Henry Zenk, PhD
Tribal Linguist
Grand Ronde Tribe
Presentation Time
Friday, September 8, 2006: 1:00 PM
Kalapuyan Names on the Land
Handout: The Kalapuyan Presence in Oregon's Geographic Names. Six-page paper by Henry Zenk, September 8, 2006.
Abstract
Kalapuyan languages, while no longer spoken, were fairly well documented by linguists working with the last two generations of Native speakers. But the linguists have yet to provide us with the dictionaries and grammars we need to make make full sense of what they recorded. Fortunately, most Kalapuyan “names on the land” are nouns, which are not the most complicated kind of word in Kalapuyan. Here we will explore how Kalapuyans named the plants, animals, and places that were important to them. The Kalapuyan presence can still be felt in the many contemporary Willamette Valley placenames of Kalapuyan origin.
Select Bibliography
Zenk, Henry B. 1976. Contributions to Tualatin Ethnography: Subsistence and Ethnobiology. MA Thesis, Portland Sate University, Portland, Oregon: xxx pp.
Zenk, Henry B. 1990a. "Kalapuyans," IN: Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 7: Northwest Coast (edited by Wayne Suttles). William C. Sturtevant (series ed.), Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC: 547-553.
Zenk, Henry B. 1990b. "Alseans," IN: Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 7: Northwest Coast (edited by Wayne Suttles). William C. Sturtevant (series ed.), Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC: 568-571.
Zenk, Henry B. 1995. "Describing a Vanished Culture: The Aboriginal Kalapuyans," IN: A Symposium: What Price Eden? The Willamette Valley in Transition, 1812-1855, Mission Mill Museum Association, Salem, Oregon: 20 pp.