Nikonha, also known as Waskiteng and Mosquito, was the last full-blooded speaker of Tutelo

Tutelo language

The Tutelo language is a member of the Virginian branch of Siouan languages that was originally spoken in what is now Virginia and West Virginia, as well as in the later travels of the speakers through North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, and finally, Ontario...

, a Virginia Siouan language. He is reported to have been around 106 when he died at Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario in 1871; this would give him a birth date of ca. 1765.

The year before his death, he met with the ethnologist Horatio Hale

Horatio Hale

Horatio Emmons Hale was an American-Canadian ethnologist, philologist and businessman who studied language as a key for classifying ancient peoples and being able to trace their migrations...

, who gave the following description of him:

His appearance, as we first saw him, basking in the sunshine on the slope before his cabin, confirmed the reports, which I had heard, both of his great age and of his marked intelligence. "A wrinkled, smiling countenance, a high forehead, half-shut eyes, white hair, a scanty, stubby beard, fingers bent with age like a bird's claws" is the description recorded in my note-book. Not only in physiognomy, but also in demeanor and character, he differed strikingly from the grave and composed Iroquois among whom he dwelt. The lively, mirthful disposition of his race survived in full force in its latest member. His replies to our inquiries were intermingled with many jocose remarks, and much good-humored laughter.

Nikonha told Hale that his father had been a Tutelo

Tutelo

The Tutelo were Native people living above the Fall Line in present-day Virginia and West Virginia, speaking a Siouan dialect of the Tutelo language thought to be similar to that of their neighbors, the Monacan and Manahoac nations...

 chief named Onusowa, while his mother had died when he was a child, leaving him to be raised by his uncle. In 1779, when he was approximately 14, the Tutelo village of Coreorgonel, New York, was attacked during the Sullivan Expedition

Sullivan Expedition

The Sullivan Expedition, also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, was an American campaign led by Major General John Sullivan and Brigadier General James Clinton against Loyalists and the four nations of the Iroquois who had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War.The...

 of the Revolutionary War, and the remnants fled, along with the Cayuga nation

Cayuga nation

The Cayuga people was one of the five original constituents of the Haudenosaunee , a confederacy of American Indians in New York. The Cayuga homeland lay in the Finger Lakes region along Cayuga Lake, between their league neighbors, the Onondaga to the east and the Seneca to the west...

, to Grand River. Nikonha also served in the War of 1812

War of 1812

The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...

. His wife was Cayuga, and he had only spoken Cayuga at home for years, until Hale induced him to provide about 100 words of the Tutelo language of his youth. Hale was collecting information on Tutelo from the few surviving individuals who had preserved any knowledge of it — who were, aside from Nikonha, heavily mixed with Cayuga. On the basis of the vocabulary and grammar that Hale collected, he was able to confirm the status of Tutelo as a Siouan language akin to Dakota and Hidatsa.

External links

• Henry H. Mitchell, Pittsylvania Historical Society, 1997 - includes Hale's photograph of Nikonha.