"Anohebasisiro Nimanibota / We Want to Talk to the Honored One": Timucua Language and its Uses, Silences, and Protests

Abstract:In 1688, five Timucua Native chiefs wrote a brief letter welcoming the new Spanish governor to La Florida, or so the accompanying Spanish translation of the letter suggests. The original Timucua words tell another story. Combining two methodologies, linguistic anthropology and history, we seek to offer more than a new translation of a neglected seventeenth-century Native-language text. First, we examine the ways in which the Timucua letter-writers used their language. We show the select grammatical and rhetorical strategies Timucua writers used to make arguments, communicate displeasure, and express themselves by comparing the 1688 epistle with the only other surviving Timucua letter, written in 1651. Second, we ground the letter in its historical context. Placing the 1688 Timucua epistle alongside other letters and dispatches from the time, we explore the different ways Timucua people made sense of the violence and disruptions affecting their homelands. Centering Timucua words and experiences shows the limits of colonial control and, more importantly, the powerful possibilities afforded by working with Native language texts.