Yokut

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The Yokuts or Mariposans are an ethnic group of Native Americans that live in Central California. Most Yokuts Indians reject the name Yokuts as an exonym invented by English-speaking settlers and historians, and prefer to refer to themselves by their tribal name. The Yokuts consisted of up to 60 ethnically and linguistically separate tribes pre-contact. The Yokuts lived in the San Joaquin Valley from the Delta south to Bakersfield.

Some tribes also lived along the northern edges of the Coast Range. Yokuts also inhabited the foothills of the Sierra Nevada from the Delta south to Bakersfield. Although the numbers of Foothill Yokuts were reduced by around 93% from 1850 to 1900, there are still a number of Foothill Yokuts extant today. A few Valley Yokuts remain, Tachi being the most prominent tribe. Only a few Yokuts tribes have been federally recognized. Many Yokuts Indians are not yet recognized by the U.S. government.

Contents 1 Population 2 Notable Yokuts 3 See also 4 External links 5 References

[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) put the 1770 population of the Yokuts at 18,000. Several subsequent investigators suggested that the total should be substantially higher (Baumhoff 1963; Cook 1955; Wallace 1978). Robert F. Heizer and Albert B. Elsasser (1980:16) suggested that the Yokuts had numbered about 70,000.

Kroeber estimated the population of the Yokuts in 1910 as 600.

[edit] Notable Yokuts

• Estanislao

[edit] See also

• Yokutsan languages
• Yokuts traditional narratives
• Kuksu religion

[edit] External links

• Info about yokuts by the Minnesota state university

[edit] References

• Baumhoff, Martin A. 1963."Ecological Determinants of Aboriginal California Populations". University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 49:155-236.
• Cook, Sherburne F. 1955. "The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, California". Anthropological Records 16:31-80. University of California, Berkeley.
• Heizer, Robert F., and Albert B. Elsasser. 1980. The Natural World of the California Indians. University of California Press, Berkeley.
• Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
• Wallace, William J. 1978. "Southern Valley Yokuts". In California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 448-469. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.