Tolowa

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This article is about the ethnic group. For their language, see Tolowa language.
Tolowa
Total population
910
Chetco and Tututni[2]

The Tolowa people or Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni’ are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethno-linguistic group. Two rancherías (Smith River and Elk Valley) still reside in their traditional territory in northwestern California. Those removed to the Siletz Reservation in Oregon are located there.

Related to current locations, Tolowa people are members of several

Trinidad Rancheria (Chetco, Hupa, Karuk, Tolowa, Wiyot, and Yurok),[4] Big Lagoon Rancheria (Yurok and Tolowa), Blue Lake Rancheria (Wiyot, Yurok, and Tolowa) as well as the unrecognized Tolowa Nation.[5]

History

Their homeland, Taa-laa-waa-dvn (“Tolowa ancestral-land”) lies along the Pacific Coast between the watersheds of Wilson Creek and Smith River (Tolowa-Chetco: Xaa-wun-taa-ghii~-li, Xaa-wvn’-taa-ghii~-li~, or Nii~-li~) basin and vicinity in Del Norte in northwestern California. The area is bounded by the California/Oregon border to the north, and Wilson Creek, north of the Klamath River (Tolowa-Chetco: Tʽáˑtʃʽɪᵗˑʼdɜn) in California, to the south. They lived in approximately eight permanent villages on present-day Crescent City Harbor and Lake Earl (Tolowa-Chetco: Ee-chuu-le' or Ch'uu-let - "large body of water").[5] The most important Tolowa village is Yontocket, California (Tolowa-Chetco: Yan’-daa-k’vt). Their tribal neighbors were the Chetco (Tolowa-Chetco: Chit Dee-ni’ or Chit-dv-ne' , also: Chit-dee-ni / Chit-dee-ne), Tututni (Tolowa-Chetco: T’uu-du’-dee-ni’ or Ta-́a te ́ne, also: Tu-́tutûn t̟ûn-nĕ) to the north; Shasta Costa (Tolowa-Chetco: Shis-taa-k'wvs-sta-dv-ne or See-staa-k’wvt-sta Dee-ni’), Takelma (Tolowa-Chetco: Ghan’-ts’ii-ne), Galice Creek / Taltushtuntede (Tolowa-Chetco: Talh-dash-dv-ne' ) to the northeast, all of which were removed to the Siletz Reservation, and Karuk (Tolowa-Chetco: Ch'vm-ne Dee-ni' , also: Ch’vm-ne Xee-she’ ) to the east; and the Yurok (Tolowa-Chetco: Dvtlh-mvsh, also: Dvtlh-mvsh Xee-she’ ) to the south.

The name "Tolowa" is derived from Taa-laa-welh (Taa-laa-wa), an

Yurok (Klamath River People)
(meaning "people of Lake Earl").

Their autonym is Hush, Xus or Xvsh, meaning "person" or "human being".[2]

The neighboring Karuk called them Yuh'ára, or Yurúkvaarar ("Indian from downriver") and used this Karuk name also for the Yurok,[6] and the Tolowa territory Yuh'aráriik / Yuh'ararih (″Place of the Downriver Indians″). Today the Karuk use also the term Imtípaheenshas (from Imtipahéeniik - ″Tolowa Indian place, i.e. Crescent City, California″).[7]

They called themselves in a political sense also Dee-ni’ , Dee-ne, Dvn-’ee, Dee-te which means "(is a)

citizen of a yvtlh-’i~ (polity
)" or "a person belonging to a place or village."

The Tolowa or Dee-ni’ population exceeded 10,000. In the 19th century, epidemics of new

infectious diseases, such as smallpox, broke out among the Tolowa, resulting in high mortality. These occurred before they had face-to-face encounters with non-natives because of contact through intermediaries. In 1828 the American Jedediah Smith
and his exploration party were the first known non-natives to contact the Tolowa.

The Tolowa embraced the Ghost Dance religion from 1872 to 1882, in hopes of getting relief from European-American encroachment.[2]

Genocide

In 1770 the Tolowa had a population of 1,000;

Hoopa Valley Reservation in California. Adding to the number of dead from the Yontoket Massacre and the Battery Point Attack are many more in the following years. These massacres included the Chetko Massacre with 24[9] dead, the Smith creek massacre with 7[9] dead, the Howonquet Massacre with 70[9] dead, the Achulet massacre with 65 dead[11] (not including those whose bodies were left in the lake) and the Stundossun Massacre with 300[9] dead. In total, 902 Tolowa Native Americans were killed in 7 years. There are no records that any of the perpetrators were ever held accountable.[9]
This means over 90% of the entire Tolowa population was killed in deliberate massacres.

Language

They have traditionally spoken Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni' Wee-ya' (Tolowa Dee-ni' Language), the Tolowa language, one of the Athabaskan languages.

At the

Salish languages.[12]

In 2007, in coordination with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians produced a "talking dictionary" in this language to aid in preservation and teaching.[12] Alfred "Bud" Lane, among the last fluent native speakers of Siletz Dee-ni on the reservation, has recorded 14,000 words of the language in this effort.[13]

Culture

The Tolowa organized their subsistence around the plentiful riverine and marine resources and acorns (san-chvn[14]). Their society was not formally stratified, but considerable emphasis was put on personal wealth.[15]

Tolowa villages were organized around a headman and usually consisted of related men, in a

kinship system
, where inheritance and status passed through the male line. The men married women in neighboring tribes. The brides were usually related (sisters), in order for the wealth to remain in the paternal families.

Population

Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially.[16] Various estimates for the 1770 population of Tolowa have ranged from as low as 450 to an upper end around 2,400.[17][18][19][20]

In 1910, there were reportedly 150 Tolowa.[17] The 1920 census listed 121 Tolowa left in Del Norte County, California. By 2009, there were approximately 1,000 Tolowa Indians.[5]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ [1] American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes in the United States and Puerto Rico 2010 (retrieved 4 November 2019)
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-513877-1
    , p. 147
  3. ^ The Smith River Rancheria. (retrieved 8 April 2009)
  4. ^ "Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad Rancheria", Alliance for California Traditional Arts. 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
  5. ^ a b c California Indians and Their Reservations. San Diego State University Library and Information Access. 2009 (retrieved 8 April 2009)
  6. ^ Bright, William; Susan Gehr. "Karuk Dictionary and Texts". Retrieved 6 January 2013.
  7. ^ http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~karuk/karuk-dictionary.php?exact-match=&lx=&ge=Tolowa&sd=&pos=&lxGroup-id=7131&audio=&index-position=&index-order=&include-derivatives=&display-derivatives= [Ararahih'urípih - Karuk Dictionary]
  8. ^
    hdl:2027/mdp.39015006584174
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0-300-18217-0
    .
  10. ^ a b Cowan, Jill (June 19, 2019). "'It's Called Genocide': Newsom Apologizes to the State's Native Americans". The New York Times. Retrieved June 20, 2019.
  11. ^ Norton, Jack (1979). Genocide in Northwestern California: When Our Worlds Cried. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press. pp. 56–57. 626892004.
  12. ^ a b "Guide to using the Siletz Dictionary" by Amy Smolek, in Anderson, Gregory D.S. and K. David Harrison. (2007) Siletz Talking Dictionary, Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages; accessed 25 November 2016
  13. ^ Jonathan Amos (18 February 2012). "BBC News - Digital tools 'to save languages'". BBC News. Retrieved 2012-06-03.
  14. ^ Bommelyn, Loren (2006). Tolowa People's Language. p. 22.
  15. JSTOR 986003
    .
  16. ^ See Population of Native California
  17. ^
    Kroeber, A. L.
    1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C., p. 883
  18. ^ Baumhoff, Martin A (1963). "Ecological Determinants of Aboriginal California Populations". University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology. 49: 155–236 [231].
  19. ^ Cook, Sherburne F. 1943. The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization I: The Indian Versus the Spanish Mission. Ibero-Americana No. 21. University of California, Berkeley, p. 170
  20. ^ Cook, Sherburne F. 1956. "The Aboriginal Population of the North Coast of California". Anthropological Records 16:81-130. University of California, Berkeley, p.101

Further reading

  • Collins, James. 1996. Understanding Tolowa Histories: Western Hegemonies and Native American Responses. London: Routledge.
  • Drucker, Philip. 1937. "The Tolowa and their Southwest Oregon Kin," University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 36:221–300. Berkeley.
  • Gould, Richard A. 1978. "Tolowa," In California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 128–136. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

External links

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