Qualla: The Valley That Invented Its Own Language

The Valley That Invented Its Own Language: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jay Bergesen, CC BY 2.0. Around 1890, in the hop fields outside Boonville, California, something linguistically improbable began. Women and children working the harvest started inventing words -- private code, at first, for saying things they did not want overheard. The habit spread. Within a generation, the residents of Anderson Valley had developed Boontling, a fully realized folk language with more than a thousand words, borrowing from English, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Spanish, and the Pomoan languages of the valley's original inhabitants. "Harp" meant to complain. "Pike" meant to walk. "Bahl gorms" meant good food. By the time a University of Texas linguist named Charles Adams published a dictionary of the lingo in 1971, it was already fading. Today fewer than a hundred people speak it with any fluency, most of them old. But the impulse that created Boontling -- the desire of a small, isolated community to define itself in its own terms -- tells you everything about this narrow valley a hundred miles north of San Francisco.

Image: Jay Bergesen | CC BY 2.0

The Valley That Invented Its Own Language: Nineteen Villages in the Redwoods

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jay Bergesen, CC BY 2.0. Before Anderson Valley had a European name, it had two Pomo languages. The Late Pomo of the Yorkville area spoke Central Pomo; the Tabahtea Pomo from Boonville westward to Navarro spoke Northern Pomo. Nineteen known village sites stretched along the creeks and terraces, with an e...

Image: Jay Bergesen | CC BY 2.0

The Valley That Invented Its Own Language: Sheep, Timber, and the Bear Flag Man

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jay Bergesen, CC BY 2.0. The first European American settlers arrived after 1850, and the valley's namesake was one of them -- William Anderson, stepbrother of Henry Beeson, who had taken part in the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846. These early arrivals practiced subsistence farming and then, as capital and mar...

Image: Jay Bergesen | CC BY 2.0

The Valley That Invented Its Own Language: Counterculture, Cannabis, and Cabernet

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jay Bergesen, CC BY 2.0. The 1970s brought a wave of urban refugees from San Francisco and the broader counterculture. Large tracts of former ranch and timber land were subdivided, and the new arrivals planted two things: marijuana and the first commercial wine grapes. Cannabis production flourished in t...

Image: Jay Bergesen | CC BY 2.0

The Valley That Invented Its Own Language: Boonville, Philo, and the Valley Today

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jay Bergesen, CC BY 2.0. Anderson Valley stretches from Boonville on Anderson Creek through Philo on Indian Creek to Navarro on Soda Creek -- a string of small, unincorporated communities set among rolling terraces enclosed by steep, forested hills. The Navarro River watershed, at 315 square miles, is th...

Image: Jay Bergesen | CC BY 2.0