last speaker of Wichita

[Andre Cramblit]

Anadarko woman last fluent speaker of the Wichita language


ANADARKO, OK
By S. E. RUCKMAN (AP) 12/5/2007

Oklahoma had been a state for only two decades when Doris Jean Lamar  
was born in 1927. Her first spoken words were not English, but an  
American Indian language taught to her by grandparents.
Today, Lamar is the last fluent speaker in the Wichita and Affiliated  
Tribes, a tribe of 2,300. Sitting in a tribal canteen that she  
supervises, the 80-year-old Lamar carries a language that once was  
spoken by thousands, then hundreds of Wichita language speakers.
``I never thought I would be in this position as a girl, to be our  
last fluent speaker,'' she said.
Wichita is one of the languages classified as Caddoan, but is only  
similar in stock to the Caddo language, scholars said. Lamar's tribe  
is one of a handful indigenous to Oklahoma with a present-day  
jurisdiction in Caddo County.
Lamar's journey was not unlike other girls in southwest Oklahoma in  
the years right before the Great Depression. Her full-blood maternal  
grandparents worked a farm and raised their grandchildren. She  
recalls fewer cars, more thriftiness and no electricity back then.  
With a white father and an Indian mother, Lamar stood out among her  
peers.
``I never thought of myself as white; to me, I was Wichita,'' she  
said. ``The old ladies of our tribe thought it was something to hear  
this little white girl speak Wichita.''
She eventually married a non-Indian and had children. After she  
divorced in 1959, she moved back among her American Indian relatives  
near Gracemont. She continued to speak Wichita as she did as a girl.
``Ever since I could remember, I spoke Wichita,'' she said. ``My  
husband told me that me speaking Indian was the only time he  
remembered I was Indian.''
Around 1962, Lamar met an earnest young linguist who followed tribal  
members in order to listen to them speak, she recalled. That young  
linguist was David Rood from the University of Colorado.
Rood has been working with the Wichitas since he stumbled upon the  
Indian language while looking for one that was not being preserved,  
he said. He still works with Lamar and other tribal members. They  
race to record the Wichita language so that a dictionary can be  
gleaned. They have spent hours going over Wichita words and compiling  
language CDs on creation stories, verbs, nouns and names.
Defining tribal fluency can be tricky, Rood said. In small tribes,  
debates exist over who qualifies as a fluent speaker. Lamar speaks  
some Wichita with another tribal member who labors with the language.
``She tells me there are so many words in her head that she can't get  
out, she gets frustrated,'' Lamar said.
Speaking and writing the language are key. Sometimes tribal members  
know ceremonial songs by heart. Yet linguists think fluency is more  
complicated than that.
``I would say when somebody is able to speak the language in a way  
that has never been spoken before or ever written in a language  
book . . . as an abstract thought, then that is fluency,'' Rood said.
The linguist tried to organize a conversation among the last few  
fluent Wichita speakers in the early 2000s, he said. He regards the  
exercise as a half-success. But the gathering was stilted because of  
political differences among the speakers.
``Which is typical in almost all Indian tribes,'' he said of tribal  
political factions. ``They spoke a little, but not much.''
Hope exists for the Wichitas' dying language. An immersion class for  
children has been soldiering forward, as is an adult-oriented  
language class, both subsidized by federal grants.
But the Wichitas must cross another obstacle of language  
revitalization: retention. Sam Still, a Cherokee speaker, said  
retention among adults and children remains low if the language is  
not already spoken in the home.
``For children, when they have no one at home to speak the language  
with, there is no one to practice the sounds with and they lose it,''  
Still said. ``When you're around the language, you learn it better.''
Meanwhile, Lamar fishes a small recorder out of her pocket and turns  
it on. She speaks English words first, then the Wichita word follows.
``I have been doing this a lot, lately,'' she said, pressing play.  
``I just put whatever words pop into my head.''
The tribal elder is aware that her language hangs on the precipice.  
She remembers the time when everyone around her spoke Wichita. Now,  
none of her children speak more than a few words, she said.
``They live in the white world,'' she said. ``I don't.'' 
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