Chumash

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For Chumash, a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, see Humash.

Rafael, a Chumash in the 1800s

Pre-contact distribution of the Chumash

The Chumash are a Native American tribe who historically inhabit mainly the southern coastal regions of California, in the vicinity of what is now Santa Barbara and Ventura, extending as far south as Malibu. They also occupied three of the Channel Islands Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel, the smaller island of Anacapa was unihabited. Modern place names with Chumash origins include Malibu, Lompoc, Ojai, Point Mugu, Piru, Lake Castaic, and Simi Valley.

1 Population
2 Lifestyle
3 Artifacts
4 Languages
5 Modern times
6 See also
7 Sources
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Population

Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. (See Population of Native California.) Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) thought that the 1770 population of the Chumash might have been about 10,000. Alan K. Brown concluded that the population was not over 15,000. Sherburne F. Cook (1976a, 1976b) at various times estimated the aboriginal Chumash as 8,000, 13,650, 20,400, and 18,500.

By 1900, their numbers had declined to just 200. According to some reports, there are now some 5,000 people who identify themselves as Chumash.^[1]

[edit] Lifestyle

The Chumash were hunter-gatherers and were adept at fishing. They are one of the relatively few New World peoples who regularly navigated the ocean (the other was the Tongva, a neighboring tribe located to the South). Some settlements built plank boats called tomols, which facilitated the distribution of goods, and could even be used for whaling. Remains of a developed Chumash culture, including rock paintings (petroglyphs) apparently depicting the Chumash cosmology, can still be seen.

[edit] Artifacts

Anthropologists eagerly sought Chumash baskets as prime examples of the craft, and two of the finest collections are at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris, France. The Museum of Natural History at Santa Barbara is believed to have the largest collection of Chumash baskets.

[edit] Languages

[edit] Modern times

The first modern Tomol was launched in 1976 as a result of a joint venture between Chumash descendants from The Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The Tomol was named Helek, the Chumash word for Falcon. The descendants reformed The Brotherhood of the Tomol, paddled around the Santa Barbara Channel Islands on a ten day journey, stopping on each island. The second Tomol the Elye'wun ("swordfish") was launched in 1997. On September 9, 2001 by The Chumash Maritime Association. Several Chumash bands and decendants came together to paddle from the mainland to Santa Cruz Island in the Elye'wun. The Elye'wun was reported to have been circled by a pod of at least 30 dolphins during part of their voyage.

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash run a casino on their reservation in Santa Ynez, California.

[edit] See also

Chumash traditional narratives

[edit] Sources

Anderson, Atholl. 2006. "Polynesian Seafaring and American Horizons: A Response to Jones and Klar". American Antiquity 71:759-763.
Applegate, Richard. 1972. Ineseño Chumash Grammar and Dictionary. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Brown, Alan K. 1967. "The Aboriginal Population of the Santa Barbara Channel". University of California Archaeological Survey Reports 69:1-99.
Cook, Sherburne F. 1976a. The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Cook, Sherburne F. 1976b. The Population of the California Indians, 1769-1970. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Jones, Terry L., and Kathryn A. Klar. 2005. "Diffusionism Reconsidered: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Polynesian Contact with Southern California". American Antiquity 70:457-484.
Jones, Terry L., and Kathryn A. Klar. 2006. "On Open Minds and Missed Marks: A Response to Atholl Anderson". American Antiquity 71:765-770.
Klar, Kathryn A., and Terry L. Jones. 2005. "Linguistic Evidence for a Prehistoric Polynesia-Southern California Contact Event". Anthropological Linguistics 47:369-400.
Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
Nabokov, Peter. Autumn, 1989. "Reconstituting the Chumash: A Review Essay". American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4, Special Issue: The California Indians. pp. 535-543.