Total population | |
---|---|
50 (2000) [1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
United States ( California) | |
Languages | |
English, formerly Kitanemuk | |
Religion | |
Animism | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Serrano, Tongva, [1] Tataviam, and Vanyume |
The Kitanemuk are an Indigenous people of California and were a tribal village of the Kawaiisu Nation.The Kawaiisu traditionally lived in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Antelope Valley area of the western Mojave Desert of southern California, United States which has historically has been within the territory of the Kawaiisu. Today some of these members people are enrolled in the federally recognized Tejon Indian Tribe of California.
The Kitanemuk, as a Kawaiisu village. traditionally spoke the a Uto-Aztecan language.Most experts contend that the Kitanemuk were not a separate tribal entity at all but were a group of Kawaiisu who were converted by missionaries to Christianity. As they converted, they gave up the Kawaiisu belief system and lost any ability to speak the local native language
Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) proposed a population of 1,770 for the Kitanemuk village.. Thomas C. Blackburn and Lowell John Bean (1978:564) estimated the Kitanemuk alone as 500-1,000.
As a village subset of the greater Kawaiisu Nation, their numbers were often understated. It is estimated by current tribal records that the total number of eligible Kawaiisu members is close to 100,000.
The Kawaiisu were first contacted by the Franciscan missionary-explorer Francisco Garcés in 1769. [1] Some Kawaiisu were recruited and relocated for the Spanish missions of Mission San Fernando Rey de España in the San Fernando Valley, Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in the San Gabriel Valley, and perhaps Mission San Buenaventura at the coast in Ventura County.
In 1840, a smallpox epidemic hit the Kawaiisu. [1] Beginning in the 1850s, they were associated with the reservations at Fort Tejon and Tule River. By 1917, some lived on Tejon Ranch and other lived on the Tule River Reservation, [1] located in Tulare County, California.
The Chemehuevi are an indigenous people of the Great Basin. They are the southernmost branch of Southern Paiute. Today, Chemehuevi people are enrolled in the following federally recognized tribes:
The Tongva are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2). In the precolonial era, the people lived in as many as 100 villages and primarily identified by their village rather than by a pan-tribal name. During colonization, the Spanish referred to these people as Gabrieleño and Fernandeño, names derived from the Spanish missions built on their land: Mission San Gabriel Arcángel and Mission San Fernando Rey de España. Tongva is the most widely circulated endonym among the people, used by Narcisa Higuera in 1905 to refer to inhabitants in the vicinity of Mission San Gabriel. Some people who identify as direct lineal descendants of the people advocate the use of their ancestral name Kizh as an endonym.
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 Salinan are a Native American tribe whose ancestral territory is in the southern Salinas Valley and the Santa Lucia Range in the Central Coast of California. Today, the Salinan governments are now working toward federal tribal recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
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 Nomlaki are a Wintun people native to the area of the Sacramento Valley, extending westward to the Coast Range in Northern California. Today some Nomlaki people are enrolled in the federally recognized tribes: Round Valley Indian Tribes, Grindstone Indian Rancheria or the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians.
The Patwin are a band of Wintun people in Northern California. The Patwin comprise the southern branch of the Wintun group, native inhabitants of California since approximately 500.
The Kawaiisu Nation are a tribe of indigenous people of California in the United States. The Kawaiisu Nation is the only treatied tribe in California, Ratified Treaty, 9 Stat. 984, Dec. 30, 1849. This Treaty with the Utah Confederation of tribal nations. They have never given up their territorial rights to any of their ancestral land to the United States. The Kawaiisu Nation had preexisting treaties with Spain and those were recognized by Mexico until 1849 when California was becoming a State.
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.
The Serrano are an Indigenous people of California. Their autonyms are Taaqtam meaning "people", Maarrênga’yam meaning "people from Morongo", and Yuhaaviatam meaning "people of the pines."
The Tataviam language was spoken by the Tataviam people of the upper Santa Clara River basin, Santa Susana Mountains, and Sierra Pelona Mountains in southern California. It had become extinct by 1916 and is known only from a few early records, notably a few words recorded by Alfred L. Kroeber and John P. Harrington in the early decades of the 20th century. These word lists were not from native speakers, but from the children of the last speakers who remembered a few words and phrases.
The Tataviam are a Native American group in Southern California. The ancestral land of the Tataviam people includes northwest present-day Los Angeles County and southern Ventura County, primarily in the upper basin of the Santa Clara River, the Santa Susana Mountains, and the Sierra Pelona Mountains. They are distinct from the Kitanemuk and the Gabrielino-Tongva peoples.
The Whilkut also known as "(Upper) Redwood Creek Indians" or "Mad River Indians" were a Pacific Coast Athabaskan tribe speaking a dialect similar to the Hupa to the northeast and Chilula to the north, who inhabited the area on or near the Upper Redwood Creek and along the Mad River except near its mouth, up to Iaqua Butte, and some settlement in Grouse Creek in the Trinity River drainage in Northwestern California, before contact with Europeans.
Mission Indians are the Indigenous peoples of California who lived in Southern california and were forcibly relocated from their traditional dwellings, villages, and homelands to live and work at 15 Franciscan missions in Southern California and the Asistencias and Estancias established between 1769 and 1823 in the Las Californias Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
The Lake Miwok are a branch of the Miwok, a Native American people of Northern California. The Lake Miwok lived in the Clear Lake basin of what is now called Lake County. While they did not have an overarching name for themselves, the Lake Miwok word for people, Hotsa-ho, was suggested by A. L. Kroeber as a possible endonym, keeping with a common practice among tribal groups and the ethnographers studying them in the early 20th Century and with the term Miwok itself, which is the Central Sierra Miwok word for people.
The Plains and Sierra Miwok were once the largest group of California Indian Miwok people, Indigenous to California. Their homeland included regions of the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, and the Sierra Nevada.
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 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 Tejon Indian Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of Kitanemuk, Yokuts, Paiute and Chumash Indigenous people of California.
Kizh, or Kit’c, are the Mission Indians of San Gabriel, an Indigenous peoples of California. They belong to a group commonly known by the Spanish name, Gabrieleño.