| Kings River Yokuts | |
|---|---|
| Region | San Joaquin Valley, California |
| Ethnicity | Yokuts people |
| Extinct | 2017 with the death of Hank Oliver |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (included in Yokuts [yok]) |
| Glottolog | king1260 Kings River |
 Historical distribution of Kings River Yokuts | |
Kings River was a Yokutsan language of California.
There were four dialects of Kings River, Chukaymina, Michahay, Ayitcha (a.k.a.Kocheyali), and Choynimni .
 Yokuts nation | |||||
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| People |
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| History and geography | |||||
| Languages & subtribes | Yokuts language (Proto-Yokuts • Yok-Utian languages) • Buena Vista Yokuts • Chukchansi dialect • Delta Yokuts • Gashowu Yokuts • Hometwoli dialect • Kings River Yokuts • Northern Valley Yokuts • Palewyami Yokuts • Southern Valley Yokuts • Tulamni • Tule-Kaweah Yokuts • Valley Yokuts • Yawdanchi dialect | ||||
| Culture & spirituality | |||||
| Reservations and rancherías | |||||
Italics indicate extinct languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Indigenous |
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Tulare Lake is a freshwater dry lake with residual wetlands and marshes in the southern San Joaquin Valley, California, United States. After Lake Cahuilla disappeared in the 17th century, Tulare Lake was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River and the second-largest freshwater lake entirely in the United States, based upon surface area. A remnant of Pleistocene-era Lake Corcoran, Tulare Lake dried up after its tributary rivers were diverted for agricultural irrigation and municipal water uses.
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian stock or phylum has been the subject of debate among specialists. Even the unity of some of its component families has been disputed. Some of the problems in the comparative study of languages within the phylum are the result of their early extinction and limited documentation.
Yokuts, formerly known as Mariposa, is an endangered language spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California in and around the San Joaquin Valley by the Yokuts people. The speakers of Yokuts were severely affected by disease, missionaries, and the Gold Rush. While descendants of Yokuts speakers currently number in the thousands, most of the constituent dialects are now extinct.
Utian is a family of indigenous languages spoken in Northern California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke languages of the Utian language family. It has recently been argued that the Utian languages and Yokuts languages are sub-families of the Yok-Utian language family. Utian and Yokutsan have traditionally been considered part of the Penutian language phylum.
The Mono are a Native American people who traditionally live in the central Sierra Nevada, the Eastern Sierra, the Mono Basin, and adjacent areas of the Great Basin. They are often grouped under the historical label "Paiute" together with the Northern Paiute and Southern Paiute - but these three groups, although related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, do not form a single, unique, unified group of Great Basin tribes.
Valley Yokuts is a dialect cluster of the Yokutsan language family of California.
The Yokuts are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. Yokuts is both plural and singular, Yokut, while common, is erroneous. 'Yokut' should only be used when referring specifically to the Tachi Yokut Tribe of Lemoore. Some of their descendants prefer to refer to themselves by their respective tribal names; they reject the term Yokuts, saying that it is an exonym invented by English-speaking settlers and historians. Conventional sub-groupings include the Foothill Yokuts, Northern Valley Yokuts, and Southern Valley Yokuts.
The Kawaiisu are a Native Californian ethnic group in the United States who live in the Tehachapi Valley and to the north across the Tehachapi Pass in the southern Sierra Nevada, toward Lake Isabella and Walker Pass. Historically, the Kawaiisu also traveled eastward on food-gathering trips to areas in the northern Mojave Desert, to the north and northeast of the Antelope Valley, Searles Valley, as far east as the Panamint Valley, the Panamint Mountains, and the western edge of Death Valley. Today, some Kawaiisu people are enrolled in the Tule River Indian Tribe.
The Tübatulabal are an indigenous people of Kern River Valley in the Sierra Nevada range of California. They may have been the first people to make this area their permanent home. Today many of them are enrolled in the Tule River Indian Tribe. They are descendants of the people of the Uto-Aztecan language group, separating from Shoshone people about 3000 years ago.
Cassons or Casson is the name of a Yokuts Native American tribe in central eastern California. The Cassons are also called the Gashowu. The Casson Yokuts territory extended from the eastern side of San Joaquin Valley floor eastward to the upper foothills, between the San Joaquin River to the north and Kings River to south. The Cassons signed the Camp Barbour Treaty under Tom-quit, on the San Joaquin River, state of California, April 19, 1851. The treaty was signed by several Yokuts tribes and between Redick McKee, George W. Barbour, and O. M. Wozencraft, commissioners on the part of the United States of America. Casson Yokuts territory included Madera County and parts of Fresno County. The three chiefs who signed for the Cassons were Domingo Perez, Tom-mas and Jose Antonio. Many Native Californians had acquired Spanish names during the Mission Period. The Cassons, like other Yokuts, and central California Native groups, were pushed from their homes in the San Joaquin Valley to reservations after they signed several treaties, including the Camp Barbour Treaty. The Barbour Treaty, Fremont Treaty and other California treaties were never ratified. Several Casson Yokuts families went to work for Yosemite in the early 1900s. Like the surrounding tribes, the Mono Paiutes and the Miwoks, they resided there half year and returned to their tribal areas. Later in the late 1920s, Yosemite National Park built homes for their Native American workers.
Buena Vista was a Yokuts dialect of California.
Tule-Kaweah is a Yokuts dialect of California.
Gashowu was a Yokutsan language of California, spoken by the Gashowu Yokuts, or Casson.
Southern Valley Yokuts is a dialect network within the Valley Yokuts division of the Yokutsan languages spoken in the Central Valley of California.
Choinumni, one of the many tribes of Yokuts Indians that live in the San Joaquin Valley of California. The Choinumni lived on the Kings River. Their culture is especially well known from the account of Thomas Jefferson Mayfield who was raised among them, at a village, opposite the mouth of Sycamore Creek, on the south bank of the Kings River, just above, what is now Trimmer, California in the 1850s until 1861. They spoke the Choynimni language.
Tachi is an endangered dialect of Southern Valley Yokuts historically spoken north of Tulare Lake in the Central Valley of California. A. L. Kroeber estimated that Tachi was, at one point, one of the most widely spoken Yokutsan dialects.
Marie Desma Wilcox was a Native American who was the last native speaker of Wukchumni, a dialect of Tule-Kaweah, which is a Yokutsan indigenous language spoken by the Tule-Kaweah Yokuts of California. She worked for more than 20 years on a dictionary of the language and taught it.
Choynimni is a dialect of Kings River Yokuts historically spoken along the Kings River between Sanger and Mill Creek. The language is the best documented dialect of Kings River Yokuts.
Hometwoli was a dialect of Buena Vista Yokuts spoken in the southern portion of the Tulare Basin of California near Kern Lake.
Yoimut or Yo'yomat, who adopted the name Josie Alonzo, was a Chunut-Wowol (Yokuts) woman who was the last speaker of the Chunut language of central California. She has also been recorded as the last "full-blooded" Chunut. She was a noted polyglot, speaking 8 different Yokutsan languages along with English and Spanish. She was among the last indigenous inhabitants of Tulare Lake, before being forcibly removed by Anglo-American settlers. She was an informant to anthropologists Frank F. Latta and A. H. Gayton.
