Pomo People

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 group, the Northeastern Pomo, lived in the vicinity of present-day Stonyford in Colusa County, separated from the core Pomo area by lands inhabited by Yuki and Wintuan near the present-day community of Pomo, California in Mendocino County. It may have referred to local deposits of the red mineral magnesite, used for red beads, or to the reddish earth and clay, such as hematite, mined in the area. In the Northern Pomo dialect, ''-pomo'' or ''-poma'' was used as a suffix after the names of places, to mean a subgroup of people of the place. By 1877, the use of ''Pomo'' had been extended in English to mean the entire people known today as the Pomo.

History

The people called Pomo were originally linked by location, language, and cultural expression. They were not socially or politically linked as a unified group. Instead, they lived in small groups or bands linked by lineage and marriage.

Precontact

According to some linguistic theories, the Pomo people descend from the Hokan-speaking people . One theory places the ancestral community from which the Pomoan languages and cultures are descended in the Sonoma County, California region . This area was where coastal redwood forests met with interior valleys with mixed woodlands. In this hypothesis, about 7000 BCE, a Hokan-speaking people migrated into the valley and mountain regions around Clear Lake, and their language evolved into Proto-Pomo. The lake was rich in resources. About 4000 BCE to 5000 BCE, some of the proto-Pomo migrated into the Russian River Valley and north to present-day Ukiah. Their language diverged into western, southern, central and northern Pomo .

Another people, possibly Yukian speakers, lived first in the Russian River Valley and the Lake Sonoma area. The Pomo slowly displaced them and took over these places. Recently, analysis of archaeological evidence has suggested that the indigenous historical economy observed by the Spanish at their arrival in the Pomo lands of central California may have first developed during the ''Mostin Culture'' period (8500–6300 BP) in the Clear Lake Basin. This was an economy that was based on women processing acorns by mortar and pestle.

Tolay Lake site

Over 1,000 prehistoric charmstones and numerous arrowheads have been unearthed at Tolay Lake, in southern Sonoma County. These are attributed to both Pomo and Coast Miwok people. As a sacred site, the lake is a ceremonial gathering and healing place.

Lake Sonoma sites

*At "the broken bridge site", researchers used radiocarbon dating of artifacts to determine it was inhabited about 3280 BCE, the oldest human-inhabited site in the valley. They consider it part of Skaggs Phase (3000–500 BCE).
*"Oregon Oak Place" was dated at 1843 BCE. The surveyors suggested that, compared to the lower river valleys, this remote area was more sparsely settled before the Pomo people arrived.

Both of these Skaggs Phase-sites contained millstones and handstones for grinding seeds. The villages may have been used for hunting or temporary camps. Obsidian was used rarely, and it came from Mt. Konocti in present-day Lake County. There were no petroglyphs. The population lived only along major creeks.

"The Dry Creek Phase" lasted from 500 BCE to 1300 CE. During this phase, the indigenous people settled the lands more extensively and permanently. Archaeologists believe a Pomo group took over the lands from the earlier peoples in this phase. They created 14 additional sites in the Warm Springs and Upper Dry Creek areas. Bowl mortars and pestles appeared in this phase, probably used by women to pound acorns (as opposed to the milling stones used for seeds). The sites were more permanent and lifeways "more complex". Decorative beads and ornaments were made in this phase, and half the artifacts were made of obsidian. Steatite or soapstone objects were found, which must have been imported into the region through trade, as the rock does not exist locally. Relatively soft and easy to carve, soapstone was used to make beads, pendants and mortars. Trade was on a large scale beyond the region. The largest and only substantial steatite mine in California existed on Catalina Island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of what is now Los Angeles. The existence of steatite in Pomo and Northern California native sites is a strong indicator of the size and complexity of native California trade networks.

The next phase, named the "Smith Phase" after the Pomo consultants, lasted from 1300 CE to the mid-19th century. Researchers mapped 30 sites in this era showing a gradual transition and intensification of trends. The bow and arrow appeared as the main technological advancement. Manufacturing of shell beads, with accompanying production of drills to make holes for stringing and sewing, was important. Drills were found in high numbers. Numerous clamshell beads, a major currency among the Indians of Central California, were also found, indicating a vast trade network.

Post contact

There were an estimated 8,000 to 21,000 Pomo among 70 tribes speaking seven Pomo languages at the time of European contact. The way of life of the Pomo changed with the arrival of Russians at Fort Ross (1812 to 1841) on the Pacific coastline, and Spanish missionaries and European-American colonists coming in from the south and east. The Pomo native to the coastline and Fort Ross were known as the Kashaya. They interacted and traded with the Russians.

The Spanish missionaries stole or enslaved many of the southern Pomo from the Santa Rosa Plain to Mission San Rafael, at present-day San Rafael, between 1821 and 1828. Only a few Pomo speakers went to Mission Sonoma, the other Franciscan mission, located on the north side of San Francisco Bay. The Pomo who remained in the present-day Santa Rosa area of Sonoma County were often called '' Cainameros'' in regional history books from the time of Spanish and Mexican occupation.

In the Russian River Valley, a missionary colonized and baptized the Makahmo Pomo people of the Cloverdale area. Many Pomo left the valley because of this. One such group fled to the Upper Dry Creek Area. The archeology surveyors of the Lake Sonoma region believe that European and Euro-American encroachment was the reason why Pomo villages became more centralized; the people retreated to the remote valley to band together for defense and mutual support.

The Pomo suffered from the infectious diseases brought by the Euro-American migrants, including cholera and smallpox. They did not have immunity to such diseases and fatalities were high. In 1837 a deadly epidemic of smallpox, originating in settlements at Fort Ross, caused numerous deaths of native people in the Sonoma and Napa regions. Mission treatment of Pomo was similar to that of slavery, and many Pomo died due to inhospitable living conditions.

The Russian River Valley was settled in 1850 by the 49ers, and the Lake Sonoma Valley was homesteaded out. The US government forced many Pomo on to reservations so that the European-Americans could homestead the former Pomo lands. Some Pomo took jobs as ranch laborers; others lived in refugee villages.

During this time period, two settlers named Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone enslaved many Pomo people in order to work as cowboys on their ranch. They forced the Pomo Indians to work in very intense and unorthodox conditions, and sexually abused the Pomo women. The Pomo men were forced to work in harsh conditions and were not given any respect by the settlers. Eventually, the Pomo Indians got sick of the disrespect and horrid practices of Stone and Kelsey, so they rebelled.

The Pomo men set up a sneak attack and killed both Stone and Kelsey. Because of the deaths of Kelsey and Stone, United States lieutenant J. W. Davidson and captain Nathaniel Lyon sent an army to retaliate against the Pomo people. This resulted in an event called the Bloody Island Massacre of 1850, on an island in Clear Lake. The 1st Dragoons US Cavalry slaughtered between 60 and 400 people, mostly women and children of the Clear Lake Pomo and neighboring tribes.

Shortly after the massacre, during 1851 and 1852, four reservations for the Pomo were established by the United States government in California. Pomo were also part of the forced relocation known as the "Marches to Round Valley" in 1856, conducted by the U.S. federal government. By using bullwhips and guns, white settlers demanded relocation to reservations of the Pomo Indian. The justification given was that to protect their culture, the Pomo Indians had to be removed from their ancestral land.

Richerson & Richerson stated that before the European conquests there was an estimated 3,000 Pomo Indians that lived at Clear Lake; after all of the death, disease, and killings, there were only about 400 Pomo Indians left.

One ghost town in the Lake Sonoma Valley excavations was identified as Amacha, built for 100 people but hardly used. Elder natives of the region remember their grandfathers hid at Amacha in the mid-1850s, trying to evade the colonizing settlers. They tell that one day soldiers took all the people in the village to government lands and burned the village houses.

From 1891 to 1935, starting with ''National Thorn'', the artist Grace Hudson painted over 600 portraits, mainly of Pomo individuals living near her in the Ukiah area. Her style was sympathetic and poignant, as she portrayed domestic native scenes that would have been fast disappearing in that time.

Population

Demographics

In 1770 there were about 8,000 Pomo people; in 1851 population was estimated between 3,500 and 5,000; and in 1880 estimated at 1,450. Anthropologist Samuel Barrett estimated a population of 747 in 1908, but that is probably low; fellow anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber reported 1,200 Pomo counted in the 1910 Census. According to the 1930 Census there were 1,143 Pomo, and by the 1990 Census there were 4,766.

According to the 2010 United States Census, there are 10,308 Pomo people in the United States. Of these, 8,578 reside in California.

Languages

Pomo, also known as Pomoan or less commonly Kulanapan, is a language family that includes seven distinct and mutually unintelligible languages, including Northern Pomo, Northeastern Pomo, Eastern Pomo, Southeastern Pomo, Central Pomo, Southern Pomo, and Kashaya. John Wesley Powell classified the language family as Kulanapan in 1891, using the name first introduced by George Gibbs in 1853. This name for the language family is derived from the name of one Eastern Pomo village on the south shore of Clear Lake. Stephen Powers (1877) was the first to refer to this entire language family with the name "Pomo", and the geographic names that have been used to refer to the seven individual Pomoan languages (e.g. Southeastern Pomo) were introduced by Samuel Barrett (1908).

The Pomoan languages became severely endangered after European-American colonization of their native territory. Contacts with Russians, the Spanish, and Euro-Americans have impacted these languages, and many are no longer spoken due to language shift to English, accelerated by policies such as the 1887 ban on the teaching in Native American languages put into place by John DeWitt Clinton Atkins. There are about twelve Pomo language varieties that are still in use by Pomo people. One, , which is spoken by Elem Pomo, is in the process of revival due to efforts by Clear Lake Pomo Cultural Preservation Foundation.

Culture

The Pomo Indian cultures are several ethnolinguistic groups that make up a single language family in Northern California. Pomo cultures originally encompassed hundreds of independent communities.

Like many other Native groups, the Pomo Indians of Northern California relied upon fishing, hunting, and gathering for their daily food supply. They ate salmon, wild greens, gnats, mushrooms, berries, grasshoppers, rabbits, rats, and squirrels. Acorns were the most important staple in their diet. The division of labor in Pomo Indian communities typically involved gathering and preparation of plant-based foods by women, while men were hunters and fishers.

Religion

The Pomo people participated in shamanism; one form this took was the Kuksu religion, which was held by people in Central and Northern California. It included elaborate acting and dancing ceremonies in traditional costume, an annual mourning ceremony, puberty rites of passage, shamanic intervention with the spirit world, and an all-male society that met in subterranean dance rooms. The Pomo believed in a supernatural being, the ''Kuksu'' or ''Guksu'' (depending on their dialect), who lived in the south and who came during ceremonies to heal their illnesses, along with spirits from six cardinal directions, and Coyote as their ancestor and creator god. Medicine men dressed up as ''Kuksu'', their interpretation of a healer spirit.

A later shamanistic movement was the "Messiah Cult", introduced by the Wintun

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