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• 1 2018-07-20T16:05:58-07:00 A Historical Timeline of Work on the Klallam Language 12 plain 2022-01-23T13:55:22-08:00

  1847  The first known mention of any Klallam words is in Paul Kane’s book Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America, published in 1859. While staying at Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island in 1847 Kane heard of a people called Clal‑lum living across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. xʷsƛ̕éləm is the Songhees word for nəxʷsƛ̕áy̕əm and is the source of the English pronunciations ‘Klallam’ and ‘Sklallam.’ Kane traveled by canoe across the strait to visit I‑eh‑nus, which is known to us today as ʔiʔínəs, the large Klallam village at the mouth of Ennis Creek across from the end of Ediz Hook (‘Ennis’ and ‘Ediz’ both come from this same Klallam word).

  1863  George Gibbs, a government agent, collected and published a list of around 700 Klallam words in Alphabetical Vocabularies of the Clallam and Lummi. Though not phonetically accurate, it is better than many later attempts at writing the Klallam language. It is a very useful list, especially in its extensive collection of animal names.

  1887  Myron Eells, missionary and government agent at Skokomish, recorded some Klallam words in The Twana, Chemakum, and Klallam Indians of Washington Territory and in other articles. His work is more valuable for its ethnographic and historical information than for information on the language.

  1913  Edward S. Curtis, photographer, produced a twenty-volume work called The North American Indian. In volume 9 he lists around 150 words under the label ‘Klallam’ and has transcriptions of some Klallam songs. As it turns out, the words in the list are not Klallam but from the closely related Songhees language.

  1917  Franz Boas, famous anthropologist from Columbia University recorded a short list of Klallam words in the course of his field work on Vancouver Island.

  1920  T. T. Waterman, anthropologist from the University of California, collected much ethnographic information on the native peoples of the area of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula. His unpublished Puget Sound Geography provides some rough transcriptions of Klallam place names.

  1925  Erna Gunther, anthropologist at the University of Washington, did extensive fieldwork on Klallam culture. Her collection of traditional stories, Klallam Folk Tales, is invaluable, though they are almost entirely in English. Her transcriptions of Klallam words in her Klallam Ethnography (1927) and Ethnobotany of Western Washington (1945) is about as good and as useful as Curtis’s. Gunther made some wax cylinder sound recordings of Klallam songs that have been very useful.

  1935  William W. Elmendorf, anthropologist from the University of Washington and later the University of Wisconsin, recorded words and customs mainly at Skokomish, where a number of Klallam speakers lived. His earliest work was The Soul‑Recovery Ceremony among the Indians of the Northwest Coast. His 1993 book, Twana Narratives: Native Historical Accounts of a Coast Salish Culture, contains much useful information on Klallam culture as well as Twana culture.

  1942  John Peabody Harrington, a linguist working for the American Bureau of Ethnography, did the first really accurate and detailed phonetic transcriptions of Klallam words. He was especially interested in place names and wrote down over 250 of them in Klallam. They remained in unpublished notes until 1997.

  1951  Wayne Suttles, anthropologist and linguist at Portland State University, coined the name Straits for the Salishan linguistic subgroup that includes Klallam and Northern Straits (Sooke, Songhees, Saanich, Lummi, Samish, and Semiahmoo). Some Klallam words Suttles recorded at Becher Bay can be found in The Economic Life of the Coast Salish of Haro and Rosario Straits.

  1953  Leon Metcalf, an educator with an interest in anthropology, carried his portable tape recorder all over western Washington. His recordings, archived at the University of Washington, of Amy Allen, Aurelia Celestine, Emma Balch, Billy Hall, Emma Johnson, and Ruth Shelton have been an important source of material for the Klallam language revival program.

  1959  Willard Rhodes, ethnomusicologist working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, recorded Klallam music and a few words. Some of his recorded music has been revived by the Klallam language program.

  1961  Mary Ann Lambert (Jamestown Klallam) published some booklets on Klallam history and genealogy. Her book The Seven Brothers of the House of Ste‑Tee‑Thlum has a very useful list of Klallam personal names. She also recorded these on audio tape.

  1964–1971  Laurence C. and M. Terry Thompson, linguists from the University of Hawaii, were the first to seriously attempt to record and thoroughly document the Klallam language. They recorded Mary Ann Lambert, Amy Allen, and Elizabeth Prince at Jamestown. However, the bulk of their forty reel‑to‑reel tapes were of Martha John at Port Gamble. Their article Clallam: A Preview was the first description of features of Klallam grammar. Their recordings, notes, and preliminary dictionary have been extremely valuable in the Klallam revitalization project.

  1974  Anna Bennett, Irene Charles, Nellie Sullivan, and Josephine Williams (Elwha Klallam) worked with Laurence C. and M. Terry Thompson to produce the booklet The Clallam Language: Beginning Lessons. Nellie Sullivan and Josephine Williams also made tape recordings of the lessons. This project was coordinated by Lorraine Doebbler and Laverne Hepfer through the Elwha Klallam culture office, with the help of the Port Angeles public schools.

  1976  Mark Fleisher, an anthropology student from Washington State University, collected some Klallam words in Clallam: A Study in Coast Salish Ethnolinguistics.

  1978–1980  Timothy Montler, linguistics graduate student at the University of Hawaii, was sent by his teacher, Laurence C. Thompson, to carry on his work on the Klallam language. He met and worked briefly with several Klallam speakers, including Irene Charles, Anna Bennett, Richard Sampson, Ethel Hopie, and Elsie Joseph from Elwha, and Tom Charles and Lillian Charles at Becher Bay. He tape recorded several of these speakers. His work on Klallam greatly informed his 1984 grammatical description of Saanich.

  1981  Claudine Poggi, linguistics graduate student at the University of Hawaii, recorded Lillian Charles and published a short paper on Klallam grammar.

  1985  Steven Egesdahl, linguistics student from the University of Hawaii, recorded some Klallam stories, words, and sentences, working briefly with Tom Charles at Becher Bay and with Bea Charles and Adeline Smith at Elwha.

  1991  Jacilee Wray, anthropologist at Olympic National Park, taped Ed Sampson, Sr. telling stories. She contacted Timothy Montler for help in Klallam language preservation. Her recordings have been very useful in the Klallam revitalization effort.

  1991–present  Jamie Valadez (Elwha Klallam) guided the Klallam Language Program, bringing together the linguist with elders, students, and the community to work to preserve and revitalize the Klallam language.

  1992  Myrna Milholland (Elwha Klallam) provided Klallam words published in the children’s book Seya’s Song by Ron Hirschi and Constance Bergum.

  1992–present  Timothy Montler, linguist at the University of North Texas, began working closely with the Klallam Language Program conducting workshops and lessons and recording a great many stories, words, and sentences from Ed Sampson, Sr., Tom Charles, Sr., Hazel Sampson, Adeline Smith, Bea Charles, and Walt Bennett. He has worked extensively with Bea Charles and Adeline Smith in transcribing tape recordings made by Leon Metcalf and Laurence C. Thompson. He has produced a number of articles and materials for understanding, learning, and teaching the Klallam language.

  1993  Fonts and keyboard software for typing and printing the Klallam language were installed on all of the computers at the Elwha tribal headquarters. These were later installed on tribal members’ personal computers and on the Port Angeles public school computers.

  1993–2014  Bea Charles and Adeline Smith (Elwha Klallam) began writing the Klallam language, recording their own speech.

  1995  Linda Laungayan (Elwha Klallam) recorded genealogical information and personal names, working with Bea Charles and Adeline Smith in the Klallam master/apprentice program.

  1996  Michael Charles (Elwha Klallam) recorded Tom Charles in the Klallam master/apprentice program.

  1997  Pamela Brooks, student at the University of North Texas, sorted and retranscribed the Klallam place names from J. P. Harrington’s microfilmed field notes in ‘John Peabody Harrington’s Klallam and Chemakum Place Names.’

  1999  Jamie Valadez (Elwha Klallam) began teaching Klallam Language at the Port Angeles High School.

  2003  The Klallam Language Board was established as consisting of Bea Charles, Adeline Smith, and Tim Montler. Jamie Valadez, Linda Laungayan, Wendy Sampson, Lovera Blackcrow, and Elaine Grinnell became the first tribally certified Klallam language teachers.

  2006  Jamie Valdadez and Wendy Sampson achieved advanced teacher certification and became members of the Klallam Language Board. Georgianne Charles, of Elwha, became a certified teacher of the language for preschool-aged children. Also the first teachers from Port Gamble became certified: Marie Hebert, Laura Price, and Karron McGrady.

  2008  Work began on the production of many story booklets and curriculum for the TPR Storytelling method of language education.

  2009  Tim Montler revised and expanded his Klallam language web site at www.ling.unt.edu/~montler/Klallam. It includes: a classified word list: 3500 Klallam words with around 1000 linked to mp3 sound files, interactive flash videos (conversation between elders with subtitles), model sentences and dialogues in mp3 audio files from this Klallam Grammar, computer games for learning Klallam vocabulary and pronunciation, morphologically analyzed useful phrases with audio, narratives with audio and grammatical analysis, videos with Klallam and English subtitles, a set of Klallam tongue twisters with audio, photos of Klallam Language Program participants, a bibliography, a family tree of the Salishan languages, a description of the alphabet, a map of Klallam and neighboring languages, and  Klallam keyboard software with a guide to using it.

  2009  Klallam Word of the Day ran on the social media sites Twitter and Facebook until 2020. A new word or phrase was posted every day. Lessons from this Klallam Grammar were added as weekly postings, starting in December of 2013.

  2010  A web-based Klallam language keyboard was made available on the author’s Klallam language web site.

  2012  A Klallam language keyboard app for use in texting on smart phones was created and made freely available.

  2012  The students from Jamie Valadez’s high school Klallam language classes achieved tribal certification to teach the language at the elementary and middle school levels: Harmony Arakawa and Ashley Pitchford.

  2012  The Klallam Dictionary was published. Work resumed on this grammar.

  2014  Members of the Klallam Language Program began the development of a series of grammar lesson videos.