Chimariko people
 range of Chimariko language | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 19[1] (2010, 60) 60 (including those of ancestral descent) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Northwest California[2] | |
| Languages | |
| formerly Chimariko[2] | |
| Religion | |
| traditional tribal religion |
The Chimariko (Chimariko language: cʼʸˈimar, tʼʸimar, čimar, čʼimar or ǯimar - ″person / Indian″) are an Indigenous people of California, who originally lived in a narrow, 20-mile section of canyon on the Trinity River in Trinity County in northwestern California.[3]
History
[edit]Originally hunter-gatherers, the Chimariko are possibly the earliest residents of their region. They had good relations with the Wintu people and were enemies of the Hupa, a Southern Athabaskan people.[3]
However, historian Jerry Rohde describes Chimariko warriors joining Tsnungwe and Whilkut warriors in a Hupa-led retaliatory expedition against the Yurok village of Rekwoi following an attack on Takimildin between 1830 and 1840.[4]
Non-native fur trappers first entered the Chimariko's territory in 1820, followed by miners and settlers in the 1850s.[3] The Chimariko were profoundly affected by the destructive environmental practices of gold seekers during the California Gold Rush, starting in 1848. One of the major issues involved the disruption of the salmon population that was the main food source of the Chimariko. In the 1860s, conflict between the Chimariko and white miners led to the near extinction of their population. The surviving Chimariko fled to live with the Hoopa Valley Hupa, and nearby Tsnungwe (South Fork or New River Hupa) (also called: Tlohomtah’hoi) and Tlohomtah’hoi (New River or Salmon River Shasta).
Language
[edit]Chimariko people spoke the Chimariko language, a language isolate. Chimariko was among the languages spoken by some Tsnungwe people at łe:lding, a regional trading center at the confluence of the Trinity and South Fork Trinity rivers.[5]
The language is currently extinct.[3] The language probably became extinct sometime in the 1930s.[6] During the 1920s, John Peabody Harrington recorded Chimariko vocabulary, elicited sentences, and oral narratives from several consultants. His approximately 3,500 pages of handwritten fieldnotes, together with notes and analyses by George Grekoff, subsequently formed the principal sources for Carmen Jany's research on Chimariko grammar.[7]
Population
[edit]Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber proposed that the 1770 population of the Chimariko, together with the New River, Konomihu, and Okwanuchu groups of the Shasta, had been about 1,000. Specifically for the Chimariko, he estimated an 1849 population of 250.[8] Shirley Silver (1978:205) put the aboriginal population at "only a few hundred".[9] Other estimates are that there were 250 Chimariko people in the 18th and early 19th centuries, declining to 200 in 1852 and 20 in 1880.[3] There may have been descendants of the Chimariko recently discovering their identity, since some Chimariko fled with the Hupa and Shasta. In the 2010 census, 60 people claimed Chimariko ancestry, 19 of them full-blooded.[1]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 "2010 Census CPH-T-6. American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2010" (PDF). www.census.gov. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-12-09.
- 1 2 "Chimariko.". Ethnologue. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Chimariko." Four Directions Institute. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
- ↑ Rohde, Jerry (2025). Northern Humboldt Indians: History of Humboldt County People and Places. The Press at Cal Poly Humboldt. pp. 60–61.
- ↑ Rohde, Jerry (2025). Northern Humboldt Indians: History of Humboldt County People and Places. The Press at Cal Poly Humboldt. p. 243.
- ↑ Luthin, Herbert (2002). Surviving through the Days. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22270-0.
- ↑ Jany, Carmen (2008). "Relativization versus Nominalization Strategies in Chimariko" (PDF). Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics. 19. Section 2, "The Language and Data".
- ↑ Kroeber, Alfred L (1925). Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin. Vol. 78. Washington, D.C. p. 883.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ↑ Silver, Shirley. 1978. "Chimariko". In California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 205-210. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. p. 205
Sources
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