Upper Umpqua is an extinct
Athabaskan language formerly spoken along the south fork of the
Umpqua River
The Umpqua River ( ) on the Pacific coast of Oregon in the United States is approximately long. One of the principal rivers of the Oregon Coast and known for bass and shad, the river drains an expansive network of valleys in the mountains west ...
in west-central
Oregon
Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...
by Upper
Umpqua (Etnemitane) people in the vicinity of modern
Roseburg. It has been extinct for at least fifty years and little is known about it other than it belongs to the same ''Oregon Athabaskan'' cluster of
Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages
Pacific Coast Athabaskan is a geographical and possibly genealogical grouping of the Athabaskan language family.
California Athabaskan
: 1. Hupa (dining'-xine:wh, a.k.a. Hoopa-Chilula)
:: dialects:
::* Hupa
::* Tsnungwe
::: - tse:ning-xwe
::: - ...
as the
Lower Rogue River language,
Upper Rogue River language and
Chetco-Tolowa.
The most important documentation of Upper Umpqua is the extensive vocabulary obtained by
Horatio Hale in 1841 (published in Hale 1846).
Melville Jacobs and
John P. Harrington were able to collect fragmentary data from the last speakers as late as the 1940s (Golla 2011:70-72). Although known to early explorers and settlers as ''Umpqua,'' the language is now usually called ''Upper Umpqua'' to distinguish it from the unrelated Oregon Coast
Penutian language ''Lower Umpqua'' (
Kuitsh or Siuslaw language) that was spoken closer to the coast in the same area.
References
* Golla, Victor (2011). ''California Indian Languages''. Berkeley: University of California Press. .
* Hale, Horatio (1846). ''Ethnography and Philology''. Vol. 6 of ''United States Exploring Expedition.... Under the Command of Charles Wilkes, U.S.N.'' Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard.
External links
Oregon Athabascan languages
{{Athabaskan languages
Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages
Extinct languages of North America
Languages extinct in the 1950s