Tony Tillohash (born on

Kaibab Kaibab (from a Native Americans in the United States, Native American word meaning "mountain lying down") may refer to the following (all in the Southwestern United States): * Kaibab, Arizona, a small community * Kaibab Indian Reservation, Arizona ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

) was a

Paiute Paiute (; also Piute) refers to three non-contiguous groups of indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Although their languages are related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, these three groups do not form a single set. The term "Pai ...

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

who worked with linguist

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sa ...

to describe the

Southern Paiute language Colorado River Numic (also called Ute , Southern Paiute , Ute–Southern Paiute, or Ute-Chemehuevi ), of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, is a dialect chain that stretches from southeastern California to Colorado. Individual ...

.Knack, 190 In 1910, Tillohash was removed from his home in Utah to the

Carlisle Indian Industrial School The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. It took over the historic Carlisle ...

Carlisle, Pennsylvania Carlisle is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in and the county seat of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. Carlisle is located within the Cumberland Valley, a highly productive agricultural region. As of the 2020 United States census, ...

. There Tillohash began working with Sapir, then employed at the nearby

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. Together they recorded many Paiute songs, and Sapir describes Tillohash's

musical memory Musical memory refers to the ability to remember music-related information, such as melodic content and other progressions of tones or pitches. The differences found between linguistic memory and musical memory have led researchers to theorize that ...

with some amazement:

Despite his five years' absence from home, Tony's musical memory was quite remarkable. Besides the myth-songs .e., the myth recitativesspoken of here, over two hundred other songs of various kinds (three or four varieties of "cry" or mourning songs, bear-dance songs, round-dance songs, ghost-dance songs, medicine songs, gambling songs, scalp songs, and others less easy to classify) were obtained from him.

The work ultimately led to a book-length description of the language, now considered a classic in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

. After his studies at Carlisle, Tillohash returned to Utah and married a Shivwits Paiute woman. Together they raised a family and ranch cattle. He was elected chairman of the

Shivwits Band of Paiutes The Shivwits Band of Paiutes is a sovereign, federally recognized tribe located in southwestern Utah. The Shivwits Band is one of five Bands comprising the inter-Tribal government of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah. Name ''Shivwits'' comes from ...

. He and Stewart Snow observed the changes that the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

and the

Indian New Deal The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of June 18, 1934, or the Wheeler–Howard Act, was U.S. federal legislation that dealt with the status of American Indians in the United States. It was the centerpiece of what has been often called the "Indian ...

brought to their tribe, when they wrote in 1940: "For the past six years we have depended largely on the various Federal Relief Agencies. Our farms have been somewhat neglected."Knach, 233 He served on the tribal council through the 1940s.

Notes

References

* Knack, Martha C
''Boundaries Between: The Southern Paiutes, 1775-1995''.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. . * Sapir, Edward.

Regna Darnell Regna Darnell (born July 10, 1943, Cleveland, Ohio) is an American-Canadian anthropologist and professor of Anthropology and First Nations Studies at the University of Western Ontario, where she has founded the First Nations Studies Program. Ov ...

, Judith T. Irvine,

William Bright William O. Bright (August 13, 1928 – October 15, 2006) was an American linguist and toponymist who specialized in Native American and South Asian languages and descriptive linguistics. Biography Bright earned a bachelor's degree in lingui ...

, Philip Sapir,

Victor Golla Victor Golla (1939–2021) was a linguist and a leading expert on the indigenous languages of California and Oregon, especially the Pacific Coast Athabaskan subgroup of the Athabaskan language family and the languages of the region that belong t ...

, and Pierre Swiggers. eds. ''The collected works of Edward Sapir''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Tillohash, Tony Linguists from the United States Native American linguists 20th-century Native American politicians Carlisle Indian Industrial School alumni People from Utah Paiute people Year of birth missing Year of death missing Native American people from Utah 20th-century linguists 20th-century American politicians

See also

Notes

References