Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related Yokuts languages, which may belong to the proposed Yok-Utian language family.
As of the 2010 census, a total of 6,273 people identify as Yokuts. Many of them live on reservations that have casinos. Gaming has been essential to providing Yokuts with jobs, funding, and healthcare.
Another name used to refer to the Yokuts was Mariposans. The endonym "Yokuts" itself means "people.")
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 Yokuts people 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.
History
Map of historical Yokuts territory
Many stories are told, depending on the tribe, on how the Yokuts and their land came to be, but most follow a similar form.
Their creation story states that once the world was completely covered in water. Then came an eagle and a crow. As they were flying, they came upon a duck and asked the duck to bring up mud from the water so there might be land again. The duck did as he was asked, and this mud became the land of the Yokuts, more specifically the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Mountains. To this day, the crow and the eagle continue to be symbolic figures in Yokuts religious ceremonies.
Precontact
Yokuts life was rather peaceful. The more than 60 tribes had an estimated 400 to 600 or more people in each tribe at the time of contact with the Spaniards in 1770. In Yokuts culture, men and women had different responsibilities. Men usually did the hunting, fishing, and building, while the women gathered, maintained the home, and cared for the children. Divorce was not difficult to achieve and could be done for a number of reasons, including affairs, laziness, and infertility.
Artistic expression among the Yokuts included music, singing, and painting. Basketmaking was also a way for the Yokuts to show their artistic skills by weaving designs and images into the baskets. Other forms of expression were done on the bodies of the Yokuts, such as tattoos and piercings.
The Yokuts partook in two important religious ceremonies, the annual mourning rite and the first fruit rite. Shamans were important to the Yokuts as they were believed to have supernatural powers, helped conduct ceremonies, and were able to treat the sick. However, shamans were able to use their power for good or evil, and depending on how they used their power they could be executed.
During contact
The first time the Yokuts encountered Europeans was in 1772, when Spanish troops were in the area searching for soldiers. In the 19th century, missions were introduced by the Spaniards and as they expanded they forced the Yokuts to work the land for farming. The harsh working conditions along with disease and abuse led to the death of many Yokuts. With their work force dwindling the missions moved further inland forcing those they encountered to convert and work.
In 1833, malaria was brought by British fur traders, spreading through the native population through their use of the sweat houses. This decrease in population left the Yokuts weak in numbers when gold was discovered, bringing with it more foreigners.
Gold was discovered in California in 19th century. The 1850s were a devastating time for California's Native Americans due to the incursion of European settlers into their homelands, who enslaved or killed the natives in great number. The gold rush left the Yokuts with no land and a large decrease in their population. In 1853, malaria spread once again among the Yokuts, killing more natives. By 1854, what was left of the Yokuts tribes was forced to move to the Fort Tejon Reservation. The reservation briefly flourished, until a combination of mismanagement, droughts, and flooding caused its eventual failure and abandonment in 1864. Tule Reservation was established in 1873 and many Yokuts moved there. Disease, violence, and relocation severely diminished the Yokuts; today, they number only a fraction of their precontact population.
Population
Chukchansi Yokuts woman, photo by Edward Curtis, 1924A Chukchansi family near Oakhurst, California, c. 1920
Estimates for the precontact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially (See Population of Native California). Alfred L. Kroeber in 1925 put the 1770 population of the Yokuts at 18,000.
Several subsequent investigations suggested that the total should be substantially higher. Robert F. Heizer and Albert B. Elsasser 1980 suggested that the Yokuts had numbered about 70,000. They had one of the highest regional population densities in precontact North America.
The federal government, which had recently acquired California after defeating Mexico in the Mexican–American War, signed a treaty (one of 18 such treaties signed state-wide, setting aside seven and a half percent of California's land area) defining a proposed reservation and 200 head of cattle per year.
The US Senate failed to ratify any of the 18 treaties in a secret vote cast on July 8, 1852, with every member either abstaining or voting no. The result of the vote was not made public until 1905. The newly organized state government took a different approach. In 1851, California Governor Peter Burnett said that unless the Indians were moved east of the Sierras, "a war of extermination would continue to be waged until the Indian race should become extinct".
Over the course of the next 50 years, settlers and eventually the California State Militia would wage war on the Yokuts and other native tribes in what became known as the California genocide. The Yokuts were reduced by around 93% between 1850 and 1900, with many of the survivors being forced into indentured servitude sanctioned by the so-called "California State Act for the Government and Protection of Indians". A few Valley Yokuts remain, the most prominent tribe among them being the Tachi Yokut. Kroeber estimated the population of the Yokuts in 1910 as 600.
Historically, tribe has a head chief (winatun) and a village chief.
Today, about 2,000 Yokuts are enrolled in federally recognized tribes. An estimated 600 Yokuts are said to belong to unrecognized tribes.
Territory
Mariposa Indian Encampment Yosemite Valley California, by Albert Bierstadt
Yokuts tribes lived in the San Joaquin Valley, from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ("the delta") south to Bakersfield and the adjacent foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which lies to the east. Tulare Lake was a population center for the Yokuts tribes until they were driven off by white settlers."..In 1858 or 1859, settlers began ethnically cleansing Tulare Lake, by killing or forcibly relocating the majority of the Yokuts population. Severe floods in 1861 and 1867 killed thousands of cattle and caused settlers to request further dams on the inflows to Tulare Lake. From 1875 to 1877, large numbers of hogs and cattle were carried to Skull Island from the mainland on the Mose Andross.
Presumably the last autonomous Indigenous people lived at the Tulare Lake archipelago in the 1870s. Yoimut detailed white settlers introducing cattle to the island and subsequently forcing the indigenous people out:
While we were at Chawlowin some white men put cattle on the island. The water was low and they drove them across from the east. There were hogs there already, but they were wild. As soon as the white people found out we were there, we began to have trouble. The tules were getting dry and we were afraid the white people would burn us out. So, we all left. My mother and stepfather took us to Téjon Ranch. We went in his brother's little wagon.
In the northern half of the Yokuts region, some tribes inhabited the foothills of the Coast Range to the west. Some evidence shows Yokuts inhabiting the Carrizo Plain and creating rock art in the Painted Rock area.
Acorn mash was the Yokuts staple food, and they also made flour from tule roots and wild iris bulbs. They dined on game birds, waterfowl, rabbits, turtles, fish, mussels. They caught fish and game with spears, basket traps, and other tools. Big game was hunted less frequently, but included deer, elk, and pronghorn. They harvested wasp grubs, which were a seasonal delicacy and source of protein.
Yokuts harvested salt from salt grass and foraged manzanita berries, pine nuts, and other seeds. While they did garden, it was for tobacco not food.
Communities
Historical Yokuts bands
Dick Neal, a Chukchansi man, California, ca. 1920Chukchansi youths, California, ca. 1920A Chukchansi woman preparing acorns for grinding, California, ca. 1920
Yokuts people historically lived in numerous regional bands.
Tulumne - The south, west, and north sides of Buena Vista Lake and as far west as the Taft and McKittrick areas.
Foothill Yokuts
Chukchansi (then spelled "Chuck Chance") in Coarsegold, California. ca.1900
Gashou - Foothills between the San Joaquin and Kings Rivers, including parts of the plains (Fresno/Clovis area). Centered around Dry Creek (Big Dry Creek).
Paleumne - Poso Creek south to Kern River, territory extended to Kern River Falls at the mouth of Kern Canyon.
Trade
Historically, Yokuts traded with other Indigenous California tribes, including coastal peoples such as the Chumash. They exported plant and animal products, salt, steatite, and obsidian. They used marine shells as a form of money showing they had a functional monetary system in place.
Notable Yokuts
Cucunuchi, also known as Estanislao (c. 1798–1838), was an Indigenous leader of the Lakisamni Yokuts and of Mission San José, who led a Native American revolt against the Mexican government and mission establishments
↑Kroeber, Alfred L. (1907). The Yokuts language of south-central California. University of California publications in American archaeology and ethnology (Vol. 2, pp. 165–377).
↑Kroeber, A. L. (1907). Indian Myths of South Central California. University Press. pp.170–250.
1234567891011Morris Bakken, Gordon; Kindell, Alexandra (2006). "Yokuts". Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West. 103: 729–735 – via SAGE Reference.
12Latta, Frank (1978). Handbook of Yokuts Indians. Bear State Books. pp.73–228. ISBN9781892622099.
123Sutton, Mark Q. (2007). An Introduction to Native North America. Routledge. pp.182–187. ISBN978-0133814095.
↑"A History of American Indians in California". FIVE VIEWS: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California. California Department of Parks & Recreation Office of Historic Preservation (published November 2004). December 1988 [1st ed. 12/1988; revised 11/2004]. Retrieved 2024-12-25.
↑"Skull Island". History of Tulare County California, with Illustrations, Descriptive of its scenery, farms, residences, public buildings, factories, hotels, business houses, schools, churches, and mines, from original drawings, with biographical sketches. Wallace W. Elliott & Co, Publishers. 1883. p.153.
↑Sydney M. Lamb. 1957. Mono Grammar. University of California. Berkeley PhD dissertation.
References
Kroeber, A. L., 1910. On the Evidences of Occupation of Certain Regions by the Miwok Tribes, University of California Press, Berkeley, Vol. 6 No. 3 p.370
Kroeber, A. L., 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, DC.
Baumhoff, Martin A. 1963."Ecological Determinants of Aboriginal California Populations". University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 49:155–236.
Cook, Sherburne F. 1955. "The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, California". Anthropological Records 16:31–80. University of California, Berkeley.
Cummins, Marjorie W. (1978). The Tache-Yokuts, Indians of the San Joaquin Valley. Pioneer Publishing Company. ISBN0-914330-24-1.
Heizer, Robert F., and Albert B. Elsasser. 1980. The Natural World of the California Indians. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Powell, John Wesley 1891. Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico, Government Printing Office, Washington, pages 90–91.
Wallace, William J. 1978. "Southern Valley Yokuts". In California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp.448–469. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
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