The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now

Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

, who traditionally spoke one of the

Miwok languages The Miwok or Miwokan languages (; Miwok: ), also known as ''Moquelumnan'' or ''Miwuk'', are a group of endangered languages spoken in central California by the Miwok peoples, ranging from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada. There are seven Miwok ...

in the

Utian Utian (also Miwok–Costanoan, previously Mutsun) is a family of indigenous languages spoken in Northern California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke languages of the Utian language family. It has recently been argued tha ...

family. The word ''Miwok'' means ''people'' in the Miwok languages.

Subgroups

Anthropologists An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and v ...

commonly divide the Miwok into four geographically and culturally diverse ethnic subgroups. These distinctions were not used among the Miwok before European contact. *''

Plains and Sierra Miwok The Plains and Sierra Miwok were once the largest group of California Indian Miwok people, indigenous to California. Their homeland included regions of the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, and the Sierra Nevada. Geography The Plains an ...

'': from the western slope and foothills of the

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...

, the

Sacramento Valley , photo =Sacramento Riverfront.jpg , photo_caption= Sacramento , map_image=Map california central valley.jpg , map_caption= The Central Valley of California , location = California, United States , coordinates = , boundaries = Sierra Nevada (ea ...

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven c ...

and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta *''

Coast Miwok Coast Miwok are an indigenous people that was the second-largest group of Miwok people. Coast Miwok inhabited the general area of modern Marin County and southern Sonoma County in Northern California, from the Golden Gate north to Duncans Point ...

'': from present day location of

Marin County Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...

and southern

Sonoma County Sonoma County () is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 488,863. Its county seat and largest city is Santa Rosa. It is to the north of Marin County and the south of Mendocino ...

(includes the ''Bodega Bay Miwok'' and ''Marin Miwok'') *''

Lake Miwok The Lake Miwok are a branch of the Miwok, a Native American people of Northern California. The Lake Miwok lived in the Clear Lake basin of what is now called Lake County. Culture The Lake Miwok spoke their own Lake language in the Utian li ...

'': from Clear Lake basin of Lake County *''

Bay Miwok The Bay Miwok are a cultural and linguistic group of Miwok, a Native American people in Northern California who live in Contra Costa County. They joined the Franciscan mission system during the early nineteenth century, suffered a devastating ...

'': from present-day location of

Contra Costa County ) of the San Francisco Bay , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_name1 = California , subdivision_type2 ...

Federally recognized tribes

The

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Bureau of Indian Affairs The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to American Indians and A ...

officially recognizes eleven tribes of Miwok descent in California. They are as follows: *

Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians The Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians of California is a federally recognized tribe of Miwok in Amador County, California. The Buena Vista Miwok are Sierra Miwok, an indigenous people of California.California Valley Miwok Tribe The California Valley Miwok Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of Miwok people in San Joaquin County and Calaveras County, California.Sheep Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians The California Valley Miwok Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of Miwok people in San Joaquin County and Calaveras County, California.Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians The Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians of California is a federally recognized tribe of Miwok people in Tuolumne County, California. The Chicken Ranch Rancheria Miwok are central Sierra Miwok, an indigenous people of California. Governmen ...

Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, formerly known as the Federated Coast Miwok, is a federally recognized American Indian tribe of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Indians. The tribe was officially restored to federal recognition in 2000 by th ...

, formerly known as the

Federated Coast Miwok The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, formerly known as the Federated Coast Miwok, is a federally recognized American Indian tribe of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Indians. The tribe was officially restored to federal recognition in 2000 by th ...

Ione Band of Miwok Indians The Ione Band of Miwok Indians is a federally recognized tribe of Miwok people in Amador County, California.

, of Ione, California * Jackson Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians * Middletown Rancheria (members of this tribe are of

Pomo The Pomo are an Indigenous people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small ...

, and

Wintun The Wintun are members of several related Native American peoples of Northern California, including the Wintu (northern), Nomlaki (central), and Patwin (southern).Pritzker, 152Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Shingle Springs Rancheria (Verona Tract) * Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians of the Tuolumne Rancheria * United Auburn Indian Community of Auburn Rancheria * Wilton Rancheria Indian Tribe

Non-federally recognized tribes

* Miwok Tribe of the El Dorado Rancheria * Nashville-Eldorado Miwok Tribe * Colfax-Todds Valley Consolidated Tribe of the Colfax Rancheria * Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation * Calaveras Band of Mi-Wuk Indians * Miwok of Buena Vista Rancheria * River Valley Miwok Indians, formally known as Historical Families of Wilton Rancheria

History

Bierstadt Albert Mariposa Indian Encampment Yosemite Valley California

The predominant theory regarding the

settlement of the Americas The settlement of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering o ...

date 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

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

ns who arrived in California by sea around 3,000 years ago.

Culture

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

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

Cuisine

The Sierra Miwok harvested acorns from the

California Black Oak ''Quercus kelloggii'', the California black oak, also known as Kellogg oak, is an oak in the red oak section (genus ''Quercus'', section ''Lobatae'', series ''Agrifoliae''), native to western North America. Although genetically separated from the ...

. In fact, the modern-day extent of the California Black Oak forests in some areas of

Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an ar ...

is partially due to cultivation by Miwok tribes. They burned

understory In forestry and ecology, understory (American English), or understorey (Commonwealth English), also known as underbrush or undergrowth, includes plant life growing beneath the forest canopy without penetrating it to any great extent, but abov ...

vegetation to reduce the fraction of

Ponderosa Pine ''Pinus ponderosa'', commonly known as the ponderosa pine, bull pine, blackjack pine, western yellow-pine, or filipinus pine is a very large pine tree species of variable habitat native to mountainous regions of western North America. It is the ...

. 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

mussel Mussel () is the common name used for members of several families of bivalve molluscs, from saltwater and Freshwater bivalve, freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other ...

s for those groups adjacent to the

Stanislaus River The Stanislaus River is a tributary of the San Joaquin River in north-central California in the United States. The main stem of the river is long, and measured to its furthest headwaters it is about long. Originating as three forks in the high ...

. 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 Abalone ( or ; via Spanish , from Rumsen ''aulón'') is a common name for any of a group of small to very large marine gastropod molluscs in the family (biology), family Haliotidae. Other common name In biology, a common name of a taxon o ...

in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. 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 A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no or ''doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system. While ''the wo ...

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.Kroeber, 1925

Languages

Sports

Miwok people played mixed-gender games on a playing field called poscoi a we'a. A unique game was played with young men and women. Similarly to

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

, the object was to put an elk hide ball through the goalpost. The girls were allowed to do anything, including kicking the ball and picking it up and running with it. The boys were only allowed to use their feet, but if a girl was holding it he could pick her up and carry her towards his goal.

Population

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 Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...

, although this may be a serious undercount; for example, he did not identify the Bay Miwok. The 1910 Census reported only 671 Miwok total, and the 1930 Census, 491. See history of each Miwok group for more information.Cook, 1976, pages 236-245. Today there are about 3,500 Miwok in total.

Influences on popular culture

The ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...

'' films feature a fictional species of forest-dwelling creatures known as

Ewok The Ewoks (singular: Ewok) are a fictional species There are a number of lists of fictional species: Extraterrestrial *List of fictional extraterrestrials (by media type) *Lists of fictional alien species: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, ...

s, who are ostensibly named after the Miwok. The Miwok people are encountered in

Kim Stanley Robinson Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American writer of science fiction. He has published twenty-two novels and numerous short stories and is best known for his ''Mars'' trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many ...

's book, ''

The Years of Rice and Salt ''The Years of Rice and Salt'' is an alternate history novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 2002. The novel explores how world history might have been different if the Black Death plague had killed 99 per ...

''. 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.

Notes

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. * Cook, Sherburne. ''The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization''. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1976. . * 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 a
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. .

External links

* ttp://www.californiaprehistory.com/tribmap.html Native Tribes, Groups, Language Families and Dialects of California in 1770(map after Kroeber)
Tribe information
from

Angel Island State Park Angel Island is an island in San Francisco Bay. The entire island is included within Angel Island State Park, administered by California State Parks. The island, a California Historical Landmark, has been used by humans for a variety of purposes, ...

U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
*Short radio episod

from Coast Miwok lore in ''Californian Indian Nights Entertainments'', 1930, California Legacy Projec.
Mewuktribe.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Miwok People Native American tribes in California Sierra Nevada (United States) Central Valley (California) History of the San Francisco Bay Area