The word “tribes,” when applied to California’s Indians, requires a brief explanation. Usually the term suggests Indian groupings tied to specified or recognizable territorial boundaries. However, when anthropologists and linguists refer to California tribes the term is often meant to differentiate between language families traceable to general living areas rather than to designate a social group with a strong sense of shared identity and a leadership structure.
When Indians had California to themselves their numbers expanded and their distinct groupings enjoyed a large measure of self-determination. On the eve of colonization in the late 1700s, between 300,000 and 1,000,000 indigenous people inhabited California. Most of them lived in villages of 100 to 500 dwellers. The village residents constituted an autonomous social group that anthropologists call a “tribelet.” Generally, the dwellers in these village communities, or tribelets, recognized only the authority of their local chieftain or headman, who resided in a central village. These leaders were responsible for managing the tribelet’s food and other resources and settling disputes. Except among the relatively more militant Mojaves and Yumas in the southeastern region, political organization and a broad sense of group identity were lacking, which eased the work of Spanish missionaries.
The absence of a broader Indian identity was due in part to the fact that natives tended to live within the territorial boundaries of their respective tribelets. This resulted in what anthropologist Robert Heizer characterized as a “deep-seated provincialism and attachment to the place of their birth.” For example, Mattole mothers impressed on the children of their northwest coastal tribelet that wandering beyond their group’s boundaries was perilous. Still, such boundaries were somewhat permeable; neighboring tribelets at times negotiated agreements allowing border-crossings for hunting, gathering, and trade. Also, Indians at times traveled beyond California’s borders to exchange goods.
Figure 1.3 Indian living areas. Based on Robert F. Heizer, Handbook of North American Indians: California, vol. 8 (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), p. ix. Used by permission of the Smithsonian Institution.
The provincialism and boundary-consciousness of native Californians were both a cause and a result of the numerous languages they spoke. These Indians constituted one of the most linguistically diverse populations in the world, surpassed in this regard only by the peoples of the Sudan and New Guinea. They spoke up to 80 languages that derived from five of the Native North American language stocks. Each language stock, in turn, split into hundreds of mutually unintelligible dialects, making communication even within the same basic language more difficult.
World History
