Group seeks to reconstruct Bay Area Indians' language

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Group seeks to reconstruct Bay Area Indians' language

By Lisa M. Krieger
KNIGHT RIDDER
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/state/10501573.htm

When Jose Guzman died in 1930, the ancient Bay Area language called
Chochenyo died with him. Or so it was thought.

But the language can be heard again, in bits and pieces, in local homes.
With the help of university linguists, Guzman's descendants are working
to recreate Chochenyo and teach it to their children.

"If we learn the language, it will bring us closer to our culture," said
16-year-old Alison Symonds of Fremont, a member of the Ohlone-Muwekma
Tribe. "We once had a big culture."

Through songs, flash cards, puzzles and bingo games, a committee of the
tribe's elder women lead lessons for about two dozen children, ages 4
to 16. They meet for pizza parties and birthdays; this month the
youngsters sang their first-ever translation of holiday songs.

"It hasn't been spoken in 75 years," said Michele Sanchez of Hayward, a
member of the tribe's language committee. "Our goal is to learn it
again."

She never heard it as a child; her grandmother, raised at the orphanage
at the Mission San Jose convent in Fremont, wasn't allowed to speak
Chochenyo and so couldn't pass it on.

Chochenyo was once spoken by thousands throughout much of the East and
South Bay, until their region fell under the influence of
Spanish-speaking Franciscan missionaries with the founding of Mission
San Jose in 1797. The name Muwekma translates as "the people."

The language was suppressed, part of a larger effort to assimilate
American Indians at missions and boarding schools. Some members were
punished for speaking the language; others died from disease or
homicide.

Chochenyo was well on its way toward extinction when Guzman met
Stanford-educated anthropologist John Peabody Harrington, field
linguist for the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology.

Guzman and his companion, Maria de los Angeles Colos, were members of a
small group called the Verona Band who worked on the Pleasanton estate
built by George and Phoebe Apperson Hearst and lived in Sunol in the
1920s.

They were the last fluent speakers of Chochenyo, according to San Jose
State University archaeologist Alan Leventhal.

Harrington recorded Guzman's voice on a wax cylinder. He also took
extensive notes.

Guzman sang stories that had been passed down through generations of his
family. He recited verb tenses. He used specific vocabulary, such as
words for "rabbit skin" or "sweetheart," according to Sanchez.

And he described everyday customs that offer insights into the culture,
such as "Stir the acorn mush," "The women are carrying tule on their
backs," and "Go get your horse so we can go hunt for meat." Shortly
after the visit, Guzman died.

Guzman's voice has since been preserved on tape and a CD.

The project was part of Harrington's near-obsessive mission to find and
record the last speakers of American Indian tongues. He knew that many
of the 250 languages once spoken in what is now the United States were
disappearing.

But Harrington's work proved impenetrable to subsequent linguists. For
years, it languished in massive, dirty and disorganized files.

His notes on Chochenyo were found after his death by the Smithsonian's
Catherine Callaghan in a folder identified only as "Chock." Callaghan
took the hand-written field notes and turned them into preliminary
teaching materials, including a dictionary.

They have since been supplemented by a few other discoveries, such as a
copy of the Lord's Prayer in Chochenyo.

Guzman's voice was translated in 2001 by UC Berkeley graduate student
Jon Rodney, using the Callaghan materials. In 2003, UC Berkeley
professor Juliette Blevins was hired by the tribe to provide language
lessons.

The scant archival material means that the Chochenyo revitalization
faces significant challenges, such as accurate pronunciation. There are
gaps in the lexicon as well.

"There's not a lot," said Sanchez, who has learned the orthographic
symbols used by linguists. "There were once 15,000 words; we know only
1,500 to 2,000. There are holes in it."

To complicate matters, there were huge regional differences in the
language, with variants in San Jose, Niles and San Lorenzo. It was
related to at least seven other American Indian languages of
mid-coastal California. Linguists say the region's highly varied
ecology encouraged great linguistic diversity.

The Bay Area's Muwekma are not alone in their revitalization effort.
Similar efforts are under way for the Mohawk language of northern New
York; Wampanoag, an Algonquin language of Massachusetts; and Choctaw,
native to Mississippi. These tribes all look to native Hawaiian,
re-established in 1984 and flourishing within small tribes today, for
inspiration.

The 425 members of the present-day Muwekma tribe, which comprises all of
the known surviving American Indian lineages native to the region, are
striving to win federal recognition. Among many other things,
recognition would provide funding to expand their language lessons.
They now must pay for professors' time and materials out of their own
pockets, a big constraint.

As they learn, they cherish the fuzzy but fluent recording of Guzman's
voice. He left a bridge between their past and future, they say.

"The language speaks to who we are, where we come from and how we
identify ourselves as a people," said tribal chairwoman Rosemary Cambra
of Fremont.