Talk:Hitchiti

Split article
I propose to split this article into one about the town and one about the language. Hitichiti was only one of a number of towns whose people primarily spoke the Hitchiti language. The town of Hitchiti was first mentioned by the Spanish as one of the towns in Apalachicola Province on the Chattahoochee River. Other towns in Apalachicola Province that were also primarily Hitchiti-speaking included Apalachicola, Oconee, Okmulgee, Sabacola, and, possibly, Osuchi. Other towns in Apalachicola Province spoke Muscogee, Koasati, or other languages. In about 1691, Hitchiti, along with other towns from Apalachicola Province, moved to the Ochese Creek area in central Georgia, where they became know to the English as the Ochese Creek Indians. In 1715, all of those towns moved back to the Chattahoochee River, where they were known to the English as the Lower Creeks. There were likely other Hitchiti-speaking towns and villages scattered across central Georgia. Donald Albury 23:28, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Question: Isn't the Hitchiti language the Mikasuki language? If so, maybe all the language info should be moved over to that article with a hatnote at the top of this article pointing to it?Yuchitown (talk) 15:57, 18 December 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown
 * My understanding (based on limited reading to date) is that Hitchiti and Mikasuki were closely related, with perhaps Mikasuki being a dialect of Hitchiti. I do know that all of the sources I have been reading state that about half of the tribal towns that were part of the association of towns called Apalachicola Province by the Spanish, and Ochese Creek Indians, later, Lower Creeks, by the English, spoke Hitchiti. None of them mention the Mikasuki language. I would need to do more research to have a better answer, which I don't think I will find time to get to for a while (I have slowed down on expanding Apalachicola people because I have been distracted by the lack of coverage of 'tribal town' or talwa in WP.) Donald Albury 17:44, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Omniglot appears to say they are the same. Native-Languages.org suggests Hitchiti is an extinct dialect of Mikasuki-Hitchiti. We should ask WP:WikiProject Languages. Yuchitown (talk) 18:32, 18 December 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown
 * In the The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages, George Aaron Broadwell writes: "Hitchiti was spoken in tribal towns within the Creek Confederacy in Georgia and, after removal, in Oklahoma. It is generally regarded as the same language as Mikasuki (p. 397)". The same is essentially said in similar general overview volumes by Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun. Mary Haas referred to the language as Hitchiti–Mikasuki. Since only the Mikasuki variety survived up to the era of the (often dubious) ISO-standardization of languages, it has got an ISO-code now, which technically relegated extinct Hitchiti to the status of a "dialect of Mikasuki", even though of course both were originally "on par". We may consider to merge the language material here into a separate section of Mikasuki language. –Austronesier (talk) 20:29, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
 * PS: we shouldn't consult sites like Omniglot or native-languages.org when this article already has a citation from a scholarly work published by University of Nebraska Press. This is a gold standard publisher in the field of Native American studies. –Austronesier (talk) 20:35, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I comprehend the difference between an academic press and a crowd-sourced website. I didn't use those as citations; just a quick web search, and asked over at WP Languages so we can hear more from linguists. Yuchitown (talk) 03:38, 19 December 2022 (UTC)Ycuihtown
 * The following is personal speculation. I will note that Hitchiti was just one of a number of tribal towns that reliable sources say spoke the Hitchiti language in the 17th into the early 19th century. That makes me suspect that "Hitchiti" was not the name used by its own speakers for the language. I haven't done a deep search, but I recall seeing "Mikasuki" first used as the name of a tribe/band that moved into northern Florida from southwestern Georgia early in the 19th century, perhaps moving down from one of the Lower Towns where Hitchiti was spoken. I will also note that the people who were call "Alachua Seminoles", the first people to be labeled "Seminole", moved to Florida by 1750 from the tribal town of Oconee, where Hitchiti was spoken. The Alachua Seminoles, of whom Micanopy was chief, were a major component of the coaliton of peoples that fought in the Second Seminole War. One report stated that "42 Seminole warriors, 33 Mikasukis, 10 Creeks and 10 Tallahassees" remained in Florida at the end of the Second Seminole War. Somehow that mix led to a majority of the Seminoles in Florida speaking Mikasuki a century ago, with the remainder speaking Cow Creek Seminole (i.e., Muscogee). This makes me suspect that Hitchiti and Mikasuki were/are the same language, but the remaining users call it Mikasuki. - Donald Albury 03:12, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, 21st-century texts from Google scholars say either they are the same or closely related, so there might not be a linguistic consensus. Either way, it appears you could move all the language material over to Mikasuki language. Yuchitown (talk) 15:22, 19 December 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown
 * Based on reliable sources, yes, the article name should be "Mikasuki language", with a statement that the same language or a closely related language/dialect of it, called "Hitchiti", was spoken in towns along the Chattahoochee River and across much of Georgia. I expect to come back to this article in a few days to deal with moving the language material, and expand the part about the tribal town. - Donald Albury 15:54, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for all your work here and on Indigenous Florida topics! Yuchitown (talk) 18:09, 19 December 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown

Now that there's a formal request to split; I oppose the name change. The simplest solution would be to keep the tribal town information here and move the language info to Mikasuki language. Creating a disabiguation page with only two links just guarantees that no one goes immediately to the article they are looking for. Yuchitown (talk) 15:27, 22 December 2022 (UTC)Yuchitown
 * I agree that the information about the Hitchiti language variety can be moved in full to "Mikasuki language". So this article can stay as "Hitchiti" with the town and its people as the primary topic. –Austronesier (talk) 20:47, 22 December 2022 (UTC)