Coast Miwok

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Coast Miwok People
Bodega Bay at Dillon Beach
Bodega Bay as viewed from Dillon Beach,
ancient homeland of the Coast Miwok.
Total population

1770: 2,000
1850: 250
1880: 60
Regions with significant populations
California:

Marin County
Sonoma County
Languages
Utian:
Coast Miwok
Religion
Shamanism: Kuksu:
Miwok mythology
Related ethnic groups

Miwok

The Coast Miwok were the second largest group of Miwok Native American people. The Coast Miwok inhabited the general area of modern Marin County and southern Sonoma County in Northern California, from the Golden Gate north to Duncans Point and eastward to Sonoma Creek. The Coast Miwok included the Bodega Bay Miwok from authenticated Miwok villages around Bodega Bay and Marin Miwok.

Contents

[edit] Culture

The Coast Miwok spoke their own Coast Miwok language in the Utian linguistic group. They lived by hunting and gathering, and lived in small bands without centralized political authority. In the springtime they would head to the coasts to hunt salmon and other seafood. Otherwise their staple foods were primarily acorns, nuts and wild game such as California Mule Deer. They were skilled at basketry.

The Coast Miwok language is no longer natively spoken, but the Bodega dialect is documented in Callaghan (1970).

There is a recreated Coast Miwok village called Kule Loklo located at the Point Reyes National Seashore.

[edit] Religion

The original Coast Miwok people world view included Shamanism, one form this took was the Kuksu religion that was evident in Central and Northern California, which included elaborate acting and dancing ceremonies in traditional costume, an annual mourning ceremony, puberty rites of passage, shamanic intervention with the spirit world and an all-male society that met in subterranean dance rooms.[1][2] Kuksu was shared with other indigenous ethnic groups of Central California, such as their neighbors the Pomo, also Maidu, Ohlone, Esselen, and northernmost Yokuts. However Kroeber observed less "specialized cosmogony" in the Miwok, which he termed one of the "southern Kuksu-dancing groups", in comparison to the Maidu and other northern California tribes.[3]

[edit] Traditional narratives

Main article: Coast Miwok traditional narratives

In their myths, legends, tales, and histories, the Coast Miwok participated in the general cultural pattern of Central California.[1]

[edit] Mythology

Main article: Miwok mythology

Coast Miwok mythology and narratives were similar to other natives of Central and Northern California. The Coast Miwok believed in animal and human spirits, and saw the animal spirits as their ancestors. Coyote was seen as their ancestor and creator god. In their case the earth began with land formed out of the Pacific Ocean.[4]

[edit] Authentic villages

The authenticated Coast Miwok villages are: [5]

[edit] History

Documentation of Miwok peoples dates back as early as 1579 by a priest on a ship under the command of Francis Drake. Other verification of occupancy exists from Spanish and Russian voyagers between 1595 and 1808.[6][7] Over 1000 prehistoric charmstones and numerous arrowheads have been unearthed at Tolay Lake in Southern Sonoma County - some dating back 4000 years. The lake was thought to be a sacred site and ceremonial gathering and healing place for the Miwok and others in the region.[8] Coast Miwok would travel and camp on the coast and bays at peak fishing seasons.

In the early 1800s, the Spanish-American Franciscans began to move the Miwok into missions and divide Marin-Sonoma lands into large ranches under Spanish land deeds. The Spanish Missions established from 1809 to 1834 used Coast Miwok and southern Pomo people as a labor source. Many became known as mission Indians or neophytes at Mission San Rafael Arcángel (of San Rafael), or Mission San Francisco Solano (of Sonoma). Mission records assist in substantiating native genealogical persistence. At first the Coast Miwok were sent to the missions in San Rafael, San Francisco and as far south as Mission San Jose. 850 Coast Miwok had been converted by year 1817.[9] The entire Sonoma-Marin region virtually emptied of people. Later the Coast Miwok were transported back to Sonoma County to help build and live at the Mission San Francisco Solano in present-day town of Sonoma, from this final missions' founding in 1823 to its secularization in 1836.[6][7]

The Coast Miwok population declined rapidly after 1837, when a smallpox epidemic decimated the native population of the Sonoma region, as well as from other diseases brought in from the Spaniards as well as the Russians at Fort Ross.[10][7]

By the beginning of California statehood (1850) the Miwok of Marin and Sonoma Counties were making the best of a difficult oppressive situation, by earning their livelihoods through farm labor or fishing, within their traditional homelands. Some chose to work as seasonal or year-round ranch labors for the Rancho Petaluma Adobe or other Ranches.[7]

[edit] Relocation

After the Mission period (1769-1834) local Indian people continued in servitude to Mexican land grant owners throughout their confiscated tribal territories. Mexican and American period records show that a Coast Miwok, Camillo Ynitia, secured the land grant for Olompali near Novato within Coast Miwok homelands. Olompali was the site of a large village, extending from prehistoric times into the Spanish/Mexican periods, and continues today as an important historic locale.

Another important locale was Nicasio northwest of San Rafael. Near the time of secularization (1835), the Church granted the San Rafael Christian Indians 20 leagues (80,000 acres, 320 km²) of mission lands at Nicasio. About 500 Indians relocated to Nicasio. By 1850 they had but one league of land left. This radical reduction of land was a result of illegal confiscation of land by non-Indians under protest by Indian residents. In 1870, Jose Calistro, the last community leader at Nicasio, purchased the small surrounding parcel. Calistro died in 1875, and in 1876 the land was transferred by his will to his four children. In 1880 there were 36 Indian people at Nicasio. The population was persuaded to leave in the 1880s when Marin County, California curtailed funds to all Indians (except those at Marshall) who were not living at the Poor Farm, a place for "indigent" peoples.

By the early 1900s, a few Miwok families pursued fishing for their livelihoods; one family continued commercial fishing into the 1970s, while another family maintained an oyster harvesting business. When this activity was neither in season nor profitable, Indian people of this area sought agricultural employment, which required an itinerant lifestyle. The preferred locality for such work was within Marin and Sonoma counties.

[edit] Recognition

The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, formerly the Federated Coast Miwok, gained federal recognition of their tribal status in December 2000. The new tribe consists of people of both Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo descent.

[edit] Population

Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. (See Population of Native California.) Alfred L. Kroeber put the 1770 population of the Coast Miwok at 1,500.[11] Sherburne F. Cook raised this figure to 2,000.[12]

The population in 1848 was estimated as 300, and it had dropped to 60 in 1880.[13]

[edit] Notable Coast Miwoks

  • Chief Marin was the "great chief of the tribe Licatiut", according to a report made by the first California State Legislature (1850). He was famous for his resistance against the Spanish in battle. He died of natural causes in 1839. Although, historians cannot verify it, Marin County and the Marin Islands are reputed to be named in his honor.[14]
  • William Smith was born a Bodega Bay Coast Miwok, was forced relocation to Lake County during the late 1800s, but returned to Bodega Bay where he and his relatives founded the commercial fishing industry in the area.

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Kroeber, 1907, Vol. 4 #6, sections titled "Shamanism", "Public Ceremonies", "Ceremonial Structures and Paraphernalia", and "Mythology and Beliefs".
  2. ^ The Kuksu Cult paraphrased from Kroeber.
  3. ^ Kroeber, 1925:445. "A less specialized type of cosmogony is therefore indicated for the southern Kuksu-dancing groups. [1. If, as seems probable, the southerly Kuksu tribes (the Miwok, Costanoans, Esselen, and northernmost Yokuts) had no real society in connection with their Kuksu ceremonies, the distinctness of their mythology appears less surprising.]".
  4. ^ Clark 1910, Gifford 1917.
  5. ^ "Miwok Indian Tribe". Access Genealogy. Retrieved on 2008-01-11.
  6. ^ a b c Cook, 1976.
  7. ^ a b c d Silliman, 2004.
  8. ^ Tolay Lake Park: Natural and Cultural History, County of Sonoma Regional Parks Department: Tolay Lake Regional Park, August 20, 2007.
  9. ^ Cook, 1976:182.
  10. ^ Cook 1976:213-214.
  11. ^ Kroeber, 1925:883.
  12. ^ Cook, 1976:182.
  13. ^ Cook, 1976:239, 351.
  14. ^ a b Teather, 1986
  15. ^ Teather has full name and acerage

[edit] References

  • Access Genealogy: Indian Tribal records, Miwok Indian Tribe. Retrieved on 2006-08-01. Main source of "authenticated village" names and locations.
  • Callaghan, Catherine. 1970. Bodega Miwok Dictionary. Berkeley: Univ. Of California Press.
  • Cook, Sherburne. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1976. ISBN 0-520-03143-1.
  • Kelly, Isabel. 1978. "Coast Miwok", in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 8 (California). William C. Sturtevant, and Robert F. Heizer, eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. ISBN 0-16-004578-9 / 0160045754, pages 414-425.
  • Kroeber, Alfred L. 1907. The Religion of the Indians of California, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4:#6. Berkeley, sections titled "Shamanism", "Public Ceremonies", "Ceremonial Structures and Paraphernalia", and "Mythology and Beliefs"; available at Sacred Texts Online
  • Kroeber, Alfred L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Washington, D.C: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. (Chapter 30, The Miwok); available at Yosemite Online Library
  • Silliman, Stephen. Lost Laborers in Colonial California, Native Americans and the Archaeology of Rancho Petaluma. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8165-2381-9.
  • Teather, Louise. Place Names of Marin. San Francisco, CA: Publisher Scottwall Associates, 1986. ISBN 0-9612790-9-5 paper
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Miwok indigenous peoples of California
Distinct ethnic groups
Valley and Sierra · Coast · Lake · Bay
Regions inhabited
Culture
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