Miwok

Template:Other uses Template:Short description Template:Infobox ethnic group The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, extending to Central California.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> They traditionally spoke one of the Miwok languages in the Utian family.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The word Miwok means people in the Miwok languages.<ref name="conrotto" />Template:Rp

Subgroups

Anthropologists commonly divide the Miwok into four geographically and culturally diverse ethnic subgroups. These distinctions were not used among the Miwok before European contact.<ref name="conrotto">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

• Plains and Sierra Miwok: from the western slope and foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
• Coast Miwok: from present-day location of Marin County and southern Sonoma County (includes the Bodega Bay Miwok and Marin Miwok)
• Lake Miwok: from Clear Lake basin of Lake County
• Bay Miwok: from present-day location of Contra Costa County

Federally recognized tribes

The United States Bureau of Indian Affairs officially recognizes eleven tribes of Miwok descent in California. They are as follows:

• Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians of California<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="cgcc">Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Rp<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref>
• California Valley Miwok Tribe,<ref name="cgcc" />Template:Rp formerly known as the Sheep Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians<ref name="cgcc" />Template:Rp
• Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria,<ref name="cgcc" />Template:Rp formerly known as the Federated Coast Miwok<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Ione Band of Miwok Indians of California<ref name="cgcc" />Template:Rp<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=":0" />
• Jackson Band of Miwuk Indians,<ref name="cgcc" />Template:Rp<ref name=":0" /> previously known as Jackson Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians of California<ref name="cgcc" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California,<ref name="cgcc" />Template:Rp<ref name=":0" /> (members of this tribe are of Pomo, Lake Miwok, and Wintun descent)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Shingle Springs Rancheria (Verona Tract)<ref name="cgcc" />Template:Rp<ref name=":0" />
• Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians of the Tuolumne Rancheria of California<ref name="cgcc" />Template:Rp<ref name=":0" />
• United Auburn Indian Community of Auburn Rancheria of California<ref name="cgcc" />[[United Auburn Indian Community of Auburn Rancheria|Template:Rp]]<ref name=":0" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Wilton Rancheria<ref name="cgcc" />[[United Auburn Indian Community of Auburn Rancheria|Template:Rp]]<ref name=":0" />

Non-federally recognized tribes

• Miwok Tribe of the El Dorado Rancheria<ref name=":1">Template:Cite journal</ref>
• Nashville-Eldorado Miwok Tribe<ref name=":1" />
• Colfax-Todds Valley Consolidated Tribe of the Colfax Rancheria<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• Calaveras Band of Mi-Wuk Indians<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Miwok of Buena Vista Rancheria<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• River Valley Miwok Indians, formally known as Historical Families of Wilton Rancheria<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

History

Painting of Sierra Miwok at the Mariposa Indian Encampment, Yosemite Valley by Albert Bierstadt

The predominant theory regarding the settlement of the Americas dates the original migrations from Asia to around 20,000 years ago across the Bering Strait land bridge, but anthropologist Otto von Sadovszky claims that the Miwok and some other northern California tribes descend from Siberians who arrived in California by sea around 3,000 years ago.<ref name=latimes>Template:Cite news</ref>

Culture

1872 photograph of Southern Miwok council in Yosemite Valley

Miwok sweat lodge in Yosemite Valley

The Miwok lived in small bands without centralized political authority before contact with European Americans in 1769. They had domesticated dogs and cultivated tobacco, but were otherwise complex hunter-gatherers.

Cuisine

The Sierra Miwok harvested acorns from the California Black Oak. In fact, the modern-day extent of the California Black Oak forests in some areas of Yosemite National Park is partially due to cultivation by Miwok tribes. They burned understory vegetation to reduce the fraction of Ponderosa Pine.<ref>C. Michael Hogan (2008) Quercus kelloggii, Globaltwitcher.com, ed. Nicklas Stromberg Template:Webarchive</ref> Nearly every other kind of edible vegetable matter was used as a food source, including bulbs, seeds, and fungi. Animals were hunted with arrows, clubs or snares, depending on the species and the situation. Grasshoppers were a highly prized food source, as were mussels for those groups adjacent to the Stanislaus River. Coastal Miwok were known to have predominantly relied on food gathered from the inland side of the Marin peninsula (modern San Pablo bay, lakes, and land based foods), but to have also engaged in diving for abalone in the Pacific Ocean.

The Miwok ate meals according to appetite rather than at regular times. They stored food for later consumption, primarily in flat-bottomed baskets.

Religion

The Miwok creation story and narratives tend to be similar to those of other natives of Northern California. Miwok had totem animals, identified with one of two moieties, which were in turn associated respectively with land and water. These totem animals were not thought of as literal ancestors of humans, but rather as predecessors.<ref name="Kroeber">Kroeber, 1925, pages 453-456</ref>

Sports

Miwok people played mixed-gender games, with both men and women in each team, on a Template:Convert playing field called poscoi a we'a. Similarly to soccer, the object of the game was to kick or carry an elk hide ball to the opposing team's goalpost, but the rules varied by gender. Women could handle the ball in any way they chose, using any part of their bodies to control it, including kicking the ball or picking it up and running with it. In contrast, men were only allowed to kick the ball. However, a man could pick up a woman who was holding the ball and run to the goal with her.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Population

Benjamin Barry (Miwok), World War II veteran and fire chief in parade dress<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1770, there were an estimated 500 Lake Miwok, 1,500 Coast Miwok, and 9,000 Plains and Sierra Miwok, totaling about 11,000 people, according to historian Alfred L. Kroeber, although this may be an undercount; for example, he did not identify the Bay Miwok.<ref name="Kroeber1925pp444">Kroeber, 1925, pages 444-445</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

History professors from California estimate the Miwok population was at least 25,000 people in 1769.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The 1910 Census reported a total of 671 Miwok, while the 1930 Census noted 491. See history of each Miwok group for more information.<ref name="Cook">Cook, 1976, pages 236–245.</ref> By the 2000 Census, the total number of Miwok had risen to approximately 3,500.<ref name="Miwok" />

Influences on popular culture

The Star Wars films feature a fictional species of forest-dwelling creatures known as Ewoks, who are ostensibly named after the Miwok.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The Miwok people are encountered in Kim Stanley Robinson's book The Years of Rice and Salt. In an alternate history scenario depicted in the book, they are the first group of Native Americans encountered by the first Chinese to discover the continent.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Miwok culture is also mentioned in the 2025 Netflix series "Untamed".

See also

• Kule Loklo
• Saklan
• Lucy Shepard Freeland
• Lucy Telles
• Utian languages

References

• Access Genealogy: Indian Tribal records, Miwok Indian Tribe. Retrieved on 2006-08-01. Main source of "authenticated village" names and locations.
• Barrett, S.A. and Gifford, E.W. Miwok Material Culture: Indian Life of the Yosemite Region. Yosemite Association, Yosemite National Park, California, 1933. Template:ISBN
• Cook, Sherburne. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1976. Template:ISBN.
• Kroeber, Alfred L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. (Chapter 30, The Miwok); available at Yosemite Online Library.
• Silliman, Stephen. Lost Laborers in Colonial California, Native Americans and the Archaeology of Rancho Petaluma. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2004. Template:ISBN.
• Miwok Bibliography

External links

• California Historical Society:The First Californians, The Miwok
• Native Tribes, Groups, Language Families and Dialects of California in 1770 (map after Kroeber)
• Tribe information from Angel Island State Park
• U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
• Short radio episode Mouse Steals Fire from Coast Miwok lore in Californian Indian Nights Entertainments, 1930, California Legacy Project.
• Mewuktribe.com