Chumash
From NativeWiki
The Chumash are a Native American tribe who historically inhabit mainly the southern coastal regions of California, in the vicinity of what is now San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south. They also occupied three of the Channel Islands Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel; the smaller island of Anacapa was unihabited. Modern place names with Chumash origins include Malibu, Lompoc, Ojai, Point Mugu, Piru, Lake Castaic, and Simi Valley.
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Population
Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. (See Population of Native California.) Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) thought that the 1770 population of the Chumash might have been about 10,000. Alan K. Brown concluded that the population was not over 15,000. Sherburne F. Cook (1976a, 1976b) at various times estimated the aboriginal Chumash as 8,000, 13,650, 20,400, and 18,500.
By 1900, their numbers had declined to just 200. According to some reports, there are now some 5,000 people who identify themselves as Chumash.<ref>Native Inhabitants</ref>
Lifestyle
The Chumash were hunter-gatherers and were adept at fishing. They are one of the relatively few New World peoples who regularly navigated the ocean (the other was the Tongva, a neighboring tribe located to the South). Some settlements built plank boats called tomols, which facilitated the distribution of goods, and could even be used for whaling. Remains of a developed Chumash culture, including rock paintings (petroglyphs) apparently depicting the Chumash cosmology, can still be seen.
Artifacts
Anthropologists eagerly sought Chumash baskets as prime examples of the craft, and two of the finest collections are at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris, France. The Museum of Natural History at Santa Barbara is believed to have the largest collection of Chumash baskets.
Languages
Several related Chumashan languages were spoken. There are no longer any living native speakers, although some current place names are derived from Chumash, at least parts of some dialects are preserved.
Modern times
The first modern Tomol was launched in 1976 as a result of a joint venture between Chumash descendants from The Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The Tomol was named Helek, the Chumash word for Falcon. The descendants reformed The Brotherhood of the Tomol, paddled around the Santa Barbara Channel Islands on a ten day journey, stopping on each island. The second Tomol the Elye'wun ("swordfish") was launched in 1997. On September 9, 2001 by The Chumash Maritime Association. Several Chumash bands and decendants came together to paddle from the mainland to Santa Cruz Island in the Elye'wun. The Elye'wun was reported to have been circled by a pod of at least 30 dolphins during part of their voyage.
The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash run a casino on their reservation in Santa Ynez, California.
Sources
- Anderson, Atholl. 2006. "Polynesian Seafaring and American Horizons: A Response to Jones and Klar". American Antiquity 71:759-763.
- Applegate, Richard. 1972. Ineseño Chumash Grammar and Dictionary. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
- Brown, Alan K. 1967. "The Aboriginal Population of the Santa Barbara Channel". University of California Archaeological Survey Reports 69:1-99.
- Cook, Sherburne F. 1976a. The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization. University of California Press, Berkeley.
- Cook, Sherburne F. 1976b. The Population of the California Indians, 1769-1970. University of California Press, Berkeley.
- Jones, Terry L., and Kathryn A. Klar. 2005. "Diffusionism Reconsidered: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Polynesian Contact with Southern California". American Antiquity 70:457-484.
- Jones, Terry L., and Kathryn A. Klar. 2006. "On Open Minds and Missed Marks: A Response to Atholl Anderson". American Antiquity 71:765-770.
- Klar, Kathryn A., and Terry L. Jones. 2005. "Linguistic Evidence for a Prehistoric Polynesia-Southern California Contact Event". Anthropological Linguistics 47:369-400.
- Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
- Nabokov, Peter. Autumn, 1989. "Reconstituting the Chumash: A Review Essay". American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4, Special Issue: The California Indians. pp. 535-543.
External links
- Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians
- Inezeño Chumash Language Tutorial
- Chumash Casino
- The Antelope Valley Indian Museum at California Department of Parks and Recreation - includes a searchable database of its collections with many artifacts.
==Additional information by by Dolan Eargle, to be published summer 2007
Chumash (pronounced schú-mash)
“Among the Chumash, there are many circles. Some overlap, some don’t,” one Chumash leader advised me. This is the way it was in earlier times, and as it is now.
Chumash-speaking tribes once stretched from San Luis Obispo to Thousand Oaks. and inland to Castaic and Mt. Pinos (Iwinhimu). The coast here is mountainous, except for a few coastal flats — at San Luis Obispo/Morro Bay, Santa Maria, Santa Ynez, and Ventura.
Coastal livelihoods depended in large part on the bounty of the ocean and its marshes. In summer the land was often without rain, so villages were located where the creeks ran all year. Inland, the people sought out continuously flowing springs and streams. These places are where towns and ranches are often found today.
The Channel Islands of San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa are all ancient Chumash land, and several dozen small fishing villages once lined the accessible coastal sites on these islands. The Spanish padres, however, had the odd notion that all natives should be gathered into their missions. The last Island Chumash were removed to the mainland missions in 1830.
The Chumash are different from other Californian tribes in their use of several important resources: steatite*, asphalt **, canoes (tomols), large thatched houses, and a rare form of rock art.
Other California Native used pine resin as a general purpose glue and for sealing water baskets, the Chumash took advantage of the asphalt seeps all along their coast but theses people are probably best known for their manufacture of steatite ware, used both for artistic carvings and cookware. The mines for the best steatite, however, were located on Santa Catalina Island which belonged to the Tongva.
For marine fishing and transport to the islands, the Chumash used large ocean-going transports, called tomols, hauling cargos of raw steatite, large fish and marine mammal catches, and passengers. Approximately twenty-foot-long, tomols were constructed from planks stitched together with sinew and sealed with asphalt; the bow and stern were decorated with designs of abalone mother-of-pearl glued on, also with asphalt.
Tomols can be seen today in a ground floor hallway of the Santa Barbara City Hall and a small one in the auditorium of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The Chumash Maritime Association is dedicated to building, decorating, and ceremoniously using these beautiful traditional boats. The large, domed and arched Chumash houses, as much as 50 feet in diameter, were made of woven thatching of long grass or reeds, covering a frame of saplings, with woven thatched roofs. Not unexpectedly, the Chumash excelled in the arts of basketry.
Smaller replicas of these perishable structures can be seen at Satwiwa, the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History in Exposition Park. A fine Chumash basket collection is on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
Examples the fascinating and fanciful apparitions of Chumash rock art can be found at Chumash Painted Cave, discussed on the next page.
Some Chumash people of today live on the Santa Ynez Reservation. Many more are associated with several federally unrecognized tribal councils and organizations.
Native persons seeking to follow the traditional ways of Chumash culture have several opportunities to affiliate wth similarly minded people: the Chumash Maritime Association builds tomols; the Chumash Interpretive Center in Thousand Oaks educates through a beautiful museum and demonstration village; others are members of the California Basketweavers Association; and some councils sponsor traditional dance and ceremonies. Many are actively involved in environmental preservation, especially necessary in this part of the state, to conserve landmarks, village sites, beaches, and marine life.
(From Native California, by Dolan Eargle, to be published summer 2007)
