Tla Wilano is a language of traditional territory in the mountains of South West Virginia and North Western North Carolina, along the New River. 

The language was originally spoken over a wide area from the mountains of North Carolina up to the North fork of the Holston River and East to the lands of the Roanoke and Monacan peoples, and then south into North Carolina

Charles Howard Thomas came to the mountains to study the plant life there. Granny Graham, as he calls her, didn't know the names of the plants in English so she along with Creed Burcham and Lottie Patton taught Charles the language. He preserved the language in his notes and in his memory .  When he began learning the language, there were still around 36-38 speakers. He became the last speaker upon the death of Creed Burcham in 2008.

Hershel Bilbry learned the language from the Youngbloods who are all gone now. None of the remaining Bilbrys speak any Native American language. Myrtle Marsh, Ethel Davis, and Edith McRoberts, all knew a little bit of the language. None of their children learned any of the language. Myrtle, Ethel, and Edith are all all gone now, too. 

Alice Wombles of Leslie County, Kentucky, spoke the language with a neighbor who was a member of the White Crane Society back in the 1970s. The neighbor was elderly at the time. Alice's granddaughter, Vicky, remembers hearing her grandmother and the elderly neighbor speaking the language when she was a child. Vicky does not speak the language but she recognizes it when she hears it even to this day. Alice Wombles family came from the New River area in the 1800s. It is feasible that they brought the language with them. 

This dictionary is being built by Charles Howard Thomas, Marc Snelling, Darlene Campbell, Kylie Green and Chris Green at NativeLanguageProject.org.* The voices you hear in the recordings, the drawings you see and all the entries have been contributed by these people in an effort to document and preserve this beautiful language.  

* Certain content shared only on trusted platforms not available in Living Tongues Dictionary.