A Vocabulary of the Nanticoke Dialect 
William Vans Murray; ed. Daniel G. Brinton

This volume contains a list of some 300 words collected by Murray in 1796 along the Choptank River on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It further contains introductory remarks and annotation by linguist Daniel G. Brinton, who provides words for comparison in a number of other Algonquin languages including Lenape and Chipeway. This edition features an indexed listing of Brinton's Algonquin comparisons in the appendix.

A Vocabulary of Susquehannock, Second Edition
Rev. Thomas Campanius Holm, et al.

Taken from Campanius' Vocabula Mahakuassica, this volume features a list of over 100 words identified as the only known vocabulary of Susquehannock or Andaste, the Iroquoian language spoken along the Susquehanna River in Maryland and Pennsylvania. The edition follows the version translated by Peter S. Duponceau in 1834, with added material from the original 1696 Swedish edition. Discrepancies between the two editions are fully noted and catalogued in the appendix. New to the second edition are additional fragments of data: a single word from George Alsop's A Character of the Province of Maryland (1666), another single word from Benjamin Smith Barton's New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America (1798) which purports to be from the Susquehannock remnant at Conestoga, and incidental statements from the Jesuits of Canada and the Moravian Bishop Commerhoff which are our only evidence of the Iroquoian languages of Erie and Scahento, spoken in Northern Pennsylvania.

1996 ~ 30 pp. ~ hardback ~ ISBN: 0-9644234-4-8 ~ out of print
Second Edition: August 2007 ~ 80 pp. ~ paperback ~ ISBN: 978-1-889758-85-5 ~ $18.95   

A Vocabulary of the Unami Jargon
Thomas Campanius Holm

From Campanius' Vocabularium Barbaro-Virgineorum, this volume features a vocabulary of the Unami traders' jargon of Lenape-Delaware used along the lower Delaware River, with over 500 entries plus dialogues and speeches recorded in the 1640s. It follows theedition translated by Peter S. Duponceau in 1834. Also included in this volume is William Penn's word-list of the Pennsylvania Indians, which lists 17 words in the jargon.

A Vocabulary of Powhatan
John Smith, Introduction by Frederic Gleach

This vocabulary contains 109 entries in the Powhatan language of Virginia as collected on the 1606 voyage of Capt. John Smith. Alsoincludes word-lists from two otherwise unattested Virginia languages: 17 words of King William County Pamunkey collected in 1858, and six words of Nansemond collected from the last living speaker in 1907. This edition also features an introduction by Powhatan scholar Frederic Gleach.

An Ancient New Jersey Indian Jargon
J. Dyneley Prince, ed.

From an anonymous manuscript entitled the "Indian Interpreter" found in the office of the Secretary of State at Trenton, New Jersey, this 261 word vocabulary was taken from Salem County, NJ and is dated to 1684. This version is reprinted from a 1904 article edited by J. Dyneley Prince, who provides detailed explanations of the words and comparisons with other Delaware/Lenape vocabularies. Also includes Gabriel Thomas' Discourses in the Delaware jargon (41 entries), and new to this expanded edition are 23 terms from Peter Lindeström's Geographia Americae.

A Vocabulary of Tuscarora
John Lawson

This volume presents the earliest known vocabulary of Tuscarora, the most prominent Iroquoian language in eastern North Carolina before the historic period. Serving as a kind of lingua franca in the early historical Carolinas, the language owed its prestige to the political power of the Tuscaroras themselves who at their height, may have numbered up to 2,000 fighting men in 15 villages. The 188 words which comprise this vocabulary are taken from John Lawson's 1709 New Voyage to Carolina.

A Vocabulary of Woccon
John Lawson

This vocabulary offers the only known example of the Woccon language of eastern North Carolina. Presenting 144 words from a language of the Eastern Siouan group most closely related to Catawba, A Vocabulary of Woccon is a valuable primary source for a tribe known to history from only the scantest of records. The words in this vocabulary are taken from John Lawson's 1709 book A New Voyage to Carolina.

A Dictionary of Powhatan
William Strachey, Introduction by Frederic Gleach

This volume represents the largest vocabulary ever collected of Powhatan -- approximately 1,000 entries compiled by William Strachey around 1612. This edition is based on Major's 1849 printing of the British Museum manuscript, with variant forms and extra words cited from the Bodleian manuscript. Two supplementary word-lists of Virginia Algonquian are also included: nine words from an anonymous relation of 1607 attributed to Gabriel Archer, and 29 words from Robert Beverley's 1705 History and Present State of Virginia. This edition also features an introduction by Powhatan scholar Frederic Gleach.

A Vocabulary of Mohegan-Pequot
J. Dyneley Prince and Frank Speck

Mohegan-Pequot was an Eastern Algonquian language originally spoken in southeastern Connecticut along the Thames River. It became extinct in the early 20th century. This vocabulary contains 446 words collected in 1903 by J. Dyneley Prince and Frank Speck from Fidelia Fielding, a resident of Mohegan, Connecticut and the last native speaker of the dialect; with 12 additional words from the Brothertown reservation in Wisconsin. It features etymological and comparative linguistic commentary for each term by Prince and Speck.

A Vocabulary of New Jersey Delaware
James Madison

Recorded in the Indian village of Edgepillock in New Jersey in 1792, (modern-day Indian Mills, Burlington County) these 267 words of the Southern Unami dialect are taken from the papers of President James Madison as reprinted in Henry Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes . Also contains 76 entries Johannes DeLaet's 1633 vocabulary of the Sanhican Indians located north of Trenton, NJ which somescholars believe is the only example of the Unalachtigo dialect of Delaware.

A Vocabulary of Stadaconan
Jacques Cartier

All the remaining linguistic data on the St. Lawrence Iroquoians comes from the Cartier voyages of 1534 and 1535-6. Cartier compiled two vocabularies from captives of Stadacona (modern day Quebec City) of 60 and 160 words, published in his First and Second Relations respectively. They document an Iroquoian language (or multiple languages) whose identity is still uncertain. This edition also contains words from the narrative portions of the Relations not foundin either vocabulary, including six words which appear to be from the Hochelaga dialect spoken on the island of Montreal.

Denny's Vocabulary of Delaware
Ebenezer Denny

The earliest true vocabulary of the Southern Unami dialect of Delaware or Lenape was recorded by Major Ebenezer Denny in 1785, at Fort McIntosh on the Western Pennsylvania frontier. Denny's is the last recording of Delaware to show traces of Pidgin Delaware, an Unami-based traders' jargon used between Delawares and European colonists during the 1600's.

A Vocabulary of Roanoke
Thomas Hariot, John White and John Lawson

Denny's Vocabulary of Shawnee
Ebenezer Denny

This vocabulary is a substantial collection of 404 Shawnee words and phrases collected by Major Ebenezer Denny in January of 1786. It was compiled from Shawnees assembled for treaty at Fort Finney, located along the Great Miami River in the southwestern corner of Ohio, mostly from a woman called "the Grenadier Squaw."

Cummings' Vocabulary of Delaware
Richard W. Cummings

Nearly 350 words of the Southern Unami dialect of Delaware or Lenape make up this vocabulary which first appeared in Henry Schoolcraft's History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. It was recorded in 1852 most likely on the Kansas reservation just north of the Kansas River. The expanded 2006 edition also contains an additional 200 words taken by Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple on the Kansas reservation from the noted Delaware chief Black Beaver in 1853.

Early Vocabularies of Mohawk
Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert

This is a collection of the first known vocabularies of Mohawk dating from the mid-17th century. It features a 1635 vocabulary of about 200 words from the anonymous Journey into the Mohawk Country, ascribed to Harmen van den Bogaert. The volume also includes Wassenaer's numerals and month names of 1624, and 15 words from Megapolensis's word list of 1644.

Schoolcraft's Vocabulary of Oneida
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and RichardUpdike Shearman

This Oneida vocabulary contains some 325 entries, and was taken primarily from Young Skenando with supplemental terms from an Oneida identified as "Johnson", collected by Richard Updike Shearman. It was collected from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's Report to the Secretary of State (1846), his Notes on the Iroquois (1847), and his Indian Tribes (1851-1857). This edition synthesizes the three previously published versions, noting textual variants.

Elliot's Vocabulary of Cayuga
Adam Elliot

This 320 word vocabulary of Cayuga was collected by the Rev. Adam Elliot in Canada, using a questionnaire devised by Henry Schoolcraft. This edition employs all three printed versions of the vocabulary, from Schoolcraft's Report to the Secretaryof State (1846), his Notes on the Iroquois (1847) and his Indian Tribes (1851-1857), listing textual variants.

Schoolcraft's Vocabulary of Onondaga
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Two versions of this vocabulary, elicited from AbrahamLe Fort from a questionnaire, were published in the mid-1800's, one in Henry Schoolcraft's Notes on the Iroquois (1847), and the other in his Indian Tribes (1851-1857). Both editions are utilized in this new reprinting, noting variations between them.

Elliot's Vocabulary of Mohawk
Adam Elliot

Rev. Adam Elliot used a questionnaire of Schoolcraft's to collect this 320 word vocabulary of Mohawk in Canada during 1845. Schoolcraft subsequently published it in his Report to the Secretary of State (1846), his Notes on the Iroquois (1847), and his Indian Tribes (1851-1857).This new alphabetized edition synthesizes and notes variants from all three published versions.

Cummings' Vocabulary of Shawnee
Richard W. Cummings

This vocabulary draws from a questionnaire prepared by Henry Schoolcraft and was subsequently published in his Indian Tribes (1851-1857). It was collected by U.S. Indian agent Richard W. Cummings, probably from the Shawnees of Kansas.

A Vocabulary of Seneca
Albert Gallatin

This volume offers a list of over 400 words of the Seneca language compiled by an anonymous collector in the War Department inthe 1820s. It also contains an additional 89 words of Seneca derived from a manuscript of J. Parish collected prior to 1820. Both of these were originally published in Albert Gallatin's Synopsis of the Indian Tribes in 1836.

The Tutelo Language
Horatio Hale

The most significant treatment of the language(s) spoken by the Siouan tribes of Virginia is the 1883 article "The Tutelo Tribe and Language" by Horatio Hale. Hale includes a substantial 279 word vocabulary, as well as numerous grammatical tables with explanations, mostly gathered from an elderly Tutelo called Nikonha. This edition includes all the Tutelo grammatical material printed by Hale, and organizes the vocabulary into bidirectional English-Tutelo and a new Tutelo-English section.

Handy's Vocabulary of Miami
Charles Handy

Collected by Indian agent Charles N. Handy, this vocabulary of about 300 words draws from a questionnaire prepared by Henry Schoolcraft and was subsequently published in his Indian Tribes (1851-1857).

Observations on the Mahican Language
Jonathan Edwards

One of the most interesting linguistic records from the 1700's, despite its brevity, is Jonathan Edwards' Observations on the Language of the Muhhekaneew Indians (1788). While not a complete grammatical treatment of Mahican, his text is one of the better works of the era, all the more valuable for his native command of the language. This new edition reprints the book in full, and also features separate bidirectional Mahican-English and English-Mahican indexes for the approximately 150 words cited.

Minor Vocabularies of Tutelo and Saponi
Edward Sapir and Leo Frachtenberg

This edition collects a number of small but valuable examples of the Virginia Siouan languages. It includes two small vocabularies of about 50 words each by Edward Sapir and Leo Frachtenberg, both published in 1913. Also included are 7 translated Saponi place-names collected by William Byrd on the Virginia-North Carolina border in 1728, and 2 words of Moneton or Tomahitan obtained by Abraham Wood during an expedition into southern West Virginiain 1674.

Wood's Vocabulary of Massachusett
William Wood

The earliest substantial vocabulary of Massachusett was that taken by William Wood and published in his New England's Prospect in 1634. It represents the North Shore dialect of the language and contains over 250 words and phrases in the now-extinct language. Included are the numbers up to twenty, days of the week, months, and names of important people and places.

Chew's Vocabulary of Tuscarora
William Chew and Gilbert Rockwood

This 350 word vocabulary wascommissioned by Henry Schoolcraft and filled by William Chew and Gilbert Rockwood in 1845, at the Tuscarora Mission in New York State. This edition makes use of both published versions in Schoolcraft's Report to the Secretary of State (1846) and Notes on the Iroquois (1847). Also included is a 100 word vocabulary of Tuscarora prepared by Nicholas and James Cassick of the War Department, printed in Albert Gallatin's Synopsis of the Indian Tribes (1836).

Early Fragments of Minsi Delaware
John Heckewelder, Thomas Jefferson, et al. 1630-1798

This volume collects the earliest written examples of the Minsi dialect of Delaware or Lenape. The volume consists of Rev. John Heckewelder's Minsi vocabulary, collected in the late 1700s and totaling 100 entries. A collection of 80 words of the language compiled by scholar/president Thomas Jefferson is also included. Several scattered linguistic fragments collected from Minsi tribes suchas the Manhattans and Hackensacks by Benjamin Smith Barton, David de Vries, Jasper Danckaerts, Adrian van der Donck, and others round out the volume.

A Vocabulary of Wyandot
Col. John Johnston, Benjamin Smith Barton, et al.

This volume contains 145 words of Wyandot collected by Col. John Johnston in 1819. Johnston was an Indian agent and "beloved friend" who was associated with the Wyandot and Shawnee tribes in Ohio for over 50 years. The volume also includes a smaller sample of about 40 Wyandot words collected by Benjamin Smith Barton in the late 18th century. Also included are three sets Wyandot numerals collected by Conrad Weiser (1755), William Walker (1851), and Samuel Haldeman (1847).

Heckwelder's Vocabulary of Nanticoke
John Heckewelder  1785

This volume features 146 words of this Maryland language collected in 1785 by John Heckewelder, a Moravian missionary. Heckewelder compiled the vocabulary from a Nanticoke chief residing in Canada, probably at Six Nations Reserve. The volume was collated from various manuscripts found in the collections of the American Philosophical Society and contains valuable background information gleaned from Heckewelder's personal correspondence. 

Minor Vocabularies of Huron
Jean de Brébeuf, Louis Armand de la Lahontan, et al.

Here are collected various short but important works on the Huron language, including Brébeuf's grammatical remarks in the Jesuit Relation of 1636. Several other wordlists from the Jesuit Relations of the mid-17th century are also included, as well as Lahontan's 50-word vocabulary of 1704. The volume also includes three words of Neutral—the only actual fragments of the language of this important nation that was wiped out by Iroquois attacks in the early 1650s.

Castiglioni's Vocabulary of Cherokee
Luigi Castiglioni  1790

This volume features one of the earliest published vocabularies of Cherokee. It was taken from Viaggio negli Stati Uniti dell' America Settentrionale (1790), an account of the early American Republic written by Luigi Castiglioni following his tour of the United States. A Milanese gentleman and botanist, Castiglioni recorded nearly 170 words in the Western or Upper dialect of Cherokee, and this new edition is translated from the original Italian. The volume also contains contemporary remarks on the language by the naturalist William Bartram (1791) and includes a valuable list of the names of 43 Cherokee towns which were inhabited during the 1770s.

Elements of a Miami-Illinois Grammar
Anonymous  ca. 1700; Compiled by Peter S. Duponceau  1820

This volume contains pronoun tables, vocabulary list and phrases (totaling 225 entries) of the mutually-intelligible language of the Piankishaw, Illinois and Miami tribes. This anonymous, undated manuscript was likely written by a French trader in the mid-to-late 1700s. The volume also contains a reproduction of the Lord's Prayer in Miami-Illinois.

Ridout's Vocabulary of Shawnee
Thomas Ridout  1788

This volume is a reprinting of the vocabulary of Thomas Ridout, who compiled a list of 400 Shawnee words in the late-18th century. Ridout was a surveyor-general of Upper Canada who was taken prisoner by the Shawnees and subsequently learned to speak their language.
    This vocabulary was first printed as an appendix to Ridout’s letters in 1890, and is one of the earliest major vocabularies of the Shawnee language.

A Vocabulary of Stockbridge Mahican
Benjamin Smith Barton, William Jenks, et al.

The original Mahican tribe lived in the Hudson River valley of eastern New York state, from Lake Champlain south to the Catskills. In later times the tribe also assumed into its orbit several closely related groups such as the Housatonic, Wyachtonok and Wappinger, though it always remained a distinct cultural and political entity from the similarly named Mohegan of Connecticut. This volume contains early linguistic data from the Stockbridge Mahicans, including 84 words collected from multiple speakers by Benjamin Smith Barton, 80 words obtained in 1804 by William Jenks, and about 30 words collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft from Metoxon in about 1827.

Minor Vocabularies of Nanticoke-Conoy
Thomas Jefferson, et al.

This single volume collects scattered fragments of the Nanticoke and Conoy dialects spoken around Chesapeake Bay. The Nanticoke materials include Jefferson's 70-word vocabulary of 1817, Frank Speck's 61-word salvage vocabulary from Six Nations Reserve 1914, and a half-dozen words of the Kickotank (Assateague) dialect from 1650. Also included are word-lists of the Conoy-Piscataway preserved from the Jesuit missions in Maryland and phrases from the 1665 deposition of Elizabeth Brumley.

Early Vocabularies of Catawba
John L. Miller and Benjamin Smith Barton

This volume collects the earliest recordings of the Catawba language including: 176 terms collected by John L. Miller in 1835 and published in Gallatin's Synopsis of the Indian Tribes, and 31 words collected by Benjamin Smith Barton in the 1790s.

A Vocabulary of Etchemin
James Rosier  1605
Introduction by Ed Sugrue

In 1605, James Rosier obtained 86 words of an unnamed language along the coast of Maine, first printed in Samuel Purchas's Pilgrimes (1625). Rosier's vocabulary has mixed Maliseet/Eastern Abenaki characteristics and possibly represents the Etchemin language. Also included in this volume is a more certain list of the Etchemin numbers from 1 to 10 recorded by Marc Lescarbot in 1607.

A Vocabulary of Souriquois Jargon
Col. John Johnson and Conrad Weiser
Introduction by Peter Bakker

This volume collects the extant examples of the Basque-Micmac pidgin spoken in Acadia during the early 1600s. It features over 100 words of "Souriquois"recorded by Lescarbot (1609), pidgin words from the Relation of Pierre Biard (1616), as well as the earliest recorded Algonquian: an untranslated, presumably Micmac phrase recorded by Jacques Cartier in the Bay of Chaleur in 1534.