Roscinda Nolasquez (1892 – February 4, 1987)
was a
Cupeño
The Cupeño (or Kuupangaxwichem) are a Native American tribe of Southern California.
They traditionally lived about inland and north of the modern day Mexico–United States border in the Peninsular Range of Southern California. Today their ...
, and the last speaker of the
Cupeño language
Cupeño is an language death, extinct Uto-Aztecan languages, Uto-Aztecan language, formerly spoken by the Cupeño people of Southern California, United States. Roscinda Nolasquez (d. 1987) was the last native speaker of Cupeño. The Cupeño people ...
of
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...
. She grew up speaking Cupeño and Spanish. It was not until she was forcefully sent to Sherman Indian School, previously Perris Indian School, in her early teens that she learned English.
In 1903, the Cupeño people had to relocate to the
Pala Indian Reservation
The Pala Indian Reservation is located in the middle of San Luis Rey River Valley in northern San Diego County, California, east of the community of Fallbrook, and has been assigned feature ID 272502.
Historic variant names used to describe the ...
where Nolasquez lived much of rest of her life.
In the early 1960s, she continued to speak Cupeño with several elderly residents in Pala.
Nancy Dorian
Nancy Currier Dorian is an American linguist who has carried out research into the decline of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo. Due to their isolation from ...
(ed) (1992)
''Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death''
Cambridge University Press.
Nolasquez made a serious effort late in her life to help document and preserve the Cupeño language, working among others with linguists
Jane Hill
Jane Amanda Hill (born 10 June 1969 in Eastbourne, Sussex) is an English newsreader working for the BBC. She is one of the main presenters for BBC News, and is the main presenter on the '' BBC News at One'' and the '' BBC News at Five'', as w ...
and
Roderick Jacobs.
Together with Hill she edited a collection of bilingual Cupeño-English oral histories.
Works
*
*Roscinda Nolasquez and Anne Galloway (1975): ''I'i Muluwet: First Book of Words in the Cupeño Indian Language of Southern California''. Pala, Calif: Alderbooks.
References
External links
Photographs of Nolasquez and other Cupeño people
1892 births
1987 deaths
Cupeno
Last known speakers of a Native American language
{{NorthAm-native-stub