Hardly “astonishing,” since as liberty3701 has described, there is considerable debate whether African languages had much influence even on African American English, much less on the southern white American accent. And something “seeming obvious” to you doesn’t have a lot of bearing on whether it is true or not.
Note that I am not saying that African speech patterns had NO effect on the southern accent, just that it is not the major influence on it. So far you have produced as evidence “an offhand remark by a linguist” about FRENCH (not English accents); a student paper which you yourself admit may have garbled information; and the journal of an actress from 1833. Hardly definitive cites, and even so none of them apparently contend that African speech was a major influence on white American speech, though it may have influenced some features. (Also, though some of them suggest that white southerners talk like black southerners, this is not at all the same thing as saying that African languages are the cause of the similarity). I would think that if this was a common hypothesis among reputable linguists it would be easier to find more solid cites.
Sorry if my meaning was unclear. By “came from” Montana I meant “used to live there,” not “was a native of there.” It’s fiction, but a strange sort of fiction that mixes up the story with autobiography, philosophizing, and nonfiction stuff like anthropology. The story itself is rather spare and intermittent, with so much space given to musing on American culture and stuff. So I was thinking of the nonfiction parts. Like I said, I don’t remember all the details of how he developed his argument, just the main point that Indian culture influenced the development of white American culture in various ways, including manner of speaking.
I was on an 18th-century discussion list wondering about Colonial and post-Revolution Americans learning the medicinal properties of native American plants from Indians. I was trying to find out more about how 18c frontier settlers used plants medicinally. Almost everyone insisted that they were unlikely to have any peaceful interactions with Indians, only hostility. But they were unable to answer my questions on 18c herbal medicine or how so many Indian medicines got into the US pharmacopoeia by the 19th century. I should have just started a Straight Dope thread…
That’s not the case. In the 17th century, the Cherokee maintained trading relationships with the South Carolina and Virginia colonies. The outpost of Ninety-Six was established in South Carolina along the trade route between Cherokee territory and Charleston. (It’s name comes from the outpost having been 96 miles from the Cherokee frontier.)
Thanks! As I eventually found out, the nations known as the Five Tribes, particularly Cherokee, turned out to be the key to the answer. My problem was that I was thinking of Pennsylvania, scene of a lot of bloody hostility in the 18th century. One of my ancestors nearly got scalped during the Revolutionary War near Huntingdon.