Yuchi (Euchee) is the language of the Tsoyaha (Children of the Sun), also known as Yuchi people, now living in Oklahoma. Historically, they lived in what is now known as the southeastern United States, including eastern Tennessee, western Carolinas, northern Georgia, and Alabama, during the period of early European colonization. Many speakers of the Yuchi language became allied with the Muscogee Creek when they migrated into their territory in Georgia and Alabama. They were forcibly relocated with them to Indian Territory in the early 19th century. Some audio tapes in the Yuchi language exist in the collections of the Columbus State University Archives in Columbus, Georgia. Classification Yuchi is classified as a language isolate, because it is not known to be related to any other language. Various linguists have claimed, however, that the language has a distant relationship with the Siouan family: Sapir in 1921 and 1929, Haas in 1951 and 1964, Elmendorf in 1964, Rudus in 1974, and Crawford in 1979. Geographic distribution Yuchi is primarily spoken in northeastern Oklahoma, where Yuchi people live in present-day Tulsa, Okmulgee, and Creek counties, within the Muscogee (Creek) Nation's tribal jurisdictional area. In 1997, 12 to 19 elders spoke the language out of an estimated Yuchi population of 1,500 speakers. In 2009, only five fluent speakers, whose first language was not English, remained, and in 2011 only one. History Yuchi people lived in Tennessee at the time of European contact. In the early 18th century, they moved to northwestern Georgia in the southeastern United States, under pressure from the powerful Cherokee in Tennessee. There they settled near the Muscogee Creek and were allied with them. In the 1830s, speakers of the Yuchi language were forcibly relocated with the Muscogee people to Indian Territory. Contradictions in linguistic study and linguistic history The spoken Yuchi language has changed over time, in part due to relocation. In 1885 in an article in Science, Swiss linguist Albert S. Gatschet wrote about various linguistic idiosyncrasies in Yuchi. He said that adjectives are not expressed with number, but nouns are, by the addition of the particle ha (coming from the original term wahále, meaning many), which made the word essentially plural. He also said that the language was no longer in an archaic state due to the lack of a "dual," and that the language had temporal and personal inflection. Gatschet did much field study and documentation regarding