Not with a bang but a whimper

clipped from seattletimes.nwsource.com Language dies with chief ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Chief Marie Smith Jones, the last full-blooded Eyak and the last person fluent in her Native language, died at her home in Anchorage. She was 89. Ms. Jones died in her sleep Monday. She was found by a friend, said Bernice Galloway, a daughter who lives in Albuquerque, N.M. "To the best of our knowledge, she was the last full-blooded Eyak alive," Galloway said. She also was the last person alive who was fluent in Eyak, said Michael Krauss, a linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who collaborated with Ms. Jones for years in an effort to preserve the Eyak language. "With her death, the Eyak language becomes extinct," Krauss said.