Nancy Raven
{{Short description|Last speaker of the Natchez language (1872–1957)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Nancy Raven
| image =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Nancy Chunestudy
| birth_date = c. {{Birth date|1868|12|25}}
| birth_place = Indian Territory
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1957|03|25|1868|12|25}}
| death_place = Oklahoma
| other_names = Nancy Chunestudy Taylor Waters Raven
| occupation = homemaker, storyteller, language consultant
| years_active =
| known_for = last fluent speaker of Natchez language
| notable_works =
}}
Nancy Raven (c. December 25, 1868–March 25, 1957),{{cite web |title=Nancy Raven |url=http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Raven&GSfn=Nancy&GSby=1875&GSbyrel=before&GSdy=1930&GSdyrel=after&GSst=38&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GRid=63027143&df=all& |publisher=Findagrave.com |accessdate=2013-10-14}} also known as Nancy Taylor, was a Natchez storyteller from Braggs, Oklahoma and one of the last two fluent speakers of the Natchez language.
Her father was Cherokee and her mother Natchez, and she learned Natchez at home. A full-blood, she never learned English, but was trilingual in Natchez, Cherokee and Muscogee.
In 1907 she worked with anthropologist John R. Swanton who collected information about Natchez religion, and in the 1930s she worked extensively with linguist Mary R. Haas who collected grammatical information and texts using an interpreter.{{cite web |title=Natchez (Naacee) |url=https://omniglot.com/writing/natchez.htm |website=Omniglot |access-date=27 August 2024}} Among the stories she told Mary Haas was one called "The Woman Who Was a Fox".{{cite journal|last=Kimball|first=G. |year=2013|title=The Woman Who Was a Fox: The Structure of a Natchez Oral Narrative|journal=International Journal of American Linguistics|volume=79|issue=3|pages=421–437|jstor=670925|doi=10.1086/670925|s2cid=144512594 }} Sometimes she used the surname Taylor, which she had taken from her second husband.
Family
She married four times. She had one son Adam Levi from her first marriage, with her second husband Will Taylor (Cherokee, d. 1905).{{cite web |title=Cherokee (by Blood), Card 9217 |url=https://www.okhistory.org/research/dawesresults?cardnum=9217&tribe=Cherokee&cardgroup=by%20Blood |website=Dawes Rolls, 1989–1914 |publisher=Oklahoma Historical Society |access-date=27 August 2024}} She was soon widowed, then married a man named Waters, and by 1920 was again widowed and married Albert Raven, a man about whom little is known. In the 1930s she appears to have been once again widowed.
She was the biological cousin of the other last speaker of Natchez, Watt Sam (Natchez, 1876–1944), who in Natchez kinship terminology was her classificatory nephew.{{Citation
| publisher = Smithsonian Institution
| pages = 598–615
|editor=Raymond D. Fogelson
| last = Galloway
| first = Patricia Kay
|author2=Jason Baird Jackson
| title = Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 14: Southeast
| chapter = Natchez and Neighboring Groups
| location = Washington, DC
| year = 2004
| isbn = 978-0160723001
| publisher = Smithsonian Institution
| pages = 68–86
|editor=Raymond D. Fogelson
| last = Martin
| first = Jack B.
| title = Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 14: Southeast
| chapter = Languages
| location = Washington, DC
| year = 2004
}} Among the Natchez, the language was generally passed down matrilineally, but at her death Nancy Raven had no surviving children, her only son Adam Levi having died from tuberculosis at age 20 in 1915.{{cite book|last=Kimball|first=Geoffry|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nd5o9juMePEC&pg=PA385|chapter=Natchez|title=Native Languages of the Southeastern United States |editor=Janine Scancarelli |editor2=Heather Kay Hardy |publisher=University of Nebraska Press|year=2005|pages=385–453|isbn=978-0803242357}}
Allotment
In 1907, she received land allotments from the Cherokee Nation, divided into individual allotments by the Dawes Commission. In 1930 she sold her land allotment.
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://cla.berkeley.edu/person/397 Index of Mary Haas' notes from her work with Nancy Raven] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130718153817/http://cla.berkeley.edu/person/397 |date=2013-07-18 }}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Raven, Nancy}}
Category:Cherokee people on the Dawes Rolls
Category:Last known speakers of a Native American language
Category:People from Braggs, Oklahoma
Category:19th-century Native American people
Category:19th-century Native American women