Last Living Speakers

Martha, at the beginning of the show, we were talking about dying languages.

A few years ago, Jack Hitt wrote about dying languages in the New York Times. I think it was in 2003.

Oh, I remember that story, yeah. And one of the things he described in that article, and it was beautifully written, was the last speaker hustle.

Do you know what I’m talking about? I remember the story. It had great photographs with it, but I don’t remember that particular part.

What he calls the last speaker hustle is this thing where you’ll go as a tourist or even as an investigator or a professional linguist or somebody who studies these sorts of things to a remote place. And they’ll trot out this one person who supposedly is the last speaker of a specific language.

And, you know, you’ll get all excited and you’ll take pictures and take notes and get out your tape recorder and stuff only to find out that there’s somebody two huts away who speaks the same language.

But the best story that Jack Hitt wrote about was Red Thundercloud. He supposedly was the last Catawba speaker. But in reality, his name was Cromwell Ashby Hawkins West.

Oh, no. He was the son of an African-American druggist in Newport, Rhode Island. And supposedly he was a great mimic and a fast learner. He mastered the language. He was not a member of the tribe at all.

Mastered the language, put on some turquoise jewelry. And until 1996, he went around hawking this product called Red Thunderclouds Akabonic Princess American Indian Tea, which was, quote, fresh from the American forest to you.

So the last speaker hustle. Well, you’ve got to make a living somehow, right? Right.

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