Essays Section

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Native American Placenames of the United States: Introduction (2002 version). The book was published in final form by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2004.

"Animals in Native North American Lore", paper to appear in an
encyclopedia of animal behavior, edited by Marc Bekoff.

"Analyzability of Nouns in Northwestern California", paper
delivered at a conference on the ecology of language, Berkeley, February 2004

"Contextualizing a Grammar", paper delivered at a conference in
Dallas, 2002; to appear in a volume published by the Summer Institute of
Linguistics.

"American Indian Placenames in the United States", paper to
appear in a special issue of the journal *Onoma* (germany), ed. by Thomas
Gasque.

"Animal Names in Native Northwestern California", paper
delivered at a conference on Animal Names in Venice, Italy, October 2003; to be
published by the University of Venice in a Volume ed. by Glauco Sanga

Native North American Languages (almanac_00_4_8.doc)

Classification
Phyla and Families
Language Contact
Types of Language Structure
Geographical Areas and Language Areas
Language and Culture
Traditional Literature
Writing Systems
Language Restoration

Inyo Redux (inyo_redux.doc)
The name of the Inyo Mountains and of Inyo County in California was reported in 1860 to mean 'dwelling place of a great spirit' in a local Indian language; but this etymology was later disputed. It is now confirmed that the name is derived from Panamint ïnï-yun 'it's dangerous'.

The Sociolinguistics of the 'S- Word':
'Squaw' in American Placenames (Squaw_revised.doc)

Preliminary Juaneño vocabulary. (juaneno.doc)
Based on data of J. P. Harrington, collected around 1933, mostly from Anastasia de Majel. Adapted by W. Bright, 1994.

THE NAPUS PROJECT (Native American Placenames of the United States): PRINCIPLES AND PROBLEMS
This paper is, in part, the story of my on-going involvement with the field of American Indian place names; and, in part, a progress report on the current project, acronymically known as NAPUS, to which my involvement has led me.

THE ORAL LITERATURE OF NATIVE CALIFORNIA
The following account will survey (1) the history of the study of the Native literature in the region; (2) the genres of this literature; (3) its function with respect to cosmogony and religion; (4) typical roles and plots in Native narratives; and (5) relationships to non-Native literatures. But no comprehensive, analytic survey of the field is possible in the present state of research; I have therefore tried, apart from the historical survey, to provide a 'mini-anthology' of Californian oral literature, to give the reader some of the flavor of the material.

NATURE, CULTURE, AND OLD MAN COYOTE
This represents a lecture given at the Free University, Berlin, Germany, in November 1999. Material in all but the final section is based on my book, A Coyote Reader (Berkeley, 1993); the conclusion, referring to the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, is new.