Shasta or Shastan may refer to:
The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families spoken mainly in California, Arizona, and Baja California.
The Wintu are Native Americans who live in what is now Northern California. They are part of a loose association of peoples known collectively as the Wintun. There are three major groups that make up the Wintu speaking people. The Wintu, Nomlaki, and Patwin. The Wintu language is part of the Penutian language family.
The Wintun are members of several related Native American peoples of Northern California, including the Wintu (northern), Nomlaki (central), and Patwin (southern). Their range is from approximately present-day Lake Shasta to San Francisco Bay, along the western side of the Sacramento River to the Coast Range. Each of these tribes speak one of the Wintuan languages. Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that the Wintun people probably entered the California area around 500 AD from what is now southern Oregon, introducing bow and arrow technology to the region. There has been carbon dating of several artifacts by UC Berkeley that dates back to around 10,000 years, and several of these artifacts have now been repatriated. Despite being a major influence on the region's history, there is still very little history on the Wintu due to centuries of genocide and displacement that still occur today along with continued destruction of sacred ceremonial and religious sites, often due to companies that ignore legal or ethical considerations.
Atsugewi is a recently extinct Palaihnihan language of northeastern California spoken by the Atsugewi people of Hat Creek and Dixie Valley. In 1962, there were four fluent speakers out of an ethnic group of 200, all elderly, and the last of them died in 1988. The last fluent native speaker was Medie Webster; as of 1988, other tribal members knew some expressions in the language. For a summary of the documentation of Atsugewi see Golla.
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, all constituent dialects apart from Valley Yokuts are now extinct.
The Takelma are a Native American people who originally lived in the Rogue Valley of interior southwestern Oregon.
The Okwanuchu were one of a number of small Shastan-speaking tribes of Native Americans in Northern California, who were closely related to the adjacent larger Shasta tribe.
The Shastan languages are an extinct language family which consists of four languages, spoken in present-day northern California and southern Oregon:
The Shasta language is an extinct Shastan language formerly spoken from northern California into southwestern Oregon. It was spoken in a number of dialects, possibly including Okwanuchu. By 1980, only two first language speakers, both elderly, were alive. Today, all ethnic Shasta people speak English as their first language. According to Golla, there were four distinct dialects of Shasta:
The Shastan peoples are a group of linguistically related Indigenous peoples from the Klamath Mountains. They traditionally inhabited portions of several regional waterways, including the Klamath, Salmon, Sacramento and McCloud rivers. Shastan lands presently form portions of the Siskiyou, Klamath and Jackson counties. Scholars have generally divided the Shastan peoples into four languages, although arguments in favor of more or fewer existing have been made. Speakers of Shasta proper-Kahosadi, Konomihu, Okwanuchu, and Tlohomtah’hoi "New River" Shasta resided in settlements typically near a water source. Their villages often had only either one or two families. Larger villages had more families and additional buildings used by the community.
Wintuan is a family of languages spoken in the Sacramento Valley of central Northern California.
Esselen is the now-extinct language of the Esselen Nation, which aboriginally occupied the mountainous Central Coast of California, immediately south of Monterey. It was probably a language isolate, though has been included as a part of the hypothetical Hokan proposal.
Northern Pomo is a critically endangered Pomoan language, formerly spoken by the indigenous Pomo people in what is now called California. The speakers of Northern Pomo were traditionally those who lived in the northern and largest area of the Pomoan territory. Other communities near to the Pomo were the Coast Yuki, the Huchnom, and the Athabascan. Ukiah High School first began offering Northern Pomo in the Fall 2020.
The Chimariko are an Indigenous people of California, who originally lived in a narrow, 20-mile section of canyon on the Trinity River in Trinity County in northwestern California.
Chimariko is an extinct language isolate formerly spoken in northern Trinity County, California, by the inhabitants of several independent communities. While the total area claimed by these communities was remarkably small, Golla (2011:87–89) believes there is evidence that three local dialects were recognized: Trinity River Chimariko, spoken along the Trinity River from the mouth of South Fork at Salyer as far upstream as Big Bar, with a principal village at Burnt Ranch; South Fork Chimariko, spoken around the junction of South Fork and Hayfork Creek, with a principal village at Hyampom; and New River Chimariko, spoken along New River on the southern slopes of the Trinity Alps, with a principal village at Denny.
The Yana language is an extinct language that was formerly spoken by the Yana people, who lived in north-central California between the Feather and Pit rivers in what is now the Shasta and Tehama counties. The last speaker of the southernmost dialect, which is called Yahi, was Ishi, who died in 1916. When the last fluent speaker(s) of the other dialects died is not recorded. Yana is fairly well documented, mostly by Edward Sapir.
Shasta traditional narratives include myths, legends, tales, and oral histories preserved by the Shasta people of northern California and southern Oregon.
New River Shasta is an extinct Shastan language formerly spoken in northern California. It may have had only 300 speakers before contact, and they soon went extinct; the language is attested in only a few short wordlists. Kroeber regarded them as possibly "nearest to the major group in speech, although [...] their tongue as a whole must have been unintelligible to the Shasta proper." The last recorded speaker of New River Shasta was Saxy Kidd, who only remembered some words and had mostly forgotten his language.
Konomihu is an extinct Shastan language formerly spoken in northern California. There may have been only a few speakers even before contact, and they self-identified as Shasta by the turn of the 20th century.
