65: The Natchez language and ancient giants

Written by Linden Alexander Pentecost, published in the UK on May the 21st 2025. This article discusses some aspects to the Natchez language in relation to the Moundbuilder Cultures of North America, including possible Natchez cognates and many other details. This article contains interconnected text, and contains a total of 1016 words. All articles on this website are only published on this website.

Recently I was watching a video on the Answers in Genisis YouTube channel, and I came across the suggestion that the Moundbuilder Culture in North America was originally Natchez, and I assume that if this is the case, then the Natchez people today must have once been distributed over a much larger area, for example, the Mound Builder areas of the Mississippi Valley. Although personally I have another perspective on this. The Natchez language is a language isolate, and rather than the Natchez language itself being the original language of this “Moundbuilder Culture”, I think it more likely that the Natchez Language preserves or contains within it something of that original Moundbuilder Culture. Note that recently I discussed something on the connection with giants and the Americas in a Kindle-only book, titled: Ancient names and giant skeletons, book one of: More on Prehistoric language, giants and archaeology of West Cumbria and the Isle of Man, May 2025 book only published in Kindle format published in UK.

So let us take a look at a few words in the Natchez Language which have some similarity to words in other languages. I was hoping to find some similarities with Welsh and with some of the languages in Europe where we also have “Moundbuilder Cultures”, but at least so far, I have not found any specific connections with Celtic languages; at least, not so specific that such similarities are not present across Indigenous American languages as a whole. Below are some examples, however, of Natchez words, with possible similarities (based around 13 primary Natchez etymologies).

 

  1. Natchez wárv - “sea”, possibly linked to Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *wVʕVr- ~ *ʕVrVy- - "lake" (1), English “weir”, more distantly to Uralic *jär, Finnish järvi - “lake”, and many other cognates I have discussed elsewhere.
  2. Natchez wi̇́ta - “day”, perhaps connected to Quechua wata - “year” and Finnish vuosi - “year” and others. 
  3. Natchez húgga or húka - “sand”, clearly similar to Finnish hiekka - sand, gravel, and to many other possible cognates I have discussed previously, including recently, e.g. Carib sakau - “sand”. 
  4. Natchez túku'l - “star”, distantly similar to Finnish tähti - “star” and to many other similar words discussed previously
  5. Kwáship - “moon”, similar to many roots meaning “sun” or “moon” or summer in many Indigenous American and other languages, also for example Finnish kesä - “summer”. 
  6. tadsoχúk - to know, possibly linked to Finnish tietää - to know, and to many other verbs in different languages
  7. puuW-hooʔis - to breath, compare Finnish puhaltaa - to blow, and puhua - to speak.
  8. Tán - louse, perhaps related to Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *tam(-an)- fish, also meaning "dragon" or "snake" in Semitic. Compare also the name "Tampa" in Florida and the River "Thames" in England
  9. Wáshkup - dog, a root word with a great many possible cognates in different languages, including some which I have discussed recently in other publications. Compare for example Proto-Afro-Asiatic Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *wVŝin- ~ *wVnVŝ- - wolf or jackel. 
  10. Natchez tvmar - woman, connected I think distantly to Danish “dame”, English “dame”, French “dame” etc and a large number of other words in different languages.
  11. Horv - large girl, compare English “whore” and Finnish huora. 
  12. Pĕhĕ’lu - bread, compare Finnish leipä - bread, and also other cognates e.g. in Arawak that I have mentioned elsewhere.
  13. U’lv - snake, perhaps connected to Tocharian yel - “worm”, compare also Turkish yel - “wind” in the sense that both worms, snakes and winds are symbolically connected to each other and to a rotating motion. 


Another aspect to the Natchez language that is possibly quite relevant here, is that Natchez possesses a particular register of speech known as “Cannibal Speech”. This was used in storytelling in the Natchez language, when speakers would mimic or “do” the voices of cannibals as they appear in stories. There is some suggestion that these “cannibals” refer in fact to animal giants, referred to as being cannibal because in many indigenous beliefs, animals are also humans, albeit in a different body. But there is also the implication that many of these legends of “giants” describe them as being cannibals towards ordinary humans. And the Moundbuilders Culture is known for its discoveries of giant skeletons, although most of these appear to have disappeared. Some of these mounds were even reported to contain forms of written language, which I may mention in the future. Certainly I think the implication is that whoever the Moundbuilders were, whether Natchez or not, they contained within them a class of “giant priests” whose culture remained seemingly largely unchanged for at least ten thousand years. These people were often associated with copper (like many of the giants found in Britain), and with seashell jewelery, and with pearls (compare these details to the Shellycoat in mythology, shell middens, to the shell grotto in Margate, Kent, and other details. As I have described elsewhere, something then seems to have happened that caused many of these peoples, who largely lived on coastlines, lakes and rivers, to turn the landscape more arid (particularly in the western United States), as I have discussed elsewhere, as I have discussed many other aspects to these topics elsewhere.

I hope that this article was an interesting read. Natchez words were sourced from various sources, whilst the Proto-Afro-Asiatic vocabulary (1) is sourced from starlingdb.org, and was reconstructed by Alexander Militarev and Olga Stolbova. I hope that this article was an interesting read. This article is dedicated to the Natchez people and to the Moundbuilders, and to all those I love. Natchez words were sourced from various resources, but all via Wiktionary's Natchez Swadesh and other wordlists.