of two reasons: geographical location (not just nearness; they were on the water in an area that might have had high foot traffic) as well as the fact they shared the same class of -Y. Narragansett, for all their language similarity and geographical proximity, aren’t even in the same alphabet grouping on most days.

I’ve presented all of that so that I can finally get to the next part: Learning Mohiks, the much fought-over child of Secotogue, and what all that has to do with it. I have shown how it and the languages around it are grouped and given a very small bit of why they’re grouped as they are. I hope if you have gotten this far, you’ve noticed the use of the same words over and over again: Mohegan and Algonquian (and how neatly I avoided using them).

Secotogue and Language Revitalization

As I mentioned before, many of these languages died over the centuries. Mohiks was one of them. The last speaker, Fidelia Fielding, walked on in 1908.¹³ As a matter of fact, if it weren’t for her the language wouldn’t have been as preserved and our modern day revitalization efforts would look very different.

Mohiks is Alonguian-Y, but it’s not the only Algonquian-Y as I mentioned before. We still have gaps in information. Linguists have been looking at similar languages to fill in gaps. Things have come along pretty far to the point that if you knew enough Mohiks, you could carry on a conversation and let the language take care of the rest.

Filling in the gaps, by the way, does not mean they changed the language’s counting system to make it easier to say the words. Or that they make up entire new words based on a sister language. As Stephanie Fielding once told me, Mohiks doesn’t have a word for buffalo because there were none.

With the first draft of this article, it was pointed out here that the method of putting the language back together could either be for historical purposes or it could be for bringing the language back to life – and perhaps finding a word for buffalo wouldn’t be a bad thing. I personally agree… to a point.

Fortunately for me, the Brotherton spent time with the Ojibwe and Stockbridge-Munsee. It makes a lot of sense for us as a tribe to have the word for buffalo. People take loan words. It’s human nature, there’s nothing you can do about it¹⁴. People are going to pull in words like television, gold (which Fidelia did) and so forth. The language will take care of itself and change, or not.

There’s an outside factor to language I’m noticing people aren’t taking into account: how the language actually operates. A language is FAR more than the technical details of dotting t’s and crossing i’s. It’s in the speaker’s brain; how one thinks. These old languages are more than old languages to us as native Americans. They’re a link to our ancestors and cultural ways of being. Our children were literally punished for speaking them. While we get our words back, we also have to remember how to use them properly.

I’m fortunate. No, I didn’t get to grow up on the rez but my father was as close to an old one as many of us are going to get these days. In my youth there are words, thoughts, actions that I now know are things many tribes are actively trying to keep alive. The Potawatomie have an elder program to encourage young people to visit their elders and just talk – to learn their histories and how to think as well. Other tribes are doing similar things.

And yes, I have written scores of letters trying to find an elder pen-pal with no luck. Sigh.

People are trying to bend the languages into a Western way of thinking¹⁵, when what they need to do is find a way to connect to the past way of thinking. We’re very fortunate Fidelia Fielding spent so much time speaking Mohiks to herself alone in her home¹⁶ and writing her diaries for us. We not only have the words, we have her thoughts. We have how she put things together.¹⁷

There are more than Fidelia’s recordings out there that each tribe is drawing from, so each tribe’s revival effort is restoring different dialects. Fundamentally many are similar because they tend to be based on the work of Stephanie Fielding, who put Fidelia’s work into a structured language, but the differences remain. Case in point, Montauk has some differences in their counting system from Mohiks.

The problem that has me taking so much time to put out this information is that people don’t seem to know how to present all that information or they’re just as confused as I was. Some are claiming to be working on Mohegan when they’re actually working with something else. Somehow “Mohegan” has become the layman’s term for SNEA when it is, in fact, not but instead is a child of SNEA. As of tonight, Wikipedia calls Secotogue, “Mohegan-Pequot-Montauk”, which is nice and specific but also extremely misleading.

The fact is the lines are being blurred in a way that’s confusing for the potential student. Or worse, there are people out there that are blurring the lines to get students into classes that aren’t teaching what the student wants or needs. Whether or not this is intentional, it is a problem.

But I Want to Learn Mohiks! What do I do?

Hey, you and me both. I’ve wanted to learn the language of my fathers since I was a small child. For years, working mostly alone on this website, I got nowhere. I’m trying a different approach now that appears to be working. But at first, I nearly fell neatly into a couple of language traps. I want you to avoid that.

So to wrap up, here’s a nice list of tips.

1. Learn the family groups that I outlined here. Go farther than that if you can. When someone says they are teaching Algonquian-Y or a “dialect of Mohegan”, unless you know your groupings you can’t know to ask “which Alqonguian-Y?” or ask them what they mean by a dialect of Mohegan. Even if the person you’re talking to doesn’t know or just doesn’t make the distinction, you can in your mind. It will help you know whether to walk into class or run to the next county.
2. If you’re going to be learning all by yourself for whatever reason, get ready to learn some linguistic theory on the side just to protect yourself. I would not want to wish the embarrassment of learning words from a sister dialect only to use them in a Mohiks conversation and be corrected on anyone.¹⁸
3. If you’re looking for an actual class to take and you find one, tread carefully. As I said before, some are honest and some have people who are not. Some don’t mean to mislead. Ask questions and find out if what they’re teaching will work for you.
   • Some of the languages are similar enough that if you learn that dialect (for example, Nehantick or Niantic), it would not be too hard to go to Mohegan from there. If that’s the only path you have to take, it’s not a bad one. It just requires a bit more study and learning more linguistic information.
   • Do your best to choose the right dialect and stick with it. I have already outlined in this article which languages were the closest, but if you have questions on it just ask. I could always use a reason to brush up on my research.
4. Fight the fight to clear up the confusion. Share this article or something else that educates on where the languages actually belong. Avoid using the general terms that are causing the mess in the first place. Say “Algonquian-R” only when you mean that entire group. Say Mohegan only when you mean Mohegan itself or even use the term Secotogue for Mohegan-Pequot, because that’s more specific. Say Narragansett only when you mean that, and Algic only when you want to talk about everybody. Say what you mean. Mean what you say.
5. Be prepared to study study study.
6. And for those who are learning this language because they truly wish to bring back the languages, form a language pod or nest.¹⁹ A language pod, for one, is a group of people who submerge themselves together to speak. Something like that is gold. If you get one, cherish it.

I didn’t EVEN touch on pronouncing things out loud. The bane of my existence.²⁰
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1. Mohiks is the native word for the Mohegan-Pequot language. ↩︎
2. This topic is actually a center of some debate with scholars. ↩︎
3. Oxford, Will. 2023. Algonquian language maps. Manuscript, University of Manitoba. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~oxfordwr/algling/maps.html. ↩︎
4. For a pretty decent list of the languages grouped with their family groups, you might try visiting https://www.aaanativearts.com/tribes_by_language.htm ↩︎
5. Kemmer, Professor S. “What Does it Mean for Languages
   to be ‘Genetically Related’?” Rice University. https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/genetic.html ↩︎
6. Oxford, Will. 2023. Algonquian language maps. Manuscript, University of Manitoba. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~oxfordwr/algling/maps.html. ↩︎
7. Granberry, Julian. 2003. Modern Mohegan: the Dialect of Jits Bodunaxa. Lincom Europa. p. 9 ↩︎
8. Goddard, “The Dialectology of Southern New England Algonquian” ↩︎
9. Granberry had actually put a question mark by Niantic, probably due to his theory that Niantic might have been identical to Mohiks or perhaps belonged in a different dialect group. ↩︎
10. Just say no. ↩︎
11. But also happily is undergoing revitalization efforts ↩︎
12. Granberry, Julian. 2003. Modern Mohegan: the Dialect of Jits Bodunaxa. Lincom Europe. p. 12. ↩︎
13. “Fidelia Fielding” The Mohegan Tribe. https://www.mohegan.nsn.us/about/our-tribal-history/historical-figures/fidelia-fielding ↩︎
14. Unless you’re an overreaching government that can’t stand the idea of that English word being the word used for that American export nut your citizens are crazy about. Then you’re going to unnaturally come up with your own word and require it be labeled that way everywhere until your people have their own word for it and forget it’s actual name, kind of like how they don’t know there was a Tienanmen Square. ↩︎
15. They’re also gatekeeping in some instances, which is probably the worst thing you can do for a language. ↩︎
16. Which is kind of sad when you think about it. ↩︎
17. Although I had to admit when I come across some of her stuff, I recognize Victorian ways of thinking as well. We’re lucky we’re not relying only on her documents. ↩︎
18. This actually happened to me, after I came back to my (rather excellent) Montauk class from speaking on the phone to someone who was adamant they were teaching Mohegan as well. (Hint: they were not.) Don’t make my mistake. ↩︎
19. This amazing suggestion is courtesy of Elizabeth Barrette, who has turned out to be a rock of sanity on the side. ↩︎
20. A hearty taput ni to Will Oxford for taking the time to help me get my facts straight. If it weren’t for him, I’d still be looking for the elusive -Z dialect. This article was finished with (I hope) finality on May 12th, 2024. ↩︎