My Life: Reminiscences of a
Grand Ronde Reservation Childhood

By Louis Kenoyer, with assistance from Henry Zenk and Jedd Schrock, Oregan State University Press, 2017, 320 pages
Reviewed by Ken Bilderback, Jan. 25, 2021

Grab a beer and some popcorn.

Imagine a tag-team cage match with three multi-generational anthropologists from the University of Washington arguing among themselves and one from the University of Oregon trying to referee. But wait! There’s more! Throw in some linguists, some historians, and some Catholic scholars vs. some Protestant scholars, and now you have a pay-per-view event for the ages.

OK, I’m kidding. It’s really just a book published by Oregon State University Press called “My Life,” by Louis Kenoyer.

Kenoyer (1868-1937) was said to be the last speaker of the language of the Atfalati people, known today as the Tuality or Tualatin nation. In the 1880s, his father sat down with a couple of the University of Washington scholars to tell his story, and in 1928 Louis sat down with researchers from the University of California to tell his life story. Then Louis moved from the Grand Ronde reservation in Oregon to the Yakama Nation (that’s a long story) and invited a University of Washington scholar to finish his story. But before finishing his autobiography he died, leaving many unanswered questions.

From there, things begin to get complicated. Or as history geeks like to call it, interesting.

The details of the book contain nuggets of gold for my own selfish interests, but I would not have stayed with it if not for that fact. Having said that, it has relevance for all of us. Most of us care about linguistics, and this book dissects how by the time Kenoyer was interviewed the Atfalati language had absorbed the “Chinuk Wawa” amalgam or lingua franca of languages from many Northwest tribes, some hostile to each other, which was used to communicate among each other and with white settlers. Suffice it to say, much got lost in translation along the way.

Anyway, this book offers insights into Native American children on reservations being taught to celebrate the Fourth of July, learning the ABCs in religious schools, and a stray murder thrown in just for fun.

Mostly, however, it’s about how history is told.