New River Shasta | |
States: | United States |
Region: | Salmon River, northern California |
Ethnicity: | Shasta |
Extinct: | after 1926 |
Familycolor: | American |
Fam1: | Hokan ? |
Fam2: | Shasta–Palaihnihan |
Fam3: | Shastan |
Iso3: | none |
Glotto: | newr1237 |
Glottorefname: | New River Shasta |
New River Shasta is an extinct Shastan language formerly spoken in northern California. It may have had only 300 speakers before contact, and they soon went extinct; the language is attested in only a few short wordlists.[1] Kroeber regarded them as possibly "nearest to the major group in speech, although [...] their tongue as a whole must have been unintelligible to the Shasta proper." The last recorded speaker of New River Shasta was Saxy Kidd, who only remembered some words and had mostly forgotten his language.[2] [3]