Mitchigamea or Michigamea was a language spoken by

Mitchigamea Mitchigamea or Michigamea or Michigamie were a tribe in the Illinois Confederation. Not much is known about them and their origin is uncertain. Originally they were said to be from Lake Michigan, perhaps the Chicago area. Mitchie Precinct, Monroe C ...

people. In 1673,

Jacques Marquette Jacques Marquette S.J. (June 1, 1637 – May 18, 1675), sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Sainte Marie, and later founded Saint Ign ...

and

Louis Jolliet Louis Jolliet (September 21, 1645after May 1700) was a French-Canadian explorer known for his discoveries in North America. In 1673, Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit Catholic priest and missionary, were the first non-Natives to explore and ...

used a Mitchigamea man, who only spoke Illinois poorly, as a translator between the Illinois-speaking French, and the Siouan-speaking

Quapaw The Quapaw ( ; or Arkansas and Ugahxpa) people are a tribe of Native Americans that coalesced in what is known as the Midwest and Ohio Valley of the present-day United States. The Dhegiha Siouan-speaking tribe historically migrated from the Oh ...

. Jean Bernard Bossu provided two sentences from the mid-18th century which, according to John Koontz, indicate that Michigamea was a

Siouan language Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east. Name Authors who call the entire ...

of the Mississippi Valley branch.Koontz, John E. 1995. ''Michigamea as a Siouan language''. Paper presented at the 15th annual Siouan and Caddoan Languages Conference, University of New Mexico - Albuquerque.

References

Languages extinct in the 18th century Mitchigamea {{indigenousAmerican-lang-stub