Extinction of American Indian languages before and after contact periods

Extract

We begin with an unanswerable question: was there more than trivial linguistic extinction before contact periods with Europeans? There is no question about the extinction of many languages after the contact periods. On landing at Plymouth, the Pilgrims, in Paul Radin’s grim view, first fell upon their knees and then upon the necks of the Indians. After King Philip’s War, many of the coastal tribes removed themselves to live with interior Algonquian tribes. There are some Algonquian Indians still living along the New England coast, as at Martha’s Vineyard and Old Town, Maine; but except for a few older Penobscot, all speak English. Some Algonquians found along the middle Atlantic coast withdrew over the Appalachians, and now speak Shawnee and Delaware in Oklahoma. But Iroquois speakers remain in New York State; some have recently settled in Brooklyn, where they specialize in the construction of tall buildings without fear of height; others remain in the Carolinas (Cherokee). And some Muskogean speakers remain in Florida (Seminoles). But most aboriginal languages of the Atlantic coast are extinct, just as most languages of the California coast became extinct, while languages in the valleys and mountains and deserts of California continued to be spoken.