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LW-001 Na-Dené · Alaska 2008

Eyak

na-deneassimilation2000s
Where
Copper River delta, Alaska
Speakers at peak
A few hundred
Last speaker
Marie Smith Jones, 2008
Status
Extinct (revival efforts)

Summary

Eyak was the language of a small Alaska Native people who lived around the Copper River delta and the Gulf of Alaska coast, near present-day Cordova. It was never spoken by many — a few hundred people at most — and it sat, linguistically and geographically, between far larger neighbors: the Tlingit, the Alutiiq, and the Athabaskans. For most of the twentieth century its speakers slipped away one by one, until only a single fluent speaker remained.

That speaker was Marie Smith Jones. Born in 1918 in Cordova, she was the last full-blooded Eyak, the last fluent native speaker of the language, and the last traditional chief of her people. When she died on January 21, 2008, at the age of 89, Eyak became the first of Alaska's twenty Native languages to lose its last fluent speaker in modern times — a milestone reported around the world.

Eyak's importance to linguists was out of all proportion to the number of people who spoke it. It is a branch of the Na-Dené family, the closest relative of the large Athabaskan group, and its survival as a distinct language was a key piece of evidence for how those languages are related. Marie Smith Jones spent her last decades working with the linguist Michael Krauss to record, write down, and preserve as much of it as possible.

Eyak is not entirely silent. The dictionary and grammar she helped create have allowed a small revival effort to begin — including one young Frenchman who taught himself the language from the records and now teaches it. But the unbroken chain of native speakers, passed from parent to child for thousands of years, ended in a hospital in Anchorage in 2008.

Decline Timeline

pre-1800s
Eyak country
The Eyak occupy the Copper River delta and Gulf of Alaska coast, a small people among larger neighbors.
1880s–1900s
Cordova rises
Commercial fishing and the railroad bring the town of Cordova onto Eyak land; the Eyak are outnumbered.
1918
Marie is born
Marie Smith Jones is born in Cordova, into a community where Eyak is already under pressure.
mid-1900s
Transmission breaks
English-only schooling and economic pressure stop parents from passing Eyak to their children.
1960s–80s
Down to a handful
Linguist Michael Krauss begins documenting Eyak; only a few elderly fluent speakers remain.
1990s
Two sisters
Marie and her sister Sophie are the last two fluent speakers; after Sophie's death, Marie is the only one.
1990s–2000s
Documenting the language
Marie works with Krauss on an Eyak dictionary and grammar and speaks publicly about language loss.
Jan 21, 2008
The last speaker dies
Marie Smith Jones dies in Anchorage at 89 — the last fluent native speaker of Eyak.
after 2008
Revival begins
Using the records, Guillaume Leduey and the Eyak community begin teaching the language again.

Profile

Eyak belonged to the Na-Dené language family, as the nearest living relative of the Athabaskan languages — a group that stretches from interior Alaska down to the Navajo and Apache of the American Southwest. Eyak was not Athabaskan itself but its own branch, and that independent status made it scientifically precious: it helped linguists reconstruct the deep history and structure of one of North America's largest language families.

Like its relatives, Eyak was a complex, verb-centered language, built on strings of prefixes and suffixes that pack into a single word what English needs a whole sentence to say. It had sounds unfamiliar to English speakers and a rich vocabulary tied to the specific world of the Copper River delta — the salmon runs, the tides, the glaciers, and the boundary country between forest and sea.

The Eyak themselves were always a small people, hemmed in by powerful neighbors. The expanding Tlingit pressed on them from the southeast, the Alutiiq from the west, and Athabaskan groups from the interior. By the time Europeans arrived, the Eyak numbered only a few hundred, which left the language acutely vulnerable to any further pressure.

The Silencing

The decisive blow came with the American period and the rise of the commercial fishing industry. The town of Cordova grew up on Eyak land in the early 1900s as a railroad and cannery hub, and the Eyak were quickly outnumbered in their own territory. Children were sent to schools where only English was permitted and Native languages were punished — the same assimilation policy applied across Alaska and the wider United States and Canada.

Within a generation or two, Eyak parents stopped passing the language to their children, who would need English to work in the canneries and to survive in a town that treated their language as a mark of backwardness. The number of fluent speakers fell steadily through the mid-twentieth century. By the 1980s only a handful of elderly speakers remained; by the 1990s, only two sisters — and then, after the elder sister died, only one.

Nothing dramatic finished Eyak off: no single massacre or disaster, only the steady, grinding pressure of a dominant language and a school system designed to replace it. That ordinariness is part of what makes the Eyak story representative — it is how most of the world's languages are dying.

The Last Speaker

Marie Smith Jones carried the language alone for years. Born in 1918, she had grown up speaking Eyak, raised nine children — none of whom learned it fluently, a fact she spoke of with sorrow — and outlived every other fluent speaker, including her younger sister Sophie, who died in the 1990s. After that she was, by herself, the entire living memory of the language.

Rather than let it vanish unrecorded, she spent her last decades as its custodian. Working with the linguist Michael Krauss of the Alaska Native Language Center, she helped produce an Eyak dictionary and grammar, recording words, stories, and the sounds of the language so that it could outlast her. She also became a public figure — an environmental and peace activist who spoke at the United Nations — and used that platform to talk about what is lost when a language dies.

She died on January 21, 2008, in Anchorage, the last fluent native speaker of Eyak and the last full-blooded member of her people. Her death was reported around the world as a marker of the global wave of language extinction — the moment a tongue that had been spoken on the Copper River delta for thousands of years fell silent in its last living voice.

What Silenced It

01
A tiny population to begin with
The Eyak never numbered more than a few hundred, hemmed in by the larger Tlingit, Alutiiq, and Athabaskan peoples. A language with so few speakers has almost no margin against any further pressure.
02
A town built on top of them
The cannery and railroad town of Cordova grew up on Eyak land in the early 1900s, and the Eyak were swiftly outnumbered in their own territory by English-speaking newcomers.
03
English-only schooling
Eyak children were sent to schools where Native languages were forbidden and punished — the standard assimilation policy across Alaska, the US, and Canada — breaking the transmission of the language from parents to children.
04
Economic survival required English
To work in the canneries and function in Cordova, Eyak people needed English. Parents stopped teaching Eyak because it offered no advantage and carried a stigma, so a single generation's choice became irreversible.
05
No new speakers replaced the old
As elderly fluent speakers died through the twentieth century, no children were growing up to take their place. Once the last sister died, Marie Smith Jones was a population of one, and the language's fate was sealed.

Legacy

Because Marie Smith Jones chose to spend her last years documenting Eyak rather than simply carrying it to the grave, the language did not vanish without a trace. The dictionary and grammar she produced with Michael Krauss are a substantial record — enough that the language can be studied, and even partially relearned, from the page.

That record made an unusual revival possible. Guillaume Leduey, a young Frenchman, taught himself Eyak from the published materials and recordings long before he ever set foot in Alaska, and after Marie's death he became one of the few people able to teach it, working with the Alaska Native Language Center and the Eyak community on revitalization. It is not the same as an unbroken chain of native speakers — but it means Eyak words are still being spoken aloud.

Marie Smith Jones also became a lasting symbol. Her death was cited at the United Nations, in scientific journals, and in countless news stories about the estimate that a language dies somewhere in the world every few weeks. Eyak is now one of the most famous examples of language extinction precisely because its end had a name, a date, and a face.

Lessons

  1. A language can be doomed by its speaker count long before it actually dies — once a community is small enough and surrounded, a single generation's shift to another language is effectively final.
  2. Schools that punish a child's mother tongue are among the most effective destroyers of languages; the damage is done in one generation and is almost impossible to reverse.
  3. Documentation is not the same as survival, but it is the difference between a language that can be relearned and one that is gone completely. Marie Smith Jones's choice to record Eyak is why a revival is even possible.
  4. The death of a language is usually quiet and gradual, not dramatic — which is exactly why it so often goes unnoticed until the last speaker is the only one left.

References