Chimariko Narratives A Piece of California History Brought Back to Life

This talk Chimariko Indians & Language Language Documentation & Data This Project Chimariko Narratives Results Conclusions

Chimariko Indians & Language Chimariko: extinct (or dormant) language Once spoken in a few small villages in Trinity County in Northern California (Trinity Rives & New River area) Last spoken in the 1930s Chimariko tribe: very small, almost wiped out during Gold Rush in the 1850s

Chimariko Territory

Chimariko Indians & Language Chimariko language: isolate (= no related languages) Hypotheses on more distant genetic relationship: Hokan stock => related to neighboring languages and others But: problematic, due to close and extensive language contact & poor sources Great linguistic diversity in California

Linguistic Diversity in California

Language Documentation & Data Handwritten documents from fieldwork in the late 19 th & early 20 th century Data collected from last (sometimes semi- fluent) speakers; speakers were often related Main source of data: handwritten notes collected J. P. Harrington in the 1920s Data is available on microfilm

Language Documentation & Data J. P. Harrington: passionate & experienced linguist; collected close to a million pages of handwritten notes on more than 125 languages Chimariko notes include: narratives with (partial) translations, sentences, vocabulary items, ethnographic information Chimariko: 3500 handwritten pages

John Peabody Harrington

Harrington sample page

The project Handwritten notes only recently made available on microfilm – no publications Grammar based on handwritten notes (& other sources) Not yet examined: 539 pages with narratives Piece narratives together & fill in missing translations

The project Contents of narratives: personal accounts, folktales, myths, historic events (flood, tribal wars, etc) => material of great cultural & historic value Goals: (a) make materials more accessible to tribal descendants & researchers, (b) examine the structure of the narratives Challenges: no interlinear or missing translations, scattered segments of same narrative

Chimariko Narratives Narratives: all with similar structure & style, many repetitions of verbs and entire clauses Repetitions: not random, but consistent, elaborate, and regular Rhetorical style also found in other American indigenous languages (Central Pomo, Haida, Kwakiutl, Chinook, & others) Often found in oral tradition

Chimariko Narratives Repetitions: particular arrangement in a story, whereby information presented in a series of statements plus successive elaborations Each elaboration adds a piece of information Repetitive pattern often linked to intonation Couplet structure (intonational pairs forming a unit) used for the main points in narrative Chimariko: no data on intonation, but punctuation (commas)

Chimariko Narratives Example 1:

Chimariko Narratives Example 2:

Project Results Developed detailed description & log of 539 pages microfilm reel Nine narratives pieced together, glossed, and translated => corpus of twenty pages Contents: personal stories, personal stories relating to historic events, cultural practices (healing rituals), stories with local animals as characters (watersnake, doe, bear)

Project Results Examples: See handout Picture: Saxy Kidd

Conclusions Narratives are made accessible to tribal descendants & researchers Pieces in the history & culture of the Chimariko tribe unveiled Chimariko culture exemplifies different world view & different way of thinking Structure of Chimariko language better understood

Thank you!