Koasati dictionary

Koasati Dictionary is one of the first modern dictionaries ever published of a language of the Muskogean language family, whose speakers formerly occupied most of the southeastern United States. When first met by Europeans in the sixteenth century, the Koasati people were living in Eastern Tennessee. In the early eighteenth century they moved to south-central Alabama and eventually migrated to present-day Louisiana, Texas, or Oklahoma. Today their language survives in southwestern Louisiana, where it is still spoken by the majority of tribal members living there.

Published three years after Kimball’s richly detailed Koasati Grammar, this dictionary is the second of three monographs to result from his fifteen-year study of the language. In this work, Kimball provides the user with a substantial introduction outlining Koasati grammar and then organizes dictionary entries into two parts, the first arranged from Koasati to English and the second from English to Koasati. In addition to the English translations, entries in the Koasati-English section include sample sentences that illustrated word usage as well as illuminate traditional Koasati culture. Most of these sentences are taken from narrative texts.

The dictionary, like Kimball’s grammar of Koasati, is an indispensable reference work for linguists, anthropologists, and historians―indeed, for anyone interested in the native culture history of the southeastern United States.

Geoffrey D. Kimball is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Tulane University.