Miwok

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Script error: No such module "other uses". Template:Short description Template:Main other Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Template:Main other The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, who traditionally spoke one of the Miwok languages in the Utian family. The word Miwok means people in the Miwok languages.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

Subgroups

Anthropologists commonly divide the Miwok into four geographically and culturally diverse ethnic subgroups. These distinctions were not used among the Miwok before European contact.[1]

Federally recognized tribes

The United States Bureau of Indian Affairs officially recognizes eleven tribes of Miwok descent in California. They are as follows:

Non-federally recognized tribes

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  • Miwok Tribe of the El Dorado Rancheria
  • Nashville-Eldorado Miwok Tribe
  • Colfax-Todds Valley Consolidated Tribe of the Colfax Rancheria
  • Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation
  • Calaveras Band of Mi-Wuk Indians
  • Miwok of Buena Vista Rancheria[11]
  • River Valley Miwok Indians, formally known as Historical Families of Wilton Rancheria

History

File:Bierstadt Albert Mariposa Indian Encampment Yosemite Valley California.jpg
Painting of Sierra Miwok at the Mariposa Indian Encampment, Yosemite Valley by Albert Bierstadt

The predominant theory regarding the settlement of the Americas dates the original migrations from Asia to around 20,000 years ago across the Bering Strait land bridge, but anthropologist Otto von Sadovszky claims that the Miwok and some other northern California tribes descend from Siberians who arrived in California by sea around 3,000 years ago.[12]

Culture

File:Miwok on Merced River.jpg
1872 photograph of Southern Miwok council in Yosemite Valley
File:Bath House in the Yosemite (NYPL b11708169-G91F396 012F).tiff
Miwok sweat lodge in Yosemite Valley

The Miwok lived in small bands without centralized political authority before contact with European Americans in 1769. They had domesticated dogs and cultivated tobacco, but were otherwise complex hunter-gatherers.

Cuisine

The Sierra Miwok harvested acorns from the California Black Oak. In fact, the modern-day extent of the California Black Oak forests in some areas of Yosemite National Park is partially due to cultivation by Miwok tribes. They burned understory vegetation to reduce the fraction of Ponderosa Pine.[13] Nearly every other kind of edible vegetable matter was used as a food source, including bulbs, seeds, and fungi. Animals were hunted with arrows, clubs or snares, depending on the species and the situation. Grasshoppers were a highly prized food source, as were mussels for those groups adjacent to the Stanislaus River. Coastal Miwok were known to have predominantly relied on food gathered from the inland side of the Marin peninsula (modern San Pablo bay, lakes, and land based foods), but to have also engaged in diving for abalone in the Pacific Ocean.

The Miwok ate meals according to appetite rather than at regular times. They stored food for later consumption, primarily in flat-bottomed baskets.

Religion

The Miwok creation story and narratives tend to be similar to those of other natives of Northern California. Miwok had totem animals, identified with one of two moieties, which were in turn associated respectively with land and water. These totem animals were not thought of as literal ancestors of humans, but rather as predecessors.[14]

Languages

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Sports

Miwok people played mixed-gender gamesTemplate:Clarify on a Template:Convert playing field called poscoi a we'a. A unique game was played with young men and women. Similarly to soccer, the object was to put an elk hide ball through the goalpost. The girls were allowed to do anything, including kicking the ball and picking it up and running with it. The boys were only allowed to use their feet, but if a girl was holding it he could pick her up and carry her towards his goal.[15]

Population

File:Benjamin Barry (1).jpg
Benjamin Barry (Miwok), World War II veteran and fire chief in parade dress[16]

In 1770, there were an estimated 500 Lake Miwok, 1,500 Coast Miwok, and 9,000 Plains and Sierra Miwok, totaling about 11,000 people, according to historian Alfred L. Kroeber, although this may be a serious undercount; for example, he did not identify the Bay Miwok.[14]

History professors from California estimate the total Miwok population was 25,000 people, prior to 1769.

The 1910 Census reported only 671 Miwok total, and the 1930 Census, 491. See history of each Miwok group for more information.[17] Today there are about 3,500 Miwok in total.[18]

Influences on popular culture

The Star Wars films feature a fictional species of forest-dwelling creatures known as Ewoks, who are ostensibly named after the Miwok.[19]

The Miwok people are encountered in Kim Stanley Robinson's book The Years of Rice and Salt. In an alternate history scenario depicted in the book, they are the first group of Native Americans encountered by the first Chinese to discover the continent.

See also

Notes

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References

  • Access Genealogy: Indian Tribal records, Miwok Indian Tribe. Retrieved on 2006-08-01. Main source of "authenticated village" names and locations.
  • Barrett, S.A. and Gifford, E.W. Miwok Material Culture: Indian Life of the Yosemite Region. Yosemite Association, Yosemite National Park, California, 1933. Template:ISBN
  • Cook, Sherburne. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1976. Template:ISBN.
  • 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. Template:ISBN.
  • Miwok Bibliography

External links

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Template:Miwok

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  1. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  8. ↑ See this notice dated Tuesday, August 11, 2009 from the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs Agency entitled "Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs Template:Webarchive" (Federal Register Vol. 74, No. 153). The "Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Shingle Springs Rancheria (Verona Tract)" is a single federally recognized Tribe.
  9. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  10. ↑ "Wilton Rancheria Announces Restoration of Status as Federally Recognized Indian Tribe", Sacramento Business Journal
  11. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  12. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  13. ↑ C. Michael Hogan (2008) Quercus kelloggii, Globaltwitcher.com, ed. Nicklas Stromberg Template:Webarchive
  14. ↑ a b Kroeber, 1925
  15. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  16. ↑ "Benjamin Barry." The Union. 15 Sept 2010. Retrieved 10 Jan 2012.
  17. ↑ Cook, 1976, pages 236–245.
  18. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Miwok
  19. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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