by Patricia Anderson

Tunica nouns have both a grammatical gender and an animacy class. Tunica grammatical gender is either masculine or feminine; there is no neuter or neutral grammatical gender. Tunica animacy classes consist of inanimate, animate-non-human, and animate-human.

Gender and animacy are inextricably linked in Tunica because they are expressed with the same set of suffixes. Known as the Gender-Number Affixes (GNA), affixes encoding grammatical gender and animacy appear on nouns and noun phrases throughout the Tunica texts.

ihchahchi

i-hcha-hchi

my-grandparent-feminine singular GNA

my grandmother

Ihchaku

i-cha-ku

my-grandparent-masculine singular GNA

my grandfather

ihksaku

ihk-sa-ku

my-dog-masculine singular GNA

my dog

ihksasinima

ihk-sa-sinima

my-dog-feminine plural GNA

my dogs

Grammatical gender in Tunica is related to biological gender at some level, as we can see with the two “grandparent” examples above: “grandmother” takes the feminine suffix while “grandfather” takes the masculine suffix. However when referring to mixed groups, the ending cannot refer to biological gender alone. Instead, the GNA selected reflects both the number of referents and the animacy class of said nouns.

Consider the following examples. In the first set, the noun is a human, and in the second set, the noun is an animal.

Etiku - my friend -- ku is masculine singular ending

Et’unima - my two friends -- unima is the masculine dual ending

Etisɛma - my many friends -- sɛma is the masculine plural ending

Etiku - my group of friends -- ku is the masculine collective ending

Rushtaku - a rabbit -- ku is masculine singular ending

Rusht’unima - two rabbits -- unima is the masculine dual ending

Rushtasinima - many rabbits - sinima is the feminine plural ending

Rushtahchi - a group of rabbits - hchi is the feminine collective ending

As seen above, when there are one or two nouns, there is no distinction between human or animal endings. However, once you increase the number past three items, the difference in animacy class is apparent from the endings - masculine endings are used for humans and feminine endings are used for non-humans.

This pattern of human/non-human animacy is also seen in verb endings when the subject is unknown or indefinite. For example, if I hear a number of voices, and I want to ask “who is making all that racket?” in Tunica, I use the masculine verb endings.

     Kaku hahpaya yata?

     who   noise      they are making (masculine)

On the other hand, if I hear a bunch of animal yowls, and want to ask “who is making all that racket?” I would say.

     Kaku hahpaya yasiti?

     who   noise      they are making (feminine)

For a more indepth look at Tunica grammatical gender and animacy as evidenced though GNAs in the texts, see Heaton and Anderson (2017).

References: 

Heaton, Raina and Patricia Anderson. 2017. “When Animals Become Humans: Grammatical Gender in Tunica.” International Journal of American Linguistics vol 83, no 2.

by Patricia Anderson

Tunica is a language isolate, meaning it is unrelated to any other language today. But, as is the case with many language isolates, it is likely that related languages once existed. Unfortunately, no related languages were recorded or written down before their speakers were coerced to stop speaking them. Youchigant mentions a mutually intelligible language in Notebook 9, stating that “there used to be another tribe near the Tunica and their languages were mutually intelligible” (180)

Several linguistic relations for Tunica have been proposed over the years. John R. Swanton (1919) proposed a relationship between Tunica, Chitimacha, and Ishak (Atakapa). Edward Sapir (1929) included Tunica in the Hokan-Siouan super-stock. Mary Haas (1951, 1952, 158) proposed a Gulf language family that included Tunica, Natchez, Muskogean, and tentatively included Ishak (Atakapa) and Chitimacha. Pamela Munro (1994) expanded on Haas’s Guld classification to encompass Yuki. For a comprehensive analysis of proposed linguistic relations of Tunica, see Campbell (1997, particularly pages 305-309). 

All of the aforementioned theories have since been evaluated as unlikely, based on the existing linguistic evidence.

It is conceivable that languages that were not documented held the key to Tunica linguistic relationships. Non-linguistic documentation indicates the possibility. For example, Yazoo was the language spoken by the Yazoo people. The Yazoo were allies of the Tunica in the early 18th century, and they lived very near the Tunica people at the mouth of the Yazoo river. Jesuit missionary Father Antione Davion lived among the Tunica and Yazoo from 1700-1708, and he wrote letters back to the seminary in Quebec indicating he could be understood in both languages. It is possible that Yazoo language was the mutually intelligible language Youchigant was referring to, however Davion did not include any language samples in his letters, so do not know if he could speak both languages or if he spoke one language that was understood by both groups. Or perhaps Youchigant is referring to Koroa, another small nation in the area allied with the Yazoo. However, these are just speculations. Given that no linguistic documentation survives of either Yazoo or Koroa, we will not be able to prove they have any linguistic relationship to Tunica today. Hence, Tunica remains classified as a language isolate.

References: 

Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian Languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford University Press, New York.

Munro, Pamela. 1994. Gulf and Yuki-Gulf. Anthropological Linguistics 36(2):125-222.

Swanton, John R. 1919. A Structural and Lexical Comparison of the Tunica, Chitimacha, and Atakapa Languages. Bulletin 68. Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, D.C.

by Patricia Anderson

Sitting, standing and lying down:  those are the three positions any noun can take in the Tunica language. Some nouns are inherently one position: rivers always lie; trees generally stand. It is possible for a tree to lay after it is felled. But under no circumstances of Tunica grammar could a tree sit.

Spatial orientation shows up grammatically in the use of existentials, English equivalents of “there is” or “there are.” The verbs to denote existentials inherently encode sitting, standing or lying. For example, “there is a tree” uses the verb kal’ura since it is standing whereas “there is a snake” uses the verb ura since it is lying. Certain animals inherently squat, such as ducks; stating that these nouns exist uses the verb una.

Rihku kal’ura

tree  there is (standing)

There is a tree

Nara ura

Snake  there is (lying)

There is a snake

Kuwa una

duck    there is (sitting)

There is a duck

Position in space is also expressed grammatically when creating durative constructions. Durative constructions in Tunica are often translated as progressive verbs in English. “He is sleeping” is inflected with a form of ura, since you most often sleep lying down. Whereas “he is sitting” is inflected with a form of una, since you always sit in a sitting position.

Rap’ura

rapu-ura

sleep-durative

He is sleeping

Uk’una

uki-una

sit-durative

He is sitting

If you’d like to provide additional information, you can indicate that someone is doing something in different positions based on the verb you use to inflect. See the below example for the difference. 

Har’ura

hara-ura

sing-durative

He is singing (in a lying position)

Har’una

hara-una

sing-durative

He is singing (in a sitting position)

During her work with Youchigant, Haas became aware of this distinction in Tunica grammar. She specifically set up elicitation paradigms to illuminate this grammatical feature; and in later notebooks, Haas was sure to ask about activities in a variety of positions in order to see if there were any grammatical nuances she should be aware of.

This example from Notebook 14 shows the different position used when asking where something is; ara is the feminine singular form of ura.

When asking where “rice” is, you use the verb that denotes a lying position, whereas when you ask where the “star” is, you use the verb that denotes a sitting position. 

As you can see above with the feminine ara and the masculine una, spatial orientation is intertwined with grammatical gender and animacy class. For more on these topics, see Tunica Animacy.

The recipient of the 2022 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is Elizabeth D. Samet, in recognition of her book, Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).  Dr. Samet has been a Professor of English at West Point (United States Military Academy), since 1997. The 2022 Barzun Prize was presented at the Society's November 2022 Meeting.

‘Miraculously’, Elizabeth Samet writes with some irony, ‘the deadliest conflict in human history became something inherently virtuous’.  We turned the damage and loss of the Second World War into a scene of rescue, an American saving of the face of democracy and kindness.  ‘Each generation has found a new use for the Good War’, Samet says.  It is seen as the only one of its kind, the war that all other wars fail to be.  The ‘keynotes’ of the myth, as she defines them, include the following claims: the United States joined the war for idealistic reasons; Americans were united in the war effort; Americans ‘fight decently reluctantly, only when they must’.  Without wishing to deny the heroism of many soldiers or the horrors committed by the enemies, Samet asks us to attend to a more complex view of the long historical situation.

When she quotes a war industry worker as saying that World War II was ‘the last time in the history of the country when a full-blown spirit of patriotism was in every heart’, Samet doesn’t deny that the spirit was in some hearts, only asks us to wonder what was going on in the hearts that didn’t feel that way, and what happens to our sense of history if we fail to take them into account.  This is her recurring theme, as she explores stories of the good war in political campaigns, history books, tv series, movies, guidebooks, comics, memorial speeches, and much else.    The myth of World War II excuses other, more questionable combats, she says, so that ‘we allow our guilt to obscure the realities of devastating, indecisive wars’, and thereby ‘increase the likelihood of finding ourselves in a similar predicament once again’.  Samet is particularly persuasive on the topic of lateness, both in wartime and after.  Which ardent defendants of democracy were paying attention when Italy took over Ethiopia and civil war broke out in Spain?  Even in England, after the Munich agreement, there was a will to do nothing until after the last minute.  ‘It was easier’, Samet says, ‘to think of all those veterans of Spain as premature anti-fascists than it was to accept that one had been too late’.  Looking for the Good War is a defense of history in the fullest sense, a model examination of one of our most dangerous habits: replacing accounts of what happened with flattering posthumous fables.  Even when the fables are partially true, it’s usually worth taking another look at them.

The Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is awarded annually to the author whose book exhibits distinguished work in American or European cultural history.  Established by a former student of Jacques Barzun, the prize honors this historian and cultural critic who was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1984.

The selection committee consisted of Michael Wood (chair), Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University; David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; and Robert B. Pippin, Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago.

The recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s 2022 Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence is Catharine A. MacKinnon “in recognition of her intellectual and political leadership in international law, constitutional law, political and legal theory, and jurisprudence, and in particular her pioneering work on gender equality, sexual abuse, and sexual exploitation, including sexual harassment, rape, prostitution, sex trafficking, and pornography, and her effective framing of such harms as civil rights violations in the United States, in other countries, and in international law, bringing recognition and transformation in theory and in practice.” She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the long-term James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Her pioneering book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (1979), created the legal claim for sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other prohibitions of sex-discrimination with enduring consequences for workplaces. She framed sexual harassment as sex discrimination in education under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which transformed practices and procedures in schools, colleges, and universities.  She also worked to change legal treatment of pornography; crafted litigation and legislative strategies to treat legal claims of rape as genocidal acts, and brought the perspective of sex inequality and sexual violence to prostitution and sex trafficking. Her thorough attention to power relationships draws on and contributes to epistemology, political theory, legal theory, and political and legal practices, with significant influences on laws, institutions, and the lives of many. 

The members of the selection committee are Linda Greenhouse, (chair), President of the American Philosophical Society and Clinical Lecturer in Law and Senior Research Scholar in Law, Yale Law School; Jane C. Ginsburg, Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law, Columbia Law School; Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard Law School; Robert C. Post, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School; Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School; and David S. Tatel, Senior United States Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Select answers from Keith Beutler, author of George Washington's Hair: How Early Americans Remembered the Founders

Q: Love your identification of the 1790s as a hinge moment in how memory takes physical embodiment. How were things remembered before the American Revolution?

A: Transatlantic memory culture in the century or so before 1790, where my book picks up the story, was not so self-consciously physicalist as it became in the half century that followed. Consider, the shocked, negative reaction that, Douwe Draaisma has noted, occurred in Britain’s Royal Society in 1682 when Sir Robert Hooke argued for a reductively physicalist theory of memory. The view was easily dismissed as a foolish “provocation” by “Hooke’s contemporaries.” The latter, Draaisma notes, “denied the physicality of memory by placing memory within the [immaterial] soul.” 

Q: I am reminded of the stuffing of Jeremy Bentham after his death in 1832. Is that an outgrowth of Peale’s impulse at all?

A: Yes!  Bentham’s stipulations in his will that parts of his corporeal form should be preserved as an “auto-didact” did partake of the transatlantic reductively-scientistic enthusiasms that also underwrote Peale’s unrealized ambition to posthumously stuff the U.S. Founders. 

Comment: This belief in hair as a way of knowing the man connects with Deborah Franklin collecting the hair of an African American youth while Benjamin Franklin was overseas.

Reply: I agree.   Certainly, this case can be seen as evidencing the same scientific, transatlantic ethos.

Q: How capacious was the definition of veteran? Did women who served in battle camps count? Or was this only open to men?

A:  As the late Alfred Young well-recounted a few years ago, the military service of Deborah Sampson, who, by, in contemporaneous terms, “passing” as a man fought as a Patriot soldier was celebrated, as was that of “camp follower” Margaret Corbin, to whom Congress awarded a partial pension in 1779, and in the 1850s, Elizabeth Ellet’s three volume Women in the American Revolution reflected and encouraged burgeoning cultural interest in remembering such women.  In George Washington’s Hair, I write extensively of Emma Willard, an influential educator in the early republic, whose intense efforts to inculcate patriotic memory in the rising generation of American youth was, in part, motivated by her acute awareness that her own mother, like many women of the generation dying of old age in the 1830s, even when they did not participate directly in military fighting during the American Revolution, had served crucially and intentionally to materially and morally sustain the families and economies that underwrote the Patriot war effort during the War for Independence.

Q: Do you know if there was a similar collecting of African American founders’ hair, such as Bishop Richard Allen or Rev Absalom Jones?

A: I’m not aware of such instances, but I’d love to know of any!

Q: Has anyone undertaken DNA analysis of supposed Washington family hair samples? I believe there are currently methods that would be minimally destructive at this point.  

A: Some DNA analyses were attempted in the 1990s by the FBI, essentially to test their forensic capabilities, but no DNA was recovered from the samples used.  Newer techniques appear to be on the cusp of being able to infer at least partial sequences from centuries-old samples, but have not yet (as of March of 2022) been tried on putative samples of Washington’s hair.

Q: Why did collecting locks of George Washington's hair eventually decline in popularity?  

A. Generally, from the latter half of the nineteenth century onward, the evidence suggests, photographs slowly began to replace hair locks as most-prized mementos of the loved and lost. 

Q: How large is the Peale self-portrait?

A:  103 3/4 x 79 7/8 in. (263.5 x 202.9 cm.)

Q: Is there any documentation of Washington providing locks to anyone during his lifetime?  

A.  Yes.  The earliest well-documented  example is of General Washington in 1778, apparently in good humor,  sending a lock of his hair from Valley Forge to Kitty Livingston, having heard (likely through Alexander Hamilton) that Livingston—the vivacious, famously-playful—daughter of William Livingston, the Revolutionary War governor of New Jersey,  had quipped that she hoped to one day acquire some of the iconic Washington’s tresses.