Red Thunder Cloud Dies, Takes Language With Him

Red Thunder Cloud, a singer and storyteller who was the last known speaker of the Catawba American Indian language, died after suffering a stroke. He was 76.

Thunder Cloud, who lived in Northbridge and also was known as Carlos Westez, died Jan. 8 in St. Vincent’s Hospital, friends said.

In addition to his singing and storytelling, Thunder Cloud also sold his own line of herbal teas made from plants he collected in the woods around his home.

The Catawba language, related to the Sioux family of languages, has no written form, said Carl Teeter, emeritus professor of linguistics at Harvard University. He said there were once about 500 languages in North America but only about 100 still are spoken.

In the 1940s, Thunder Cloud made a recording of all he knew of the language for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also recorded some Catawba songs for the Smithsonian Institution.

Although Thunder Cloud was believed to the last speaker of the Catawba language, estimates of the number of living Catawbas range from several hundred to more than 1,000. The tribe originally lived in South Carolina and parts of North Carolina and Virginia; its headquarters is in Rock Hill, S.C.

Thunder Cloud was not an official member of the tribe, though he visited its reservation several times in the 1930s and 1940s, said Foxx Ayers, a friend of Thunder Cloud’s and a member of the tribe’s executive committee.

“I don’t think he was that fluent. But he did know the cadence of the language and he had a tremendous vocabulary,” said Tom Blumer, the tribe’s historian and an editor at the Library of Congress.

Thunder Cloud had no known survivors, friends said.