Mary Joachina Yee (née Mary Joachina Ygnacio Rowe; 1897–1965) was a Barbareño Chumash linguist. She was the last first-language speaker of the

Barbareño language Barbareño is one of the Chumashan languages, a group of Native American languages spoken almost exclusively in the area of Santa Barbara, California. The closely-related Ineseño may have been a dialect of the same language. A dialect of the B ...

, a member of the

Chumashan languages Chumashan was a family of languages that were spoken on the southern California coast by Native American Chumash people, from the Coastal plains and valleys of San Luis Obispo to Malibu, neighboring inland and Transverse Ranges valleys and ca ...

that were once spoken in southern California by the

Chumash people The Chumash are a Native American people of the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what is now San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu ...

Biography

Yee was born in 1897 in an

adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

house near Santa Barbara, California, the home of her grandmother. In the late 1890s, Yee was one of only a handful of children brought up to speak any Chumash language. She memorized several old Chumash stories. In her fifties, Yee began to take part in the analysis, description, and documentation of her language, for many years working closely with the linguist

John Peabody Harrington John Peabody Harrington (April 29, 1884 – October 21, 1961) was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which h ...

, who had also worked with Yee's mother Lucretia García and her grandmother Luisa Ignacio. Yee and Harrington corresponded with each other in Chumash. After retiring in 1954, Yee worked with Harrington nearly every day. She also worked with linguist Madison S. Beeler. Over the course of her work she became a linguist in her own right, analyzing paradigms and word structure. Yee's story appears in the documentary film, ''6 Generations: A Chumash Family History'' (2010) which was co-written by her daughter Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto''.'' Posthumously, she published a children's book, ''The Sugar Bear Story'' (2005), illustrated by her daughter Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto.

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* Image collection
Native Americans on the Central Coast
from OAC include photos of Yee, her mother, grandmother, and extended family and tribe {{DEFAULTSORT:Yee, Mary 1897 births 1965 deaths Linguists from the United States Women linguists Native American linguists Last known speakers of a Native American language Chumash people People from Santa Barbara, California 20th-century linguists Linguists of Chumashan languages Native American people from California 20th-century Native American women 20th-century Native Americans

Biography

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