"The day a language died"

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Catawba

"This week another language died: Carlos Westez, more widely known as Red Thunder Cloud, the last speaker of the Native American language Catawba, died of a stroke at the age of 76. With him passed away the Catawba language. 

Anyone who wants to hear the war songs, the hunting songs and the religious chants of the Catawba can apply to the Smithsonian Museum, where, back in the Forties, Red Thunder Cloud recorded a series of them for posterity. Some earnest folk might even take the trouble to learn some of them by heart. But Catawba as something that lived and breathed and developed organically is gone for good. Of the creatures alive on the planet, only Red Thunder Cloud's dog, which survived him and understood commands in no other tongue, still presumably has snatches of Catawba rolling around his brain." p.41.

 

Popham, P. The day a language died, The Independent, 20th January, 1996, p.15.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Thunder_Cloud