Documentation
Kitsai is documented in the still mostly-unpublished field notes of anthropologist Alexander Lesser, of the Hofstra University. Lesser discovered five speakers of Kitsai in 1928-9 – none of whom spoke English – but working through Wichita/English bilingual translators, he filled 41 notebooks with Kitsai material.
Kai Kai was the last fluent speaker of Kitsai. She was born around 1849 and lived eight miles north of Anadarko. Kai Kai worked with Lesser to record vocabulary and oral history and prepare a grammar of the language.
In the 1960s, Lesser shared his materials with Salvador Bucca of the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, and they published scholarly articles on Kitsai.
Read more about this topic: Kitsai Language