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 19th & early 20th 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!