Purisimeño was one of the

Chumashan languages Chumashan was a family of languages that were spoken on the southern California coast by Native American Chumash people, from the Coastal plains and valleys of San Luis Obispo to Malibu, neighboring inland and Transverse Ranges valleys and ...

traditionally spoken along the coastal areas of

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...

near

Lompoc Lompoc ( ; Chumash: ''Lum Poc'') is a city in Santa Barbara County, California. Located on the Central Coast, Lompoc has a population of 43,834 as of July 2021. Lompoc has been inhabited for thousands of years by the Chumash people, who calle ...

. It was also spoken at the La Purisima Mission. A vocabulary of "La Purrissima or Kagimuswas (Purismeno Chumash)" was collected by

Henry Wetherbee Henshaw Henry Wetherbee Henshaw (March 3, 1850 – August 1, 1930) was an American ornithologist and ethnologist. He worked at the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology from 1888 to 1892 and was editor of the journal ''American Anthropologist''. Biography Early li ...

in 1884. John P. Harrington also documented the language, and wrote a sketch of the grammar. Dr. Timothy Henry of the Western Institute for Endangered Language Documentation (WIELD) created a dictionary of the language.

Writing system

References

External links

Wieldoc.org: Purisimeño Project at the Western Institute for Endangered Language DocumentationPurisimeño language
— overview at the

Survey of California and Other Indian Languages The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...