Foreword
NISENAN, which earlier in the 20th century was often referred to as Southern Maidu, is a member of the Maiduan family of languages, originally spoken in a wide area of what is now Northern California. There were Nisenan villages in the drainages of the Yuba and American Rivers, in the adjacent Sacramento Valley and up toward the crest of the Sierra Nevada.
This dictionary focuses on data establishing the existence of several dialects. The two for which the most information is available are the Central Hill dialect of Auburn, collected from Lizzie Enos by Richard Smith in the early 1960s, and the Southern Hill dialect collected from William Joseph of Forest Home by H. J. Uldall in the early 1930s.
Lizzie Enos
Central Hill Dialect
Lizzie Enos, probably the last speaker of Nisenan, worked with Richard Smith through the summers of 1964 and 1965 on recording the Central Hill Dialect. Lizzie was an honored elder among the Nisenan. She was close to an ideal teacher of the language: intelligent, knowledgeable and kind.
Richard Alan Smith
Linguist (1942–1987)
Richard Alan Smith was an outstanding student of Linguistics at Berkeley. He prepared the prototype of the present dictionary and wrote a grammar of Nisenan. He died in 1987 at the age of forty-four, entrusting his work to William Shipley.
"Hers [Margo Schulter, editor] has been a truly remarkable accomplishment worthy of the highest praise."
Dialect & Speaker Abbreviations
| Code | Speaker | Dialect |
|---|---|---|
| LE | Ms. Lizzie Enos | Central Hill |
| LK | Mr. Louis Kelly | Central Hill |
| ET | Mr. Elmer Thompson | Northern Hill |
| GN | George Nye | Northwestern Hill |
| JP | Ms. Jane Prout | Central Hill |
| DC | Mr. Dick Childs | Central Hill |
| BJ | Mr. William Joseph | Southern Hill |
| H | Chief Hunchup | Southern Hill |
| TC | Tom Cleanso | Southern Valley |