Timucua

Timucua is an extinct language isolate formerly spoken by the Timucua peoples of northern and central Florida and southern Georgia in what is now the southeastern United States. It has no demonstrable genetic relationship to any other North American language; proposed connections to the Muskogean languages and to various South American families including Cariban, Arawakan, Chibchan and Warao have not been widely accepted. The language became extinct in the late eighteenth century, after Spain ceded Florida to Britain in 1763 and most Spanish colonists and mission Indians, including its few remaining speakers, relocated to Cuba. Most surviving knowledge of Timucua comes from the Franciscan missionary Francisco Pareja, who devised a writing system for the language and published catechisms and grammatical works between 1612 and 1628.