Washoe

Washoe or Washo could refer to Washoe people, an indigenous peoples of the Great Basin.

Places

Culture

Other

See also

Washoe (chimpanzee)

Washoe (c. September 1965 – October 30, 2007) was a female common chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to communicate using American Sign Language;as part of a research experiment on animal language acquisition.

Washoe learned approximately 350 words of ASL. She also taught her adopted son Loulis some ASL.

Early life

Washoe was born in West Africa in 1965. She was captured for use by the US Air Force for research for the space program. Washoe was named for Washoe County, Nevada, where she was raised and taught to use ASL.

In 1967, Allen and Beatrix Gardner established a project to teach Washoe ASL at the University of Nevada, Reno. At the time, previous attempts to teach chimpanzees to imitate vocal languages (the Gua and Vicki projects) had failed. The Gardners believed that these projects were flawed because chimps are physically unable to produce the voiced sounds required for oral language. Their solution was to utilize the chimpanzee's ability to create diverse body gestures, which is how they communicate in the wild, by starting a language project based on American Sign Language. The Gardners raised Washoe as one would raise a child. She frequently wore clothes and sat with them at the dinner table. Washoe had her own 8 x 24 foot trailer complete with living and cooking areas. The trailer had a couch, drawers, a refrigerator, and a bed with sheets and blankets. She had access to clothing, combs, toys, books, and a toothbrush. Much like a human child, she underwent a regular routine with chores, outdoor play, and rides in the family car. One claim was that upon seeing a swan, Washoe signed "water" and "bird". Harvard psychologist Roger Brown said that "was like getting an S.O.S. from outer space".

Washoe people

The Washoe are a Great Basin tribe of Native Americans, living near Lake Tahoe at the border between California and Nevada. The name "Washoe" is derived from the autonym waashiw (wa·šiw) meaning "people from here" in the Washo language (transliterated in older literature as Wa She Shu (Wašišiw) the plural form of wašiw).

Territory

Washoe people have lived in the Great Basin and the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains for at least the last 6,000 years. Prior to contact with Europeans, the territory of the Washoe people was roughly bounded by the southern shore of Honey Lake in the north, the west fork of the Walker River in the south, the Sierra Nevada crest in the west, and the first range east of the Sierra Nevada in the east. The Washoe would generally spend the summer in the Sierra Nevada, especially at Lake Tahoe; the fall in the ranges to the east; and the winter and spring in the valleys between them.

History

Washoe people are the only Great Basin tribe whose language is not Numic, so they are believed to have inhabited the region prior to neighboring tribes. The Kings Beach Complex that emerged about 500 CE around Lake Tahoe and the northern Sierra Nevadas are regarded as early Washoe culture. The Martis complex may have overlapped with the Kings Beach culture, and Martis pit houses gave way to conical bark slab houses of historic Washoe culture.