FEBRUARY 4, 1987

CUPEÑO ROSCINDA NOLASQUEZ-LAST CUPEÑO SPEAKER-DIED

Born April 3, 1892, at Cupa, California, she was raised primarily by her grandmother from whom she learned much of her people’s history. In 1903, a U.S. Supreme Court decision deprived the Cupeño of their ancestral homes at Cupa and 11-year-old Roscinda moved with her people to the Pala Indian Reservation. Nolasquez attended the government Indian School at Cupa and then the Sherman Institute in Riverside. She worked at various locations, including several years at the Warner Springs Resort built amid the remains of Cupa, but was forbidden from talking to guests about her village. Likely the last Native speaker of the Cupeño language, she was sought by and worked with linguists Jane Hill & Roderick Jacobs. Together, they published Mulu’wetam: The First People (Malki Museum Press, 1973)—a collection of Cupeño oral histories & songs. During the 1960s & 70s, Nolasquez taught classes in the Cupeño language at Pala and worked towards the founding of the Cupa Cultural Center at Pala in 1974.

Source: Phil Brigandi, “Roscinda Nolasquez Remembered,” Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, UC Merced.  Retrieved 9/21/2022, Roscinda Nolasquez Remembered (escholarship.org)

Map:  mdhennessey, 8/17/2007.  Southern California Indian Linguistic Groups [Cropped]. Permissive Use pursuant to Creative Commons licenses.