Awaswas | |
---|---|
Santa Cruz | |
Native to | United States |
Region | California |
Extinct | 19th century [1] |
Dialects | four varieties [2] |
Latin | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | (included in Northern Ohlone [cst]) |
Glottolog | sant1428 |
Map of Ohlone varieties with Awaswas |
Awaswas, or Santa Cruz, is one of eight Ohlone languages. It was historically spoken by the Awaswas people, an indigenous people of California. The last speaker of Awaswas died in the 19th century, and the language has been extinct ever since. [1]
Linguists originally called the language Santa Cruz after the mission in the area, but it was renamed to Awaswas as part of a move in the late 1960s and early 1970s by graduate students at the University of California Berkeley to use native names for the Ohlone languages. [3] 'Awaswas' is derived from the term ʔawas-was, meaning 'north-people from there'. [4]
The Awaswas lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains and along the coast of present-day Santa Cruz County from present-day Davenport to Aptos. Awaswas became the main language spoken at the Mission Santa Cruz. [5] However, there is evidence that this grouping was more geographic than linguistic, and that the records of the "Santa Cruz Costanoan" language in fact represent several diverse dialects. A report from 1952 identified four different distinct forms of Costanoan [2] and a more recent report from 2009 states, "No area in North America was more crowded with distinct languages and language families than central California at the time of Spanish contact." [3]
The Ohlone language group is broken into branches with the most related languages grouped together. Awaswas has been grouped in both the northern and southern branches with different research disagreeing on the best fitting classification. Some branches within the Ohlone language group have been described as being as similar to each other as different local dialects of Italian, while others, such as Rumsen, Mutsun, and Awaswas "were as closely related as French, Spanish, and Portuguese." [3]
In 2012, Amah Mutsun Tribal Chairman Valentin Lopez stated that "his great-great-grandmother was the last of the Awaswas speakers." [6]
The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans, are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of related languages. The Ohlone languages make up a sub-family of the Utian language family. Older proposals place Utian within the Penutian language phylum, while newer proposals group it as Yok-Utian.
The Rumsen language is one of eight Ohlone languages, historically spoken by the Rumsen people of Northern California. The Rumsen language was spoken from the Pajaro River to Point Sur, and on the lower courses of the Pajaro, as well as on the Salinas and Carmel Rivers, and the region of the present-day cities of Salinas, Monterey and Carmel.
The Bay Miwok are a cultural and linguistic group of Miwok, a Native American people in Northern California who live in Contra Costa County. They joined the Franciscan mission system during the early nineteenth century, suffered a devastating population decline, and lost their language as they intermarried with other native California ethnic groups and learned the Spanish language.
The Lamchin were one of many tribes of the Ohlone (Coastanoan) people, Native Americans who lived along the San Francisco Peninsula. The Lamchin were the native inhabitants of what is now San Carlos, California. Information is sparse and dispersed, coming mostly from Spanish mission records – as the natives had no written language. The collected information follows over 100 years of research by many noted historians. The Lamchin are believed to be extinct – as historical, statistical and limited written accounts would seem to indicate.
The Ramaytush or Rammay-tuš people are a linguistic subdivision of the Ohlone people of Northern California. The term Ramaytush was first applied to them in the 1970s, but the modern Ohlone people of the peninsula have claimed it as their ethnonym. The ancestors of the Ramaytush Ohlone people have lived on the peninsula—specifically in the area known as San Francisco and San Mateo county—for thousands of years. Prior to the California Genocide, the Ohlone people were not consciously united as a singular socio-political entity. In the early twentieth century anthropologists and linguists began to refer to the Ramaytush Ohlone as San FranciscoCostanoans—the people who spoke a common dialect or language within the Costanoan branch of the Utian family. Anthropologists and linguists similarly called the Tamyen people Santa Clara Costanoans, and the Awaswas people Santa Cruz Costanoans.
The Yelamu are a local tribe of Ohlone people from the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. The Yelamu speak a language called Ramaytush. The modern Association of Ramaytush Ohlone (ARO) are the descendants of the Ramaytush.
The Karkin language is an extinct Ohlone language. It was formerly spoken in north central California, but by the 1950s there were no more native speakers. The language was historically spoken by the Karkin people, who lived in the Carquinez Strait region in the northeast portion of the San Francisco Bay estuary. The name 'Karkin' means 'trader' in some varieties of Ohlone.
The Chalon people are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone (Costanoan) people of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. Chalon is also the name of their spoken language, listed as one of the Ohlone languages of the Utian family. Recent work suggests that Chalon may be transitional between the northern and southern groups of Ohlone languages.
Mutsun is a Utian language spoken in Northern California. It was the primary language of a division of the Ohlone people living in the Mission San Juan Bautista area. It initially went extinct in 1930 when the last speaker, Ascencion Solórzano de Cervantes died. The Tamien Nation and Amah Mutsun band is currently working to restore the use of the language, using a modern alphabet.
The Awaswas, also known as the Santa Cruz people, were a group of the Indigenous peoples of California in North America, with subgroups historically numbering about 600 to 1,400. Academic research suggests that their ancestors had lived within the Santa Cruz Mountains region for approximately 12,000 years. The Awaswas maintained regular trade networks with regional cultures before the Spanish colonists began settling in the area from the 18th century.
The Tamien people are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Ohlone (Costanoan) people groups of Native Americans who live in Northern California. The Tamien traditionally lived throughout the Santa Clara Valley. The use of the name Tamien is on record as early as 1777; it comes from the Ohlone name for the location of the first Mission Santa Clara on the Guadalupe River. Father Pena mentioned in a letter to Junipero Serra that the area around the mission was called Thamien by the native people. The missionary fathers erected the mission on January 17, 1777, at the native village of So-co-is-u-ka.
The Chochenyo are one of the divisions of the Indigenous Ohlone (Costanoan) people of Northern California. The Chochenyo reside on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, primarily in what is now Alameda County, and also Contra Costa County, from the Berkeley Hills inland to the western Diablo Range.
Tamcan or Tammukan was a local tribe of Delta Yokuts-speaking natives in the U.S. that once lived on the lower reaches of California's San Joaquin River in what is now eastern Contra Costa County and western San Joaquin County, California. The Tamcans were absorbed into the system of the Spanish missions in California in the early nineteenth century; they moved to Mission San José, near the shore of San Francisco Bay, between 1806 and 1811. At the mission, they and their descendants intermarried with speakers of the San Francisco Bay Ohlone, Plains Miwok, and Patwin Indian languages. Mission Indian survivors of these mixed groups gathered at Alisal, near Pleasanton in Contra Costa County, in the late nineteenth century.
The Ohlone languages, also known as Costanoan, form a small Indigenous language family historically spoken in Northern California, both in the southern San Francisco Bay Area and northern Monterey Bay area, by the Ohlone people. Along with the Miwok languages, they are members of the Utian language family. The most recent work suggests that Ohlone, Miwok, and Yokuts are branches of a Yok-Utian language family.
The Chalon language is one of eight Ohlone languages, historically spoken by the Chalon people of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. Also called Soledad, it belongs to the one of the Ohlone languages of the Utian family.It is poorly attested, the only documentation originating from wordlists in the 19th century and a fragment of a catechism. Recent work suggests that Chalon may be transitional between the northern and southern groups of Ohlone languages.
The Tamyen language is one of eight Ohlone languages, once spoken by Tamien people in Northern California.
The Ramaytush language is one of the eight Ohlone languages, historically spoken by the Ramaytush people who were indigenous to California. Historically, the Ramaytush inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in the area which is now San Francisco and San Mateo Counties. Ramaytush is a dialect or language within the Ohlone branch of the Utian family. The term Ramaytush was first applied to it during the 1970s, and is derived from the term rammay-tuš "people from the west". It is extinct, but efforts are being taken to revive it.
The Rumsen are one of eight groups of the Ohlone, an indigenous people of California. Their historical territory included coastal and inland areas within what is now Monterey County, California, including the Monterey Peninsula.
The Karkin people are one of eight Ohlone peoples, indigenous peoples of California.