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The 'Chumash' are a Native American people who historically inhabit mainly the southern coastal regions of California, in the vicinity of what is now San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south. They also occupied three of the Channel Islands Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel; the smaller island of Anacapa was unihabited. Modern place names with Chumash origins include Malibu, Lompoc, Ojai, Point Mugu, Piru, Lake Castaic, and Simi Valley.

Contents

Population

Lifestyle

Artifacts

Languages

Modern times

See also

Sources

References

External links

Population

Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. ''(See Population of Native California.)'' Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) thought that the 1770 population of the Chumash might have been about 10,000. Alan K. Brown concluded that the population was not over 15,000. Sherburne F. Cook (1976a, 1976b) at various times estimated the aboriginal Chumash as 8,000, 13,650, 20,400, and 18,500.
By 1900, their numbers had declined to just 200. According to some reports, there are now some 5,000 people who identify themselves as Chumash.^[1]

Lifestyle

The Chumash were hunter-gatherers and were adept at fishing. They are one of the relatively few New World peoples who regularly navigated the ocean (the other was the Tongva, a neighboring tribe located to the South). Some settlements built plank boats called ''tomol''s, which facilitated the distribution of goods, and could even be used for whaling. Remains of a developed Chumash culture, including rock paintings (petroglyphs) apparently depicting the Chumash cosmology, can still be seen.

Artifacts

Anthropologists eagerly sought Chumash baskets as prime examples of the craft, and two of the finest collections are at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris, France. The Museum of Natural History at Santa Barbara is believed to have the largest collection of Chumash baskets.

Languages

Several related Chumashan languages were spoken. There are no longer any living native speakers, although they are well documented in the unpublished fieldnotes of linguist John Peabody Harrington. Especially well documented are the Barbareño, Ineseño, and Ventureño dialects.

Modern times

The first modern Tomol was launched in 1976 as a result of a joint venture between Chumash descendants from The Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The Tomol was named Helek, the Chumash word for Falcon. The descendants reformed The Brotherhood of the Tomol, paddled around the Santa Barbara Channel Islands on a ten day journey, stopping on each island. The second Tomol the Elye'wun ("swordfish") was launched in 1997. On September 9, 2001 by The Chumash Maritime Association, several Chumash bands and descendants came together to paddle from the mainland to Santa Cruz Island in the Elye'wun. The Elye'wun was reported to have been circled by a pod of at least 30 dolphins during part of their voyage.
The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash run a casino on their reservation in Santa Ynez, California.

See also

★ Chumash traditional narratives

Sources

★ Anderson, Atholl. 2006. "Polynesian Seafaring and American Horizons: A Response to Jones and Klar". ''American Antiquity'' 71:759-763.

★ Applegate, Richard. 1972. ''Ineseño Chumash Grammar and Dictionary''. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

★ Brown, Alan K. 1967. "The Aboriginal Population of the Santa Barbara Channel". ''University of California Archaeological Survey Reports'' 69:1-99.

★ Cook, Sherburne F. 1976a. ''The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization''. University of California Press, Berkeley.

★ Cook, Sherburne F. 1976b. ''The Population of the California Indians, 1769-1970''. University of California Press, Berkeley.

★ Jones, Terry L., and Kathryn A. Klar. 2005. "Diffusionism Reconsidered: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Polynesian Contact with Southern California". ''American Antiquity'' 70:457-484.

★ Jones, Terry L., and Kathryn A. Klar. 2006. "On Open Minds and Missed Marks: A Response to Atholl Anderson". ''American Antiquity'' 71:765-770.

★ Klar, Kathryn A., and Terry L. Jones. 2005. "Linguistic Evidence for a Prehistoric Polynesia-Southern California Contact Event". ''Anthropological Linguistics'' 47:369-400.

★ Kroeber, A. L. 1925. ''Handbook of the Indians of California''. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.

★ Nabokov, Peter. Autumn, 1989. "Reconstituting the Chumash: A Review Essay". ''American Indian Quarterly'', Vol. 13, No. 4, Special Issue: The California Indians. pp. 535-543.

References

1. ''Native Inhabitants''

External links

★ Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians

★ Inezeño Chumash Language Tutorial

★ Chumash Casino

★ The Antelope Valley Indian Museum at California Department of Parks and Recreation - includes a searchable database of its collections with many artifacts.