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Language Lineage

Pacific Coast Athabaskan

Hupa, Tolowa and their neighbours, far from the northern Athabaskan homeland. Most of these languages were silenced after the California Gold Rush.

c. 1st millennium CE – presentSouthwestern Oregon and northwestern California
On this page
  1. The Coast Group
  2. Records and Revival
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points

01

The Coast Group

Athabaskan speakers reached the coast of Oregon and northern California about a thousand years ago and adopted the salmon-and-acorn way of life of their neighbours, the Yurok and Karuk. Hupa, in the Hoopa Valley, is one of the best documented Native languages of California, recorded by Pliny Earle Goddard in the early 1900s and later by Edward Sapir. Violence and dispossession after the Gold Rush of 1849 destroyed many of these communities, and most of the languages ceased to be spoken during the 20th century. Hupa and Tolowa are now taught in revival programmes.

02

Records and Revival

The Pacific Coast languages are among the best recorded in California, which is the main reason their revival is possible. Pliny Earle Goddard published Hupa Texts in 1904 and a grammar, The Morphology of the Hupa Language, in 1905. Sapir worked with Hupa speakers in 1927, and his notes were edited long afterwards by Victor Golla, whose own work from the 1960s onward includes a grammar and the Hupa Language Dictionary. Much of this material is now searchable online with recordings of speakers.

Hupa and its neighbours belong to the northwest California culture area, where the Athabaskan-speaking Hupa, the Algic-speaking Yurok and the Karuk, whose language has no proven relatives, shared ceremonies such as the White Deerskin Dance and a common way of life, while keeping three unrelated languages. Hupa vocabulary reflects that setting, with detailed terms for salmon fishing, acorn preparation and regalia.

Today the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation run language programmes. Tolowa was carried into the present by teachers such as Loren Bommelyn, who learned it from elders and has taught it in schools; Hupa is taught in classes and in an immersion nest for young children.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. United States

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 1st millennium CEContested

    South to the coast

    Athabaskan-speaking groups settle along the rivers and coast of Oregon and northern California. Whether they came in one migration or several is debated.

    Sources (1)
    • Golla, Victor. 2011. California Indian Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  2. Extinction1850s – 20th century

    After the Gold Rush

    Massacres, disease and removal after 1849 shatter Athabaskan communities in California and Oregon. Mattole, Wailaki, Kato and most other coast languages lose their last speakers in the 20th century.

    Sources (1)
    • Golla, Victor. 2011. California Indian Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.