Nancy Raven (also Nancy Taylor) (December 25, 1872 – March 25, 1957) was a

Natchez Natchez may refer to: Places * Natchez, Alabama, United States * Natchez, Indiana, United States * Natchez, Louisiana, United States * Natchez, Mississippi, a city in southwestern Mississippi, United States * Grand Village of the Natchez, a site o ...

storyteller from

Braggs, Oklahoma Braggs is a town in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 259 as of the 2010 census, with a 14.0 percent decline from the figure of 301 recorded in 2000. The town is best known as the site of Camp Gruber, a World War II milit ...

and one of the last two native speakers of the

Natchez language The Natchez language is the ancestral language of the Natchez people who historically inhabited Mississippi and Louisiana, and who now mostly live among the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples in Oklahoma. The language is considered to be either unrelat ...

. Her father was

Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...

and her mother Natchez, and she learned Natchez at home. She never learned English, but was trilingual in Natchez,

and

Creek A creek in North America and elsewhere, such as Australia, is a stream that is usually smaller than a river. In the British Isles it is a small tidal inlet. Creek may also refer to: People * Creek people, also known as Muscogee, Native Americans ...

. In 1907 she worked with anthropologist

John R. Swanton John Reed Swanton (February 19, 1873 – May 2, 1958) was an American anthropologist, folklorist, and linguist who worked with Native American peoples throughout the United States. Swanton achieved recognition in the fields of ethnology and et ...

who collected information about Natchez religion, and in the 1930s she worked extensively with linguist

Mary Haas Mary Rosamond Haas (January 23, 1910 – May 17, 1996) was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. She was elected a ...

who collected grammatical information and texts using an interpreter. Among the stories she told Mary Haas was one called "The Woman Who was a Fox". Sometimes she used the surname Taylor, which she had taken from her second husband. She married four times; she had one son Adam Levi from her first marriage, with her second husband Will Taylor she received land allotments from the

Dawes Commission The United States, American Dawes Commission, named for its first chairman Henry L. Dawes, was authorized under a rider to an Indian Office appropriation bill, March 3, 1893. Its purpose was to convince the Five Civilized Tribes to agree to cede tr ...

in 1907. She was soon widowed, then married a man named Waters, and by 1920 was again widowed and married Albert Raven, a man about whom little is known. In the 1930s she appears to have been once again widowed. In 1930 she sold her land allotment. She was the biological cousin of the other last speaker of Natchez,

Watt Sam Watt Sam in 1908 holding a bow. From a series of photos taken by John R. Swanton, near Braggs, Oklahoma. Watt Sam (October 6, 1876 – July 1, 1944) was a Natchez storyteller and cultural historian of Braggs, Oklahoma and one of the two last nati ...

, who in Natchez kinship terminology was her classificatory nephew. Among the Natchez, the language was generally passed down matrilineally, but at her death Nancy Raven had no surviving children, her only son Adam Levi having died from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

at age 20 in 1915.

References

External links

Index of Mary Haas' notes from her work with Nancy Raven
{{DEFAULTSORT:Raven, Nancy Natchez people People from Braggs, Oklahoma Last known speakers of a Native American language 19th-century Native Americans 1872 births 1957 deaths 19th-century Native American women 20th-century Native American women 20th-century Native Americans