All about the ancient tribes
The Yokuts tribe of California are known to have engaged in trading with other California tribes of Native Americans in the United States including coastal peoples like, for example, the Chumash tribe of the Central California coast, and they are known to have traded plant and animal products.
The Yokuts were great hunters and fishermen, and although they had a great variety of food, they didn’t waste it and carefully stored it for use in the winter. The acorn was a principal food and was made into flat cakes or mush.
Their main food was acorns. The Yokuts also ate wild plants, roots, and berries. They hunted deer, rabbits, prairie dogs, and other small mammals and birds. They made simple clothing out of bark and grass.
Yokuts, also called Mariposan, North American Indians speaking a Penutian language and who historically inhabited the San Joaquin Valley and the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada south of the Fresno River in what is now California, U.S. The Yokuts were traditionally divided into tribelets, perhaps as many as 50,
There were 5,793 Yurok living throughout the United States. The Yurok Indian Reservation is California’s largest tribe, with 6357 members as of 2019.
The hunting of waterfowl, such as geese and ducks, was also of major importance. The subsistence pattern of the Southern Valley Yokuts focused on lake and river fishing with nets, basket traps, and spears, hunting waterfowl from tule rafts, and gathering shellfish and tule roots.
Weapons. The bow among the Yokuts took two forms, the self bow and the sinew-backed bow, both made of mountain cedar. Houses. Apparently several types of shelters were built by the hill Yokuts adjoining Sequoia Park. Clothing. Yokuts men wrapped a deer skin around their loins or went naked.
Yokuts language
Yokuts | |
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Ethnicity | Yokuts |
Native speakers | Unknown 20–25 fluent and semispeakers (Golla 2007) |
Language family | Yok-Utian Yokuts |
Dialects | Palewyami † Buena Vista † Tule–Kaweah Gashowu † Kings River † Valley Yokuts |
Yokuts traditional narratives include myths, legends, tales, and oral histories preserved by the Yokuts people of the San Joaquin Valley and southern Sierra Nevada foothills of central California.
The Yokuts believed in a variety of localized spirits, some of whom were potentially evil. Religious Practitioners. Part-time religious specialists, or shamans, with powers derived from visions or dreams cured the sick and conducted public rituals and celebrations.
The Yokuts burned wild seed plant areas to improve the following year’s crop. Trade Yokuts Indians traded widely with peoples of different habitats. Southern Valley people imported obsidian for arrowheads and sharp tools, stone mortars and pestles, wooden mortars, and marine shells for money and decoration.
“Yo’-kuts Tule Lodges” from Contributions to North American Ethnology, Volume III.
The Miwok people were decimated by the diseases brought by the invaders and subjected to atrocities. Following the short-lived Mariposa Indian War (1850) those who survived were forced on to various reservations.
“The original inhabitants of what is now the Three Rivers area were the Yokuts. Preparing food was women’s work. The women gathered acorns from the oak trees, ground them, rinsed and leached them in the baskets in the river. Drying on the granite rocks and storage followed.
Even though they lived on some of the best farmland in the entire country, why didn’t the Miwok or Yokut tribes depend on farming to provide food for their villages? what they needed. -The land provided: many animals to hunt, edible plants, gathered berries and acorns, they fished and hunted.