Classification
The Natchez language is generally believed by scholars to be a language isolate. Mary Haas studied the language with Sam and Raven in the 1930s, and posited that Natchez was distantly related to the Muskogean languages. In 1941 she also proposed grouping Natchez with the Atakapa, Chitimacha, and Tunica languages in a language family to be called Gulf.
Neither of these theories is widely accepted today by linguists, but the Gulf proposal has not been entirely rejected. (It is followed by Ethnologue, for example.) A modern sketch of the Natchez language, including its assessment as an isolate, written by Geoffrey Kimball and based on Haas's notes, was published in a 2005 survey of Southeastern languages.
As of 2011 six members of the Natchez tribe in Oklahoma speak the language, out of about 10,000.
Read more about this topic: Natchez Language