The Chalon people are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone (Costanoan) people of Native Americans who lived in

Northern California Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...

. ''Chalon'' (also called ''Soledad'') is also the name of their spoken language, listed as one of the Ohlone (alias Costanoan) languages of the Utian family. Recent work suggests that Chalon may be transitional between the northern and southern groups of Ohlone languages. The original Chalon homeland area is the subject of some local controversy. Initial studies in the early twentieth century placed them in the portion of the

Salinas Valley The Salinas Valley (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Valle de Salinas'') is one of the major valleys and most productive Agriculture, agricultural regions in California. It is located west of the San Joaquin Valley and south of San Francisco Bay and ...

that surrounds the modern town of Soledad, as well as in the adjacent lower Arroyo Seco area to the west and Chalon Creek are to the east.Kroeber 1925:465 In contrast, a late twentieth century study gives the Spanish-contact period Chalon people the rugged Coast Range valleys centered farther to the east, including upper Chalon Creek, the San Benito River east of the

, and the small creeks around

San Benito Mountain San Benito Mountain is the highest mountain in the Diablo Range of California. The summit is at an elevation of . The rock is composed of asbestos (chrysotile), an ultramafic rock. It weathers to produce serpentine soils with characteristically l ...

. The latter study assigns most of that Salinas Valley area to the Eslenajan local tribe of

Esselen The Esselen are a Native American people belonging to a linguistic group in the hypothetical Hokan language family, who are Indigenous to the Santa Lucia Mountains of a region south of the Big Sur River in California. Prior to Spanish col ...

speakers.Milliken 1987 Specific Chalon material culture was never documented, but beyond doubt it was a

hunter-gatherer A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived Lifestyle, lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, esp ...

culture based upon deer and acorn harvest, typical of the ethnographic California culture area. Chalon territory was bordered by the

Mutsun Mutsun (also known as San Juan Bautista Costanoan) is a Utian language spoken in Northern California. It was the primary language of a division of the Ohlone people living in the Mission San Juan Bautista area. It initially went extinct in 193 ...

(another Ohone division) to the east, Rumsen (another Ohlone division) to the north,

in the Salinas Valley to the west,

Salinan The Salinan are a Native American tribe whose ancestral territory is in the southern Salinas Valley and the Santa Lucia Range in the Central Coast of California. Today, the Salinan governments are now working toward federal tribal recognition ...

to the south, and

Yokuts The Yokuts (previously known as MariposasPowell, 1891:90–91.) are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. Yokuts ...

in the San Joaquin Valley to the east. During the era of

Spanish missions in California The Spanish missions in California () formed a List of Spanish missions in California, series of 21 religious outposts or missions established between 1769 and 1833 in what is now the U.S. state of California. The missions were established by ...

, the Chalon people's lives changed with the founding of

Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad (), commonly known as Mission Soledad, is a Spanish mission located in Soledad, California. The mission was founded by the Franciscan order on October 9, 1791, to convert the Native Americans living in th ...

in 1791. Most Chalon speakers were forced into the mission between 1795 and 1814, where they were baptized, lived and educated to be Catholic ''neophytes'', also known as

Mission Indians Mission Indians was a term used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of California who lived or grew up in the Spanish mission system in California. Today the term is used to refer to their descendants and to specific, contemporary tribal nations ...

. At Mission Soledad many Chalon married local Esselen speakers, while others married

who were brought into the mission between 1806 and 1834. The Soledad mission was discontinued by the Mexican Government in 1835 during the period of

secularization In sociology, secularization () is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism or irreligion, nor are they automatica ...

, at which time the survivors scattered. Most went to work on the farms and ranches of west-central California, while many with Yokuts ancestry moved east into the San Joaquin Valley.

Chalon mobile bands and villages

The term ''Chalon'' was documented by the Franciscan priests in their Mission Soledad ecclesiastical records. The term definitely applied to a region, since individuals were baptized from specific villages such as "''Ponojo del Chalon''" and "''Zusotica del Chalon''."Merriam 1968:48–62 Anthropologist A.L. Kroeber, who first mapped the Chalon language area, presumed that it entirely surrounded Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad on the Salinas River; he mapped the specific village of ''Wacharo-n'' adjacent to the mission itself. A recent alternative analysis places the ''Eslenajan'' local tribe of Esselen language speakers as the inhabitants of the Soledad vicinity at the founding of the mission, places the ''Guachirron'' local tribe as Rumsen speakers farther north near Monterey Bay, and places the villages of ''Chalon'' to the east of the Salinas Valley.

Notes

References

* Gordon, Raymond G. Jr. (ed.), 2005. ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'', 15th edition. Dallas, TX: SIL International

* Kroeber, Alfred L. 1925. ''Handbook of the Indians of California''. Washington, D.C: ''Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin'' No. 78. (map of villages, page 465) * Merriam, C. Hart. ''Village Names in Twelve California Mission Records'', assembled and edited by Robert F. Heizer. Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey Number 74. Department of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley, 1968. * Milliken, Randall. ''A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769–1910'' Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication, 1995. (alk. paper) * Milliken, Randall. ''Ethnohistory of the Rumsen''. Papers in Northern California Anthropology No. 2. Salinas, CA: Coyote Press, 1987. * Teixeira, Lauren. ''The Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area, A Research Guide''. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication, 1997. .

External links

Chalon language
overview at the

Survey of California and Other Indian Languages The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chalon People Ohlone Mission Indians Indigenous peoples of California History of Monterey County, California Salinas Valley