Last of the Kitsai

The only person who can speak fluent Kitsai, an American Indian language which anthropologists consider the key to a considerable part of Amerind history. is a woman named Kai Kai who lives near Anadarko, Okla. Kai Kai, 83, pretends that she is dull and sullen. That is to protect her from importunate people. Really she is shrewd, intelligent, full of energy. Last week she knew that Anthropology was making a fuss about her solitary survival, that Dr. Alexander Lesser, financed by the Committee on Research in Native American Languages, was transcribing & translating Kitsai history as she had dictated it to him the past two summers. He is also preparing a Kitsai grammar to preserve the tongue. Last week he sent her a telegram, inquiring for her health, telling her he would be back soon to see her.

The last of Kai Kai's several husbands died more than 35 years ago. All her children and their children are dead. Since 1900 she has lived alone, most of the time in a grass house. About nine years ago she told the Indian Agent at Anadarko to build her a two-room frame cottage and a snug backhouse. That was done. She rents out all but one acre of her Government land allotment to white farmers. They pay her a small amount of cash which suffices her for her weekly drive to town for store groceries. She never goes farther than Anadarko, eight miles away. A visit to the St. Louis Fair in 1904 disgusted her with cities, crowds.

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