I read an article about the extinction of the Eyak language a couple of days ago (see #1 on the list below) and it really intrigued me. I guess I had never put much thought into all of the cultures in the U.S. that are in danger of being totally obliterated, so I started to do some research – turns out, there are a lot on the endangered list and even more on the already-extinct list. Here are 10 of the extinct ones. Have more to add? As always, let us know in the comments.

1. The Eyak language was spoken near the mouth of the Copper River in Alaska up until about two days ago. January 21 was the day that Marie Smith Jones died, the last known full-blooded Eyak and the only person known to be fluent in the language. She tried to help preserve it by creating a dictionary so others could learn it someday. Although Marie had nine children, none of them learned the language because it was considered improper to speak anything but English at the time.

2. Yana was last spoken in north-central California about 95 years ago by the Yahi people. The last native speaker went by the name Ishi, and, like Marie Smith Jones, was instrumental in preserving the language (with help from linguist-anthropologist Edward Sapir). Ishi and his family were around during the Three Knolls Massacre of 1865, which killed off about half of the remaining Yahi people. The rest of them slowly died off, and when Ishi (which means “man” in Yana) succumbed to tuberculosis in 1916, that was the end of the spoken language. Ishi’s story has been featured in several books and movies.
3. The Tunica/Tonica language could be found in Louisiana until the 1930s. Sesostrie Youchigant of the Native American Tunica peoples was the last native speaker and worked with Mary Haas, a student of Edward Sapir, to try to write down everything he remembered.

4. Tillamook isn’t just a cheese – it was a language until the mid 1970s. Like the cheese, though, it comes from Oregon. Tillamook is part of the Salishan languages family, which is made up of 23 languages – or was, at one point.

5. The Susquehannock language has been gone for a long time. It was part of the Iroquois language family, but the only way we even know it existed is from a short vocabulary guide written by Swedish missionary Johannes Campanius in the 1640s. Even then, the vocabulary guide consisted of only about 100 words.

6. Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language is particularly interesting, I think. In the early 18th century, to the mid 20th century, the population of deaf people on Martha’s Vineyard was so huge that even people with perfect hearing started using Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language. It was a combination of Chilmark Sign Language – Chilmark being the town where a good portion of the deaf population lived – American Sign Language, Old Kent Sign Language and French Sign Language. As the tourism industry on the island picked up, the deaf population went down – tourism jobs weren’t as easy to adapt to as fishing and farming were. The last deaf person born into Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language died in 1952.

7. Jersey Dutch, as you might imagine, was a variant on the Dutch language and could be found in certain New Jersey counties from the 1600s until the early 20th century. Some linguists even think it might have had some Creole elements to it.

8. The Eastern Abnaki language was used by the Penobscot tribe in Maine until pretty recently. It died just about 15 years ago with the last native speaker.

9. All we have left of the Eastern Atakapa language is 287 words written down in 1802. The people who spoke the language lived near modern-day Franklin, Louisiana.

10. The Siuslawan language of the Oregon Pacific coast has been out of commission since the 1970s, but it’s been preserved quite well for anyone who wants to try to pick it up again. There’s a 12-page vocabulary list, plus audio recordings, several hours of fieldwork, and a few books. Despite all of this preservation, no one seems to be speaking it fluently these days.