INTRODUCTION BY ERIC ELLIOTT
The following song texts were selected from Yumáyk Yumáyk (Hyde and Elliott 1994), a compilation of personal memoirs and historical texts narrated in Luiseño by Villiana Hyde.[1] Luiseño is a member of the Cupan branch of the Takic subfamily of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages. The Uto-Aztecan family includes languages spoken from the American Northwest to Central America. The Cupan languages were all spoken within the boundaries of modern California. Within the Cupan languages, Luiseño is most closely related to the now-extinct Cupeño language.
Born Villiana Calac, Mrs. Villiana Hyde was a native speaker of Luiseño and a proud member of the Luiseño community at the Rincón Reservation of San Diego County. In Luiseño orthography the name “Calac” is spelled “Qáálaq” and literally means ‘(the earth) caves in’. In complete contrast to the literal meaning of the family name, the Calac
True to the Calac family tradition of serving the community, Mrs. Hyde found her niche early on as historian and linguist. Forbidden to speak Luiseño at Sherman Indian School in Riverside, California, Mrs. Hyde became painfully aware at a young age that her language and culture were in peril. As a young woman she gained an acute understanding of what it means for a language and culture to die. Mrs. Hyde's own mother-in-law was a native speaker of Cupeño, Luiseño's closest geographic and linguistic neighbor. The Cupeño people, including Mrs. Hyde's mother-in-law, had been forcibly evicted from their home at Warner Springs. Mrs. Hyde watched as her mother-in-law, now living among Diegueño and Luiseño speakers, saw her language and culture fade into extinction as the few remaining Cupeño speakers passed away around her.
Mrs. Hyde thus had a clear understanding of the ominous task of preserving her language and culture for future generations. Her formal career as a linguist began in the 1960s, when she first collaborated with Professors Margaret Langdon and Ronald Langacker of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). This work eventually culminated in the publication of Mrs. Hyde's first book, An Introduction to the Luiseño Language (1971). Among those who collaborated with Mrs. Hyde on the Introduction were Langacker and the linguists Pamela Munro and Susan Steele, all of whom have continued their linguistic research on Luiseño language to the present day.
As an undergraduate student at the University of California, Irvine, I had the good fortune to stumble onto Mrs. Hyde's Introduction to the Luiseño Language. Long fascinated by the indigenous languages of California, I also happened to sign up for a class on Amerindian languages oered by Professor Mary Key, a linguist who had spent decades working on various American Indian languages of Mexico and South America. Professor Key encouraged my interest in Native American languages, opening up her office and personal linguistic library to me. When I showed up with Mrs. Hyde's Introduction, Professor Key further encouraged me to contact Mrs. Hyde and Professor Margaret Langdon of the Department of Linguistics at UCSD.
At the time, Mrs. Hyde's telephone number was listed in the directory. I simply called up directory assistance, got her number, telephoned Mrs. Hyde, and asked her whether she would teach me more about her language. Mrs. Hyde graciously agreed. Armed only with the Introduction, my tape recorder, and William Bright's Luiseño Dictionary, I drove to Mrs. Hyde's house. Our technique was simple. I would ask Mrs. Hyde about a particular subject of interest. She would tell me details on tape in Luiseño. I would take the tape home, transcribe the Luiseño, analyze it morphologically, translate it into English as best I could, and bring the work back to Mrs. Hyde for editing. At first, the work was painstakingly slow. Mrs. Hyde, who opened up her home to me most Saturdays, thought nothing of working from nine o'clock in the morning until as late as five o'clock at night.
Mrs. Hyde and I ended up collaborating for more than eight years. Our work has thus far yielded Yumáyk Yumáyk (‘long, long ago’), and we also have a dictionary and grammar in the making. Mrs. Hyde passed away in 1994, several weeks before Yumáyk Yumáyk was published. Mrs. Hyde was a good friend to me. She was also an ideal linguistic consultant. With her passing I lost a friend and also the possibility of further data collection or further clarification of material already gathered. The following excerpts from Yumáyk Yumáyk are therefore presented raw, as they appeared in the original—that is, with no further interpretation or explanation on my part. Mrs. Hyde provided explanations where she felt them necessary in Yumáyk Yumáyk. As with any culture's history, or as with any individual's own life story, there will always be facets of that history that are more readily comprehensible to outsiders, and other aspects that are less transparent. In order to fully understand the culture of a given community or individual, one has to be a member of that culture. I am not a member of the Luiseño-speaking culture presented in Yumáyk Yumáyk, a culture where speaking Luiseño and having one's gallstones removed by a shaman (Hyde and Elliott 1994:175–84) were as natural to Mrs. Hyde as speaking English and going to the dentist for a filling is to me. Yet, the more one reads of Mrs. Hyde's life and times, the better picture one forms of her culture, which really did exist not so long ago. It is my hope that these selections will provide readers with a glimpse of the grace and beauty of the language and culture that Mrs. Hyde worked so hard to document.