Eighteenth-Century Vilela

Abstract

Vilela is a severely endangered Argentine Chaco language without any certain genealogical affiliation. The discovery of two elderly members of the last generation of speakers at the end of the year 2003 opened up the possibility of adding to the still scarce documentation of this language and describing it in more depth, hence for contributing to the knowledge of the languages and peoples of the Chaco, their relationships, and contacts. This article focuses on the documentation of the Vilela language and its speakers that was recorded by eighteenth-century Jesuit missionaries. We first outline the history of the Vilela from the earliest mentions of this people in the sources to present times. We then present the texts recorded in the eighteenth century in the original orthographic representation and our tentative phonemic transcription, with interlinear glosses, Spanish translation, and comments. Lastly, we include two appendices, the first of which gathers all the words recorded over this period, indicating their sources and degree of recognition by present-day speakers, and the second of which is a key text of demographic information about the Vilela people at the time the Jesuits were driven out of the Americas.