Californian Indian
Introduction
Native peoples found in California were only generally circumscribed by the present state boundaries. Some of the peoples within these boundaries were culturally intimate with other areas neighbouring California. The Colorado River groups, such as the Mojave (Mohave) and Yuma, shared traditions with both the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) and southern California, whereas the peoples of the Sierra Nevada, such as the Washo, shared traditions with the Great Basin peoples. In northern California were to be found native traditions of the Northwest Coast; the remaining native groups occupied the greater part of California, and they represented indigenous cultural developments.
A conservative estimate of the pre-Spanish population of California is 275,000, making it one of the most populous culture areas of native North America. Various ecologic features—seacoasts, tide lands, river and lake areas, valleys, deserts, and foothills—and various historical traditions contributed to great cultural diversity. Thus there existed a seemingly endless variety of local environmental niches, each contributing advantages and disadvantages to human adaptation.
The peoples of California were politically stable, sedentary, and conservative and less in conflict with one another than was usually the case in other areas of North America; and neighbouring groups often developed elaborate systems of economic exchange of goods and services. The Californian Indians reached peaks of cultural attainment rarely seen among peoples depending almost wholly for subsistence on hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild plant foods.
Traditional culture patterns
Local and territorial organization
California was occupied by a large number of cultural groups that have been described as ethnic nationalities—that is, groups of people sharing common linguistic, social, and cultural traditions and recognizing themselves as part of a single culture distinct from that of other groups. Except for the Colorado River peoples (Mojave and Yuma) and perhaps some Chumash groups, these ethnic nationalities had no centralized governmental structures; instead, each group comprised independent territorial and political units that may be termed tribe lets, tightly organized polities that were smaller than the average groupings in most other parts of North America. Populations in these tribe lets ranged from a hundred to a few thousand people, depending on the richness of locally available resources; tribe let territories ranged in size from about 50 to 1,000 square miles (150 to 3,000 square kilometres).
Within each tribe let there might be only one principal village in which all the people lived and from which some of them ranged for short periods of time to collect food, hunt, or visit other tribe lets for ritual or economic purposes. In some tribe lets there was a principal village surrounded by settlements of people who came to the principal village for ritual, social, economic, and political occasions. In other tribe lets there were two or more villages, each having various satellite settlements and one serving as a “capital” or central village. Here a principal chief would usually reside, and major rituals and political and economic affairs would be held.
Community organization of tribe let villages was varied, but basic patterns are discernible. Among the Mi wok and the peoples south of them, village ownership was usually based on clan arrangements, whereas in northern California land ownership was based more on territorial principles than on kinship ties. Bilateral or non lineal descent organization usually occurred where village land ownership was not clan based, as in the case of the southeastern desert-dwelling peoples, although exceptions to this occurred in the far northern part of the state.
Kinship and status patterns
Marriage was almost always a matter arranged by the families because it created long-range economic and social bonds between families. Generally the families exchanged goods at the time of the marriage, the bulk of goods coming from the husband's family. In most cases the wife resided with the husband's family and was taught the ways of the husband's group by the mother-in-law. Lev irate (widow marriage to the brother of the deceased) and sororities (widower marriage to the sister of the deceased) were widely observed, maintaining relationships between already connected families and stabilizing child-care conditions. Men could often have more than one wife; this was particularly true of chiefs and shamans (medicine men) because heavy social responsibilities were required of their offices and because political ties between groups could thereby be established.
The aged served as the teachers and advisers. Young adults were active in subsistence, and the elders prepared the children for adulthood. The aged made most of the decisions concerning legal disputes and economic crises.
The role of chief was generally an inherited position providing political stability to the group (though in northern California no formal chief appears to have existed). Women in some groups, such as the Pomo, were chosen as chiefs or “little chiefs.” The chief was an economic administrator whose instructions to his people ranged from general admonitions to specific directions for particular tasks, such as indicating where food was available and how many people it would require to collect it. He redistributed the economic resources of his community and, through donations from village members, maintained resources from which emergency needs of individuals could be met. He was the major decision maker and the final authority in most villages, but he had the aid of a council consisting of such persons as heads of extended families, ritualistic, assistant chiefs, and shamans. In some areas the chief functioned as a priest, maintaining the ceremonial house and ritual artifacts. The chief was generally a conspicuous person, wealthier, more elaborately dressed, and often displaying the symbols of his office. He was treated with great respect. Chiefs' families formed a super stratum of the community elites, especially in areas in which lineage development was present.
Shamans served not only as physical and mental healers and diviners but also as artists and poets. They defined and described the world of the sacred and regulated the fortune of souls before and after death, thereby serving as mediators between the profane and sacred worlds. Most tribe lets in California had one or more shamans, usually men. Shamans were active in political life, working with other leaders and placing their powers at the disposal of the community.
Alongside chiefs and shamans in native California there were ritualistic—dancers, singers, fire tenders—who were carefully trained in their crafts, and they functioned intimately within the political, economic, and religious spheres of their communities. They were men or women who acquired considerable respect and often wealth because of their skills and placement in the social structure. In effect, they were members of the power elite. When performing, ritualistic were usually costumed in headdresses, dance skirts, wands, jewelry, and other items.
Socialization and education
Formal learning was a continuous process in native California life. Older persons instructed children through elaborate tales containing lessons concerning behaviour and values. Constant supervision—provided by adults, older siblings, or other relatives—instructed and reminded the child about how things should be done.
The dramatic time of the educational process occurred during rites of passage, when individuals attained new status and responsibility. The girls' puberty ceremony, for example, generally consisted of a time of isolation because the female was considered dangerous (or especially empowered) at menarche. During this time, which varied from several days to several weeks, an older woman would care for the girl and instruct her in her role as an adult. Ceremonies for boys' initiation were less common and, when carried out, were usually less formal, involving instruction in manly occupations and behaviour and prediction of the boys' future religious, economic, or political careers.
Sometimes education was quite institutionalized. Young Chumash men, for instance, purchased positions from guild like associations of specialists in order to receive apprenticeship as professional artisans of some kind, while young Po mo men were charged a fee to be trained as apprentices by recognized professional craftsmen.
Leaders and specialists continued their training on a less formal level throughout their lifetimes. A man destined to become chief received his learning from others (such as ritualistic and shamans) and continued to receive such instruction even after assumption of office.
Economic systems
Settlement patterns
In most of California the villages were occupied the year round, with small groups moving out only for short periods of time to hunt or collect food. In areas poor in economic resources, people moved more frequently, only temporarily gathering together in large groups for such activities as antelope drives and pinon-nut harvests. Reveries and coastal peoples as a rule enjoyed more stable settlements than those living in the desert and foothills.
House types varied throughout California from permanent, carefully constructed houses occupied for a lifetime or more to the most temporary type of structure, such as a brush shelter, as dictated by circumstances. Types of houses ranged from wood-framed (northern California), earth-covered (various areas), semi-subterranean (Sacramento area), and brush (desert areas) to thatched palm (southern California). Communal and ceremonial houses were found throughout the region and were often large enough to hold several hundred people for rituals or festivals. Domestic houses ranged in size from five or six feet (almost two metres) in diameter to apartment-style houses in which several families lived together in adjoining units. Another common type of housing consisted of the sweat houses, earth-covered permanent structures that were used by most Californians (the Colorado River groups and the northern Paiute, on the margins of California, were exceptions); sweating was usually a daily activity for men.
Patterns of production and technology
Food production in native California centred on hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plant foods. Men usually hunted and fished while women collected plant foods and small game. Hunting and fishing equipment such as bows and arrows, throwing sticks, fishing gear, snares, and traps were made by men; women manufactured clothing, nets, baskets, pots, and other cooking utensils. Older people commonly made the productive equipment used in the harder labours of production by younger adults.
For coastal Californians, shellfish, deep-sea fish, surf fish, acorns, and game were the main subsistence staples; peoples in the reveries and lake areas relied on fish, acorns, tulle, game, and waterfowl. Native groups of the foothills, valleys, and plains depended on acorns, tulle, game, and fish; and those living in the desert regions sought pinon nuts, mesquite, and game (especially antelope and rabbit) and practiced some marginal agriculture.
There were also various special technological devices. The Chumash of southern coastal California made large seagoing plank canoes, which allowed them to hunt large sea mammals. Peoples living on the bays and lakes used tulle balsas or rafts, while reveries groups had flat-bottom dugouts (canoes made by hollowing out large logs). Techniques of food preservation included drying, hermetic sealing, and leaching of some foods high in acid content. Milling and grinding equipment was common.
Property and exchange systems
Concepts of property tended to vary in degree rather than kind throughout California. Everywhere, property was owned by individuals, family groups, lineages, communities, or larger political groups such as clans. In general, socially defined groups (such as clans and villages) owned the land and protected it against infringement from other groups. Individuals, lineages, or extended families usually owned exclusive rights only to certain food-collecting, fishing, and hunting areas. Such resources as obsidian mines or areas where medicinal plants grew might be owned by either groups or individuals. Individual articles could be acquired by manufacture, inheritance, purchase, or gift.
Goods and foodstuffs were distributed through two main institutions—reciprocal exchange between kin and “trade fairs,” often ritualized. Both operated similarly in that they served as a redistribution and banking system for spoilable foodstuffs; a group with a surplus of foods, that is, would bring it to another group and exchange it for goods (such as shells), which could be used in the future to acquire foodstuffs in return.
There were professional traders in most California groups who travelled long distances among many ethnic nationalities. Goods from as far away as Arizona and New Mexico were exchanged by coastal peoples. Generally, shells from the coastal areas were valued and exchanged for products of the inland areas, such as obsidian or food. Medicines, manufactured goods such as baskets, and other objects were also commonly exchanged in these systems.
Religion
Throughout native California religious institutions were intensely and intimately associated with all other institutions—political, economic, social, and legal. In all the groups there were shamans, religious leaders who served as intermediaries between the supernatural world and the world of man. Priests and other ritualists were common in many groups.
Two religious systems—the Kuksu and the Toloache—were associated with social organizations into which initiates were formally indoctrinated. In the Kuksu religion common to northern California (as among the Pomo, Yuki, Maidu, Wintun), members “impersonated” spiritual beings and engaged in colourful and dramatic rituals requiring special costumes and equipment; these events usually were conducted in large public communal houses. Within the Toloache religion of southern California (as among the Luiseño and Diegueño), initiates performed while drinking a hallucinogenic decoction made of the plant Datura meteloides, which put them in a trance and provided them with supernatural knowledge about their future life and role as members of the sacred societies. In both religions special instruction was a significant factor in the recruitment of members into the ritual society. Members exercised considerable economic, political, and social influence.
Religions on the Colorado River differed slightly because they were not concerned with developing formal organizations and recruitment procedures. Individuals received religious information through dreams; and members recited long narrative texts, explaining the creation of the world, the travel of culture heroes, and the adventures of historic figures.
In the northwest there was another informally structured religious system. It was associated with rituals concerned with world renewal (as in the white-deerskin dance), in which privately owned myths were recited. One communal need served by these ceremonies was that of restructuring relationships in societies lacking the rigid social ordering found in many other native California groups. The display of costumes and valuable possessions (such as white deerskins or delicately chipped obsidian blades) reaffirmed social ranking, and the success of the ritual reaffirmed the orderly relationship of man to the supernatural.
The use of supernatural power to control events or transform reality was basic to every California group. Generally, magic was used in attempts to control the weather, increase the harvest of crops, and foretell the future. Magic was deemed not only the cause of sickness and death but also the principal means of curing many diseases. Magic was considered also as an agent to protect oneself, to punish wrongdoers, or to satisfy personal ends.
Arts and crafts
Oral literature was the art form for which native California was most renowned—especially esoteric and elaborate creation tales and epic poems. There were also songs with accompanying narratives, tales of victory, recollections of recent events or daily activities, and airs of love. Songs were usually short but could, in narrative form, last for days. Singing was accompanied by rattles, whistles, or drums.
Visual art forms ranged from decoration on items of daily use (such as baskets and tools) to elaborate rock paintings and rock engravings. California natives are generally most remembered for their exquisite basketwork, though pottery in the eastern desert was shaped and decorated handsomely. Costuming, particularly in relation to the Kuksu religion, involved the creation of elaborate headdresses, skirts, feathered costumes, and so on, which were often symbolic of supernatural beings. Body painting was also popular.
Incising or pecking designs into rock was practiced in various parts of the area, and rock paintings were widespread. They were associated probably with individual and group rituals and hunting and gathering activities on the one hand and served as simple trail markers or indicators of food or water on the other.
Modern developments
Contemporary native Californians are rural peoples residing mainly on reservations or rancherias. There is, however, a long-established pattern of individuals moving to urban areas to find work when necessary but considering their reservation or rancheria as “home,” as a place where they will be welcomed upon return. In this manner many native Californians may live away from their lands for the better part of a lifetime and yet come back at last to a way of life compatible with their cultural ideals and involving their family and friends. Many individuals come and go sporadically, depending upon economic conditions; some live only seasonally on the reservations. Native Californians move from depressed areas to towns, villages, and cities, however, not only to find employment but also to arrange for schooling for their children and to find the amenities of life that are often totally lacking in the more remote Indian lands.
In the late 20th century, as industries moved into some rural areas, the nearby reservations became more attractive, offering some prospects of local employment. In many areas, the permanent populations of reservations were expanding, particularly with more young people with children. In other more remote rural areas, the economic situation remained bleak.
Since the United States government withdrew most federal responsibility for native Californians in 1955, reservations have become relatively autonomous. Each reservation or rancheria has an elected body of officials, known variously as a business committee or tribal council, which acts as a liaison between the people and such outside interests as the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, business corporations desiring the purchase or lease of reservation lands, public utilities concerned with seeking rights-of-way across lands, and individuals having some form of business with the group. The council acts with the advice and consent of the people in dispersing tribally owned assets such as the lands or funds, and it also acts as the receiving agent for grants from various economic-development or relief organizations of the government. It is often involved in litigation with the government or other agencies concerning tribal grievances, and today it almost invariably participates directly in planning economic and social development programs for the future protection of the group's assets.
Generally speaking, native Californians have adopted much of the ways of contemporary society. In clothing, housing, transportation, education, and often religion, they are not significantly distinguishable from other people residing in California. In more subtle ways, however, native culture, attitudes, ritual, and psychology are still viable throughout the state from north to south. Wherever there are native populations, one finds ceremonial houses, ritual, and the continued use and manufacture of ritual materials, as well as occasional use of native foods. Many arts and crafts, especially basket weaving, have been maintained. The Indian languages, though spoken less and less as first languages, are being maintained and revived for cultural and nostalgic reasons. On some reservations there are cultural centres and museums helping to preserve the culture and languages, and on other reservations and in some local school districts classes in native languages and culture are being offered to both children and adults. Various organizations of native Californians, such as the American Indian Historical Society and the California Indian Education Association, are aggressively examining, criticizing, and providing new teaching materials for schoolteachers who deal with native Californians in the classrooms.
On the other hand, few if any traces of traditional cultures remain in some areas of California. These areas generally coincide with what have become the major population centres of California, from San Francisco and Oakland south to San Diego. A new form of native American cultural development is under way, however, as Indians from all over the United States, not only from rural California but also from reservations in the central great plains of the United States and the Southwest, gravitate to these major urban areas, bringing with them diverse tribal and cultural backgrounds that add up to a new measure of cultural diversity in urban life. Many of these people came in large numbers during World War II, often to work in defense industries, while others came in large numbers after the war as part of the aggressive planning and development of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1950s. These moves led to serious problems among some of the relocatees because Bureau of Indian Affairs coordination was ineptly carried out, with the result that many native American groups have had to develop their own self-help organizations to care for their people in the cities. A pattern of replicating the institutions of the cultural groups they came from is apparent throughout the state. Recreational groups as well as educational and political groups have developed generally along lines of cultural similarity.
Distribution of Californian Indians.member of any of the aboriginal North American peoples in the area roughly corresponding to California and the northern Baja California peninsula.
Native peoples found in California were only generally circumscribed by the present state boundaries. Some of the peoples within these boundaries were culturally intimate with other areas neighbouring California. The Colorado River groups, such as the Mojave (Mohave) and Yuma, shared traditions with both the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) and southern California, whereas the peoples of the Sierra Nevada, such as the Washo, shared traditions with the Great Basin peoples. In northern California were to be found native traditions of the Northwest Coast; the remaining native groups occupied the greater part of California, and they represented indigenous cultural developments.
A conservative estimate of the pre-Spanish population of California is 275,000, making it one of the most populous culture areas of native North America. Various ecologic features—seacoasts, tide lands, river and lake areas, valleys, deserts, and foothills—and various historical traditions contributed to great cultural diversity. Thus there existed a seemingly endless variety of local environmental niches, each contributing advantages and disadvantages to human adaptation.
The peoples of California were politically stable, sedentary, and conservative and less in conflict with one another than was usually the case in other areas of North America; and neighbouring groups often developed elaborate systems of economic exchange of goods and services. The Californian Indians reached peaks of cultural attainment rarely seen among peoples depending almost wholly for subsistence on hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild plant foods.
Traditional culture patterns
Local and territorial organization
California was occupied by a large number of cultural groups that have been described as ethnic nationalities—that is, groups of people sharing common linguistic, social, and cultural traditions and recognizing themselves as part of a single culture distinct from that of other groups. Except for the Colorado River peoples (Mojave and Yuma) and perhaps some Chumash groups, these ethnic nationalities had no centralized governmental structures; instead, each group comprised independent territorial and political units that may be termed tribe lets, tightly organized polities that were smaller than the average groupings in most other parts of North America. Populations in these tribe lets ranged from a hundred to a few thousand people, depending on the richness of locally available resources; tribe let territories ranged in size from about 50 to 1,000 square miles (150 to 3,000 square kilometres).
Within each tribe let there might be only one principal village in which all the people lived and from which some of them ranged for short periods of time to collect food, hunt, or visit other tribe lets for ritual or economic purposes. In some tribe lets there was a principal village surrounded by settlements of people who came to the principal village for ritual, social, economic, and political occasions. In other tribe lets there were two or more villages, each having various satellite settlements and one serving as a “capital” or central village. Here a principal chief would usually reside, and major rituals and political and economic affairs would be held.
Community organization of tribe let villages was varied, but basic patterns are discernible. Among the Mi wok and the peoples south of them, village ownership was usually based on clan arrangements, whereas in northern California land ownership was based more on territorial principles than on kinship ties. Bilateral or non lineal descent organization usually occurred where village land ownership was not clan based, as in the case of the southeastern desert-dwelling peoples, although exceptions to this occurred in the far northern part of the state.
Kinship and status patterns
Marriage was almost always a matter arranged by the families because it created long-range economic and social bonds between families. Generally the families exchanged goods at the time of the marriage, the bulk of goods coming from the husband's family. In most cases the wife resided with the husband's family and was taught the ways of the husband's group by the mother-in-law. Lev irate (widow marriage to the brother of the deceased) and sororities (widower marriage to the sister of the deceased) were widely observed, maintaining relationships between already connected families and stabilizing child-care conditions. Men could often have more than one wife; this was particularly true of chiefs and shamans (medicine men) because heavy social responsibilities were required of their offices and because political ties between groups could thereby be established.
The aged served as the teachers and advisers. Young adults were active in subsistence, and the elders prepared the children for adulthood. The aged made most of the decisions concerning legal disputes and economic crises.
The role of chief was generally an inherited position providing political stability to the group (though in northern California no formal chief appears to have existed). Women in some groups, such as the Pomo, were chosen as chiefs or “little chiefs.” The chief was an economic administrator whose instructions to his people ranged from general admonitions to specific directions for particular tasks, such as indicating where food was available and how many people it would require to collect it. He redistributed the economic resources of his community and, through donations from village members, maintained resources from which emergency needs of individuals could be met. He was the major decision maker and the final authority in most villages, but he had the aid of a council consisting of such persons as heads of extended families, ritualistic, assistant chiefs, and shamans. In some areas the chief functioned as a priest, maintaining the ceremonial house and ritual artifacts. The chief was generally a conspicuous person, wealthier, more elaborately dressed, and often displaying the symbols of his office. He was treated with great respect. Chiefs' families formed a super stratum of the community elites, especially in areas in which lineage development was present.
Shamans served not only as physical and mental healers and diviners but also as artists and poets. They defined and described the world of the sacred and regulated the fortune of souls before and after death, thereby serving as mediators between the profane and sacred worlds. Most tribe lets in California had one or more shamans, usually men. Shamans were active in political life, working with other leaders and placing their powers at the disposal of the community.
Alongside chiefs and shamans in native California there were ritualistic—dancers, singers, fire tenders—who were carefully trained in their crafts, and they functioned intimately within the political, economic, and religious spheres of their communities. They were men or women who acquired considerable respect and often wealth because of their skills and placement in the social structure. In effect, they were members of the power elite. When performing, ritualistic were usually costumed in headdresses, dance skirts, wands, jewelry, and other items.
Socialization and education
Formal learning was a continuous process in native California life. Older persons instructed children through elaborate tales containing lessons concerning behaviour and values. Constant supervision—provided by adults, older siblings, or other relatives—instructed and reminded the child about how things should be done.
The dramatic time of the educational process occurred during rites of passage, when individuals attained new status and responsibility. The girls' puberty ceremony, for example, generally consisted of a time of isolation because the female was considered dangerous (or especially empowered) at menarche. During this time, which varied from several days to several weeks, an older woman would care for the girl and instruct her in her role as an adult. Ceremonies for boys' initiation were less common and, when carried out, were usually less formal, involving instruction in manly occupations and behaviour and prediction of the boys' future religious, economic, or political careers.
Sometimes education was quite institutionalized. Young Chumash men, for instance, purchased positions from guild like associations of specialists in order to receive apprenticeship as professional artisans of some kind, while young Po mo men were charged a fee to be trained as apprentices by recognized professional craftsmen.
Leaders and specialists continued their training on a less formal level throughout their lifetimes. A man destined to become chief received his learning from others (such as ritualistic and shamans) and continued to receive such instruction even after assumption of office.
Economic systems
Settlement patterns
In most of California the villages were occupied the year round, with small groups moving out only for short periods of time to hunt or collect food. In areas poor in economic resources, people moved more frequently, only temporarily gathering together in large groups for such activities as antelope drives and pinon-nut harvests. Reveries and coastal peoples as a rule enjoyed more stable settlements than those living in the desert and foothills.
House types varied throughout California from permanent, carefully constructed houses occupied for a lifetime or more to the most temporary type of structure, such as a brush shelter, as dictated by circumstances. Types of houses ranged from wood-framed (northern California), earth-covered (various areas), semi-subterranean (Sacramento area), and brush (desert areas) to thatched palm (southern California). Communal and ceremonial houses were found throughout the region and were often large enough to hold several hundred people for rituals or festivals. Domestic houses ranged in size from five or six feet (almost two metres) in diameter to apartment-style houses in which several families lived together in adjoining units. Another common type of housing consisted of the sweat houses, earth-covered permanent structures that were used by most Californians (the Colorado River groups and the northern Paiute, on the margins of California, were exceptions); sweating was usually a daily activity for men.
Patterns of production and technology
Food production in native California centred on hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plant foods. Men usually hunted and fished while women collected plant foods and small game. Hunting and fishing equipment such as bows and arrows, throwing sticks, fishing gear, snares, and traps were made by men; women manufactured clothing, nets, baskets, pots, and other cooking utensils. Older people commonly made the productive equipment used in the harder labours of production by younger adults.
For coastal Californians, shellfish, deep-sea fish, surf fish, acorns, and game were the main subsistence staples; peoples in the reveries and lake areas relied on fish, acorns, tulle, game, and waterfowl. Native groups of the foothills, valleys, and plains depended on acorns, tulle, game, and fish; and those living in the desert regions sought pinon nuts, mesquite, and game (especially antelope and rabbit) and practiced some marginal agriculture.
There were also various special technological devices. The Chumash of southern coastal California made large seagoing plank canoes, which allowed them to hunt large sea mammals. Peoples living on the bays and lakes used tulle balsas or rafts, while reveries groups had flat-bottom dugouts (canoes made by hollowing out large logs). Techniques of food preservation included drying, hermetic sealing, and leaching of some foods high in acid content. Milling and grinding equipment was common.
Property and exchange systems
Concepts of property tended to vary in degree rather than kind throughout California. Everywhere, property was owned by individuals, family groups, lineages, communities, or larger political groups such as clans. In general, socially defined groups (such as clans and villages) owned the land and protected it against infringement from other groups. Individuals, lineages, or extended families usually owned exclusive rights only to certain food-collecting, fishing, and hunting areas. Such resources as obsidian mines or areas where medicinal plants grew might be owned by either groups or individuals. Individual articles could be acquired by manufacture, inheritance, purchase, or gift.
Goods and foodstuffs were distributed through two main institutions—reciprocal exchange between kin and “trade fairs,” often ritualized. Both operated similarly in that they served as a redistribution and banking system for spoilable foodstuffs; a group with a surplus of foods, that is, would bring it to another group and exchange it for goods (such as shells), which could be used in the future to acquire foodstuffs in return.
There were professional traders in most California groups who travelled long distances among many ethnic nationalities. Goods from as far away as Arizona and New Mexico were exchanged by coastal peoples. Generally, shells from the coastal areas were valued and exchanged for products of the inland areas, such as obsidian or food. Medicines, manufactured goods such as baskets, and other objects were also commonly exchanged in these systems.
Religion
Throughout native California religious institutions were intensely and intimately associated with all other institutions—political, economic, social, and legal. In all the groups there were shamans, religious leaders who served as intermediaries between the supernatural world and the world of man. Priests and other ritualists were common in many groups.
Two religious systems—the Kuksu and the Toloache—were associated with social organizations into which initiates were formally indoctrinated. In the Kuksu religion common to northern California (as among the Pomo, Yuki, Maidu, Wintun), members “impersonated” spiritual beings and engaged in colourful and dramatic rituals requiring special costumes and equipment; these events usually were conducted in large public communal houses. Within the Toloache religion of southern California (as among the Luiseño and Diegueño), initiates performed while drinking a hallucinogenic decoction made of the plant Datura meteloides, which put them in a trance and provided them with supernatural knowledge about their future life and role as members of the sacred societies. In both religions special instruction was a significant factor in the recruitment of members into the ritual society. Members exercised considerable economic, political, and social influence.
Religions on the Colorado River differed slightly because they were not concerned with developing formal organizations and recruitment procedures. Individuals received religious information through dreams; and members recited long narrative texts, explaining the creation of the world, the travel of culture heroes, and the adventures of historic figures.
In the northwest there was another informally structured religious system. It was associated with rituals concerned with world renewal (as in the white-deerskin dance), in which privately owned myths were recited. One communal need served by these ceremonies was that of restructuring relationships in societies lacking the rigid social ordering found in many other native California groups. The display of costumes and valuable possessions (such as white deerskins or delicately chipped obsidian blades) reaffirmed social ranking, and the success of the ritual reaffirmed the orderly relationship of man to the supernatural.
The use of supernatural power to control events or transform reality was basic to every California group. Generally, magic was used in attempts to control the weather, increase the harvest of crops, and foretell the future. Magic was deemed not only the cause of sickness and death but also the principal means of curing many diseases. Magic was considered also as an agent to protect oneself, to punish wrongdoers, or to satisfy personal ends.
Arts and crafts
Oral literature was the art form for which native California was most renowned—especially esoteric and elaborate creation tales and epic poems. There were also songs with accompanying narratives, tales of victory, recollections of recent events or daily activities, and airs of love. Songs were usually short but could, in narrative form, last for days. Singing was accompanied by rattles, whistles, or drums.
Visual art forms ranged from decoration on items of daily use (such as baskets and tools) to elaborate rock paintings and rock engravings. California natives are generally most remembered for their exquisite basketwork, though pottery in the eastern desert was shaped and decorated handsomely. Costuming, particularly in relation to the Kuksu religion, involved the creation of elaborate headdresses, skirts, feathered costumes, and so on, which were often symbolic of supernatural beings. Body painting was also popular.
Incising or pecking designs into rock was practiced in various parts of the area, and rock paintings were widespread. They were associated probably with individual and group rituals and hunting and gathering activities on the one hand and served as simple trail markers or indicators of food or water on the other.
Modern developments
Contemporary native Californians are rural peoples residing mainly on reservations or rancherias. There is, however, a long-established pattern of individuals moving to urban areas to find work when necessary but considering their reservation or rancheria as “home,” as a place where they will be welcomed upon return. In this manner many native Californians may live away from their lands for the better part of a lifetime and yet come back at last to a way of life compatible with their cultural ideals and involving their family and friends. Many individuals come and go sporadically, depending upon economic conditions; some live only seasonally on the reservations. Native Californians move from depressed areas to towns, villages, and cities, however, not only to find employment but also to arrange for schooling for their children and to find the amenities of life that are often totally lacking in the more remote Indian lands.
In the late 20th century, as industries moved into some rural areas, the nearby reservations became more attractive, offering some prospects of local employment. In many areas, the permanent populations of reservations were expanding, particularly with more young people with children. In other more remote rural areas, the economic situation remained bleak.
Since the United States government withdrew most federal responsibility for native Californians in 1955, reservations have become relatively autonomous. Each reservation or rancheria has an elected body of officials, known variously as a business committee or tribal council, which acts as a liaison between the people and such outside interests as the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, business corporations desiring the purchase or lease of reservation lands, public utilities concerned with seeking rights-of-way across lands, and individuals having some form of business with the group. The council acts with the advice and consent of the people in dispersing tribally owned assets such as the lands or funds, and it also acts as the receiving agent for grants from various economic-development or relief organizations of the government. It is often involved in litigation with the government or other agencies concerning tribal grievances, and today it almost invariably participates directly in planning economic and social development programs for the future protection of the group's assets.
Generally speaking, native Californians have adopted much of the ways of contemporary society. In clothing, housing, transportation, education, and often religion, they are not significantly distinguishable from other people residing in California. In more subtle ways, however, native culture, attitudes, ritual, and psychology are still viable throughout the state from north to south. Wherever there are native populations, one finds ceremonial houses, ritual, and the continued use and manufacture of ritual materials, as well as occasional use of native foods. Many arts and crafts, especially basket weaving, have been maintained. The Indian languages, though spoken less and less as first languages, are being maintained and revived for cultural and nostalgic reasons. On some reservations there are cultural centres and museums helping to preserve the culture and languages, and on other reservations and in some local school districts classes in native languages and culture are being offered to both children and adults. Various organizations of native Californians, such as the American Indian Historical Society and the California Indian Education Association, are aggressively examining, criticizing, and providing new teaching materials for schoolteachers who deal with native Californians in the classrooms.
On the other hand, few if any traces of traditional cultures remain in some areas of California. These areas generally coincide with what have become the major population centres of California, from San Francisco and Oakland south to San Diego. A new form of native American cultural development is under way, however, as Indians from all over the United States, not only from rural California but also from reservations in the central great plains of the United States and the Southwest, gravitate to these major urban areas, bringing with them diverse tribal and cultural backgrounds that add up to a new measure of cultural diversity in urban life. Many of these people came in large numbers during World War II, often to work in defense industries, while others came in large numbers after the war as part of the aggressive planning and development of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1950s. These moves led to serious problems among some of the relocatees because Bureau of Indian Affairs coordination was ineptly carried out, with the result that many native American groups have had to develop their own self-help organizations to care for their people in the cities. A pattern of replicating the institutions of the cultural groups they came from is apparent throughout the state. Recreational groups as well as educational and political groups have developed generally along lines of cultural similarity.
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