Amelia Yuu-k'wvt-day-na Julia Jim Brown

Yuu-k’wvt-day-na, also known as Amelia Brown, was a Tolowa speaker of Nuu-wee-ya’ who lived most of her life in Crescent City and Smith River in northern California. She reached the advanced age of 110 and had a remarkable memory dating back to the 1870s. Amelia supported early efforts to catalog and teach Tolowa in Del Norte County in the 1960s and 1970s, playing a crucial role in passing down cultural knowledge and community history to younger generations. With her outgoing and caring personality, she was remembered affectionately in the Smith River community for many years as their matriarch, Grandma Amelia–pronounced “Grandma ‘Aa-mitlh-ya.”

Family Origins

Amelia James was born in 1868 at Lht’vsr-me’, a village at the mouth of Cushing Creek, during a violent and chaotic period. Her grandparents and her mother, Yuu-k’wvt-day-na Julia Jim, came from Taa-ghii~-’a~, a coastal village located at Point St. George in present-day Crescent City, California.

By the 1850s, the California Gold Rush had brought a flood of white miners and settlers to northern California and southern Oregon hoping to strike it rich. “Gold Fever” was one of several factors that led to escalating violence against Native people in the region. Between 1851 and 1856, the state cavalry, local militia groups, and hired men carried out state-funded massacres at villages throughout the Taa-laa-waa-dvn homelands, killing 80 percent of Amelia’s people and causing survivors to flee.

In this unstable time, Amelia’s family and many others were forced to leave their villages and resettle further away from the developing white settlements. Some people were driven to places like Daa-ghestlh-ts’a’-dvn, the southernmost Tolowa village at Wilson Creek. Others were captured and separated onto different reservations such as the 1855 Klamath River Reservation, the 1855 Coast (Siletz) Reservation in Oregon, the original 1862 Smith River Ranch Reservation (which was annulled in 1868), and the Hoopa Valley Reservation. Amelia’s grandparents and mother escaped during their removal to Wilson Creek to live with relatives at the village of Lht’vsr-me’ at Cushing Creek–the place where Amelia was later born. 

When Amelia was growing up, the elders and teachers of her day were the survivors of these removals and massacres. They shared their precious knowledge with her, along with memories of pain and loss. She once said, “If I had a nickel for every one of my footsteps between Lht’vsr-me’ and Taa-’at-dvn at Crescent City, I’d be a rich person.”

Early Life and Marriage

Amelia’s mother passed away when Amelia was young, and her father brought her into the sweathouse to live with him. This was an unconventional upbringing for a girl, since the sweathouse was traditionally the living residence for men. Amelia’s presence there could suggest that her aunts, Jenny and Buttons, were unable to care for her. 

Amelia and her family continued many of the coastal fishing and seasonal gathering practices of previous generations. Amelia often visited Shin-yvslh-sri, an important summer smelt fishing site along Nickel Creek to the south of their home village. Her uncle was a skilled fisherman named Wee-nii-chvm or Cushing Creek Jim.

Amelia married twice. Her first husband was Sk’wvm Willie John from ‘Ee-chuu-le’ in the Lake Earl area. They had three children together. Her husband and children passed away during an influenza outbreak, but Amelia survived. She remarried to Henry Brown of Yan’-daa-k’vt. They had three daughters – Berneice (1910-1994), Anna (1913-1997), and Harriet (1916-2001). 

Leadership and Elder Years

Amelia became a Ch’aa-may-yvlh-sri (an herbalist and medicine maker) who worked as a healer and midwife. She was also a skilled basket maker. She supported families after the loss of a loved one, preparing the decedent’s body for burial. Daily life could be extreme in this period, but Smith River was a small, close-knit community. Many people leaned on Amelia during hard times and referred to her affectionately as “Grandma ‘Aa-mitlh-ya.” 

In 1908 when Amelia was about 40, a 163-acre parcel of land was purchased for the Smith River Rancheria Reservation under the 1906 Landless California Indians Act. Between 1927 and 1932, people in Smith River built the Smith River Indian Shaker Church, which became one of the central community gathering spaces. Amelia had previously been a faithful member of the Methodist Mission at K’vsh-chu Hall, but she converted to the Shaker faith at age 70. She became a long-time church leader, along with other locals like Delilah Frank George, Lyda Bigby George, Maggie Charlie Billy, Ellen White Lafountain, Frank Moorehead, Donnie Flannery, Norman George, and Eddie Richards. Church meetings blended Christian teachings with traditional shaman healing practices; they were also spaces where people spoke and prayed in Nuu-wee-ya’.

The Indian Shaker Church was a federally and state-recognized church, giving it legal protections. It offered Native people a way to gather publicly and practice elements of their culture without being harassed. (The ten-night Naa-yvlh-sri World Renewal Nee-dash ceremony had already gone “underground” by this time–at a 1923 ceremony, federal agents had rushed in, arrested the Dance Makers, and confiscated their precious regalia.) “The Shake” also connected relatives and friends across different communities. Through Amelia’s participation in church services, she likely spent time with visitors from neighboring Indian Shaker churches in Siletz, Klamath, Johnson’s Landing, Hupa, Klamath Falls, and as far away as Washington and southern British Columbia. 

Language Revitalization Work

Amelia and her daughter, Nan-ts’vn-numlh-k’vs (Berneice), shared their language expertise with students in the Del Norte School District in the 1960s and 1970s. These Wednesday meetings, facilitated by the Del Norte Indian Welfare Association and Tom Parsons of Humboldt State University, were intended to connect elder speakers with youth to preserve Indian languages. Tolowa elders like Amelia and Berneice, Sam Lopez, Ella Norris, Gobel Richards, and Ellen Lafountain agreed to attend the meetings and share their knowledge of language, history, and culture. 

Led by Berneice, the elders also worked together to write down lists of every Tolowa word they could remember–every fish, animal, tool, body part, place name, etc– transferring their spoken language into writing. Starting in 1969, the work of these elders helped with the eventual development of the first Tolowa Dee-ni’ Language and Ethnographic text. Amelia helped the early efforts to preserve Nuu-wee-ya’ in northern California, passing on what she knew to future language teachers. Berneice Humphrey became the first State Eminence Credentialed teacher of Nuu-wee-ya’ in the Del Norte School District in 1971. 

Amelia was also influential in the life of the linguist Loren Me’-lash-ne Bommelyn, who spent time with Amelia in his childhood and was one of the young students who attended the Wednesday language meetings at Del Norte High School. Me’-lash-ne also visited her often at her home, asking her many questions about the nuances of Nuu-wee-ya’. Though she was always a gracious and patient teacher, he later learned that she once said of him, “Ch’a’, ghii ‘ii~-ghvn xuu ghalh. Shsi’s ‘ii~-ghee-ts’ilh-te.” (Again, that thing is-coming. My-head is-going-to-ache.) [1]

In 1983, Berneice and Me’-lash-ne published the first edition of a text collection for Tolowa Dee-ni’ Wee-ya’. They also published the second Xus We-yo’ dictionary of Tolowa in 1989, which served as a foundation for Nuu-wee-ya’ revitalization. 

Ancestral Knowledge

Amelia was generous with her knowledge, both in her community and with non-Native researchers. She had memories spanning back as far as the 1870s, and she also carried knowledge from the elders who lived in the decades prior. She was born only 15 years after the devastating 1853 Yan’-daa-k’vt Massacre along the estuary of the Smith River, which is remembered as the second-largest single mass killing of Indians in American history. With difficulty, Amelia shared an account of this event in a 1972 interview with the archaeologist Richard Gould. The testimonies of Amelia and other elders challenged early written histories of white settlement in northern California, which downplay or omit violence against Native people from their accounts.

Amelia remembered many local historical happenings that ranged from natural disasters to the first time people in the community tasted potatoes. She could describe historic villages, geography, landmarks, and community life before white settlement. She knew about the places and times of year that people traveled to fish, hunt sea lions, dig for clams, and gather huckleberries and other traditional foods. 

Amelia was interviewed by the linguist Joe Pierce in 1962, providing many hours of vocabulary and phrases, stories, and cultural information. Around 1962 she was also interviewed by Jane O. Bright, a linguist and ethnographer with a unique and valuable approach. Amelia shared stories and historical happenings with her and also participated in the only known recording of elder speakers carrying on an extended conversation in Tolowa. Bright described Amelia as “intelligent and extremely active” at age 94. [2]

Amelia played an important role in the developing field of ethnoarchaeology in the 1970s, providing non-Native researchers with contextual information about their findings to better understand local history and ecology. 

Legacy

Amelia influenced multiple generations within her community, living to see her great-grandchildren.  In her elder years, young students from her great-grandson’s elementary school class would take field trips to her long-time home along Highway 101 to hear her sing and learn from her. Her descendants remember how kind and thoughtful she was, and how much she loved to teach. The memories and knowledge that she passed on have shaped our present-day understanding of Nuu-wee-ya’. 

Amelia passed away in 1979 at age 110 and is buried in the Xaa-wan’-k’wvt (How-on-quet) Cemetery in Smith River. She remains a respected figure in the community today. 

[1] Bommelyn, Loren. “Rising to the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Language Challenge.” K’am T’em: A Journey Toward Healing. Ed. Kira Lara-Cooper. Great Oak Press. 2019.

[2] Bright, Jane O. “The Phonology of Smith River Athabaskan (Tolowa).” International Journal of American Linguistics. Vol 30, No. 2, April 1964.

Works Cited and Consulted

Bledsoe, Anthony. History of Del Norte County, California. Humboldt Times Press-Wyman & Co. 1881. 

Bommelyn, Loren. Now You’re Speaking Tolowa. Center of Indian Development, Humboldt State University. Arcata, CA. 1995. 

Bommelyn, Loren. “Rising to the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Language Challenge.” K’am T’em: A Journey Toward Healing. Ed. Kira Lara-Cooper. Great Oak Press. 2019.

Bommelyn, Loren and Berneice Humphrey. The Tolowa Language. Center for Community Development, Humboldt State University. Arcata, CA. 1984. 

Bommelyn, Loren. Xus Wee-yo’: Tolowa Language, 2nd Edition. Tolowa Language Committee. Crescent City, CA. 1989. 

Bright, Jane O. “The Phonology of Smith River Athabaskan (Tolowa).” International Journal of American Linguistics. Vol 30, No. 2, April 1964.

Collins, James. Understanding Tolowa Histories, Western Hegemonies & Native American Responses. Routledge. 1998.

“Daa-gheslh-ts'a'-dvn.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive. Accessed Dec 30, 2024 ILDA

Drucker, Phillip. The Tolowa and Their Southwest Oregon Kin. University of California Press. Berkeley, CA. 1937.

 “‘Ee-chuu-le’.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive. Accessed Dec 30, 2024. ILDA

Gould, Richard. “Indian and White Versions of ‘The Burnt Ranch Massacre: A Study in Comparative Ethnohistory.” Journal of Folklore Institute. Vol 3, No 1, June 1966.

Gould, Richard, and Theodore Furukawa. “Aspects of Ceremonial Life among the Shaker Indians of Smith River, California.” 1964.

Madley, Benjamin. “When ‘The World Was Turned Upside Down’: California and Oregon’s Tolowa Indian Genocide, 1851-1856.” 2012.

Marshall, Jim. “Tolowa Language, Literature Course Due Del Norte School.” Jan 26, 1973. The Times-Standard. Eureka, California.

Rowley, Una. “Why the Owls Live in the Woods” Oregon Coast Magazine. Florence, Oregon. 1984.

San Francisco Examiner. “Building Pride in the Hoopa Heritage.” May 09, 1973. San Francisco, CA.

Slagle, Al Logan. “Tolowa Indian Shakers and the Role of Prophecy at Smith River, California.” American Indian Quarterly.  Summer, 1985.

“Taa-'at-dvn.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive. Accessed Dec 30, 2024. ILDA 

“Taa-ghii~-'a.” J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive. Accessed Dec 30, 2024. ILDA 

Tushingham, Shannon and Justin Hopt, Colin Christiansen, Me’-lash-ne Loren Bommelyn, Michael R. Peterson, Suntayea Steinruck & Crista Stewart. “In the Footsteps of Amelia Brown: Collaborative Historical Ecology at  Shin-yvslh-sri, a Tolowa Village on the North Coast of California.” The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology. Vol 15, Issue 1, 2020.

United States Federal Census, 1900-1950. Census Place: Smith River, Del Norte, California. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed June 15, 2024 through ancestry.com

“Yan'-daa-k'vt.”  J.P. Harrington Collection (1942). Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Indigenous Language Digital Archive. Accessed Dec 30, 2024. ILDA