Native Language Project

The data collected for this talking dictionary is being compiled by Charles H. Thomas. He writes, "This is a long-term language project. It could take years. I learned the language from three elders of Native American descent in three different mountain communities in Virginia when I was just starting out as a young man. As I understand, the language was originally spoken over a wide area from the mountains of North Carolina up to the North fork of the Holston River and East to the lands of the Roanoke and Monacan peoples, and then south into North Carolina. When the French built a Fort In Jacksonville, Florida in 1565, the Chief of the Timucuan asked the French leader to help him defeat his enemies, the Chisca. Charles Hudson's map had the Chisca in Virginia at that time in the boldest writing of any other group listed on the map. Perhaps the Chisca range went all of the way to western Florida. When I began learning the language, there were still around 36-38 speakers. I became the last speaker upon the death of Creed Burcham in 2008. I now have a student who has been studying the language for five years. I have three students who have been studying for over three years. I have still other students who are learning the language through online classes every Sunday night.    

Darlene Campbell has been learning the language for over five years now. She has also been creating and contributing the illustrations seen here. Marc Snelling has also been learning the language for a while and is now also working on the site. His children are also learning the language. Chris Greene and his daughter, Kylee Greene, are coming over regularly and learning the old plant ways as well as the language. Chris and Falishia Greene's Son Korban is learning the language as he learns English. They contribute regularly by raising all kinds of language problems, the most recent being "how do we say racking horse?" Trish Greene was all over the project at the start. She is sorely missed and not forgotten.  

It should be noted that in an old dialect, Ani-Stohini has been used by the Cherokee to describe us and I have been told that it means Bog Turtle People. It should be noted that this is what the Cherokee called us and that none of our people claim to be Cherokee. In fact, we are most definitely NOT Cherokee. Our language may have some structural similarities to Iroquoian languages but it has never been studied.    

I want to personally thank my dear friend Tim Towe, who inspired me to keep going, remembering, and writing things down for all of these years. He passed away recently, and it is my hope that this project honors his memory. I want to thank Creed Burcham, Lottie (Pearman) Patton, and Granny Graham for teaching me the language in the first place. I cherish them in memory. Hershel Bilbry learned the language from the Youngbloods who are all gone now as well as Hershel Bilbry. He spoke another Native language when he first arrived in the Brush Creek community, but learned our language well. I often spoke "Inyun" with him while delivering food from the food distribution program. None of the remaining Bilbrys speak any Native American language. Myrtle Marsh, Ethel Davis, and Edith McRoberts, all knew a little bit of the language but never used it except to practice with me as far as I know. None of their children learned any of the language. Mrytle, Ethel, and Edith are all all gone now. I was recently reminded by Katherine Burcham, that Tiny Edwards Burcham was a medicine woman who knew all of the plant ways. Creed learned the language from her and from one of the Mahala Smiths in the family. Uncle Creed passed in 2008 and I have not had a fluent speaker to speak with and listen to, since that time    

In the early 80's, I spoke at great length with Norma Thompson Dean, the last speaker of the Lenni Lenape language, in Oklahoma by telephone. Our languages had some similarities and we wanted desperately to understand each other, but in the end, we concluded that if we were both speaking a Delaware language, that our dialects were too far removed to understand each other. The Encyclopeadia of Linguistics lists Tla Wilano as a Delaware language. I do not know if the Tla Wilano they mention is the language here or not, but Tla Wilano is definitely documented as a language. You would think somebody, somewhere, might take an interest in finding out if the Tla Wilano of Pennsylvania and the Oli'ichtla Wilano of Virginia are related. No one here has ever claimed that they are, but we've always been curious. I spoke at length with Walker Calhoun, a speaker of eastern Cherokee at the very first Monacan Pow wow in Virginia at an elementary school near Bear Mountain years ago, and he said that he couldn't understand my language. I spent quite a bit of time in Cherokee from 1974-1976 and spoke to many people including Raymond Grant, who was very interested in the language, but also said that he thought that if it was Cherokee, it must be a lost dialect not understood in today's Cherokee. To my knowledge, Mooney never even came up into our area. No other linguists or historians, for that matter have covered, investigated, or written about our language in depth so far as I know. That is entirely on them as we are right here. Walter Plecker, with the stroke of a pen, erased all Virginia Indians for many years from official papers. The 14th amendment did not apply to Indians and Indians were not citizens until 1924, only to have Walter Plecker erase Virginia Indians, at least on paper. Virginia Indians have the Walter Plecker factor to deal with that other tribes in other states do not. It has only been recently that six tribes in Virginia received federal recognition. The Bureau of Ethnology in Washington, D.C has a long way to go to put their records online in any accessible manner. Our language and history isolation is strange considering that we have been here since before the last ice age and our traditional territory covered over five thousand square miles! The high country of southwestern Virginia is a veritable dead zone when it comes to historical documentation of any kind.

 Kokohela eshuna - May you have wonderful, beautiful, blessed, days!