The Eastern Siouan branch consists of various historical languages spoken by Siouan peoples of the Appalachian Plateau and Piedmont regions of present-day Virginia and the Carolinas. These languages are sometimes collectively referred to as Catawban. The two attested Eastern Siouan languages were historically spoken by the Catawba and Woccon peoples. While early scholars such as John R. Swanton suggested that the Woccon may have represented a late subdivision of the

Waccamaw The Waccamaw people were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who lived in villages along the Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers in North and South Carolina in the 18th century.Lerch 328 Name The meaning of the name ''Waccamaw'' is ...

, contemporary linguists have not reached a consensus on whether Woccon was the specific language of the historic Waccamaw people or a related Catawban variety. The Eastern Siouan languages possibly represent a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

with Ohio Valley Siouan languages (

Ofo language Ofo ( ), also known as Mosopelea, is a language formerly spoken by the Ofo people, also called the Mosopelea, in what is now Ohio, along the Ohio River, until about 1673. The tribe moved south along the Mississippi River to Mississippi, near the ...

Mosopelea The Mosopelea or Ofo (also Ofogoula) were a Siouan-speaking Native American people who historically lived near the upper Ohio River. In reaction to Iroquois Confederacy invasions to take control of hunting grounds in the late 17th century, they ...

Biloxi language Biloxi is an extinct Siouan language, formerly spoken by the Native American Biloxi tribe in present-day Mississippi, Louisiana, and southeastern Texas. History The Biloxi tribe first encountered Europeans in 1699, along the Pascagoula R ...

).Ryan M. Kasak. 2016. "A distant genetic relationship between SiouanCatawban and Yuchi." In Catherine Rudin and Bryan J. Gordon (eds.), ''Advances in the study of siouan languages and linguistics'', 5–39. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.17169/langsci.b94.120 https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/be94144a-3e4f-4913-9089-2bcfe5bd0879/611691.pdf The Catawban family is a branch of the larger Siouan–Catawban language family.

Family division

Recognized members of the Eastern Siouan/Catawban family include: # Catawba ''(†)'' – spoken by the

Catawba people The Catawba, also known as Issa, Essa or Iswä but most commonly ''Iswa'' ( Catawba: ), are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans, known as the Catawba Indian Nation. Their current lands are in South Carolina, on the Catawba Ri ...

# Woccon ''(†)'' – spoken by the Woccon people, possibly

References

* Parks, Douglas R.; & Rankin, Robert L. (2001). The Siouan languages. In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.), ''Handbook of North American Indians: Plains'' (Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 94–114). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. . Catawba Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast Languages of the United States Extinct languages of North America {{IndigenousAmerican-lang-stub