Guale

Guale was an historic Native American chiefdom along the coast of present-day Georgia and the Sea Islands. Spanish Florida established its Roman Catholic missionary system in the chiefdom in the late 16th century. During the late 17th century and early 18th century, Guale society was shattered by extensive epidemics of new infectious diseases and attacks by other tribes. Some of the surviving remnants migrated to the mission areas of Spanish Florida while others remained near the Georgia coast. Joining with other survivors, they became known as the Yamasee, an ethnically mixed group that emerged in a process of ethnogenesis.

Language

Scholars have not reached a consensus on how to classify the Guale language. An early claim was that the Guale spoke a Muskogean language, but this has been questioned by the historian William C. Sturtevant. He has shown that recorded vocabulary, which sources had believed to be Guale, was in fact Creek, a historical Muskogean language. Historical references note that the Jesuit Brother Domingo Agustín Váez recorded Guale grammar in 1569, but the documents have not been found.