Natchez Analytical Dictionary

In Natchez Analytical Dictionary Geoffrey Kimball offers the first comprehensive dictionary of the Natchez language, a now extinct Native American language originally spoken in the region surrounding Natchez, Mississippi, and finally in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Based primarily on the extensive fieldwork of world-renowned linguist Mary R. Haas, the dictionary also contains material collected earlier by linguists and anthropologists such as Victor Riste, John R. Swanton, Albert S. Gatschet, Ann Eliza Worcester Robertson, Albert Pike, and Albert S. Gallatin.

The Natchez language--whose lack of accurate available lexical material has perplexed modern linguists--has long been thought to be related to the Muskogean languages. Kimball’s Natchez Analytical Dictionary fills this critical gap for comparative, historical linguistics.

Geoffrey Kimball is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University. He is the author of Yukhíti Kóy: A Reference Grammar of the Atakapa Language (Nebraska, 2022), Koasati Traditional Narratives (Nebraska, 2010), Koasati Dictionary (Nebraska, 1994), and Koasati Grammar (Nebraska, 1991). Watt Sam (c. 1877-1944), a member of the Cherokee Nation, was one of the last remaining speakers of the Natchez language. He worked extensively with Mary R. Haas and other linguists to record vocabulary, grammar, and more than seventy traditional narratives. Nancy Raven (c. 1874-1957), a member of the Cherokee Nation, was upon her death the last known speaker of Natchez. She worked extensively with Mary R. Haas to record vocabulary, grammar, and fourteen literary narratives.