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The Plains and Sierra Miwok were once the largest group of Native American Miwok people, indigenous to California. Their homeland included regions of the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, and the Sierra Nevada.
Contents
Geography
The Plains and Sierra Miwok traditionally lived in the western Sierra Nevada between the Fresno River and Cosumnes River, in the eastern Central Valley of California, and in the northern Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta region at the confluences of the Cosumnes River, Mokelumne River, and Sacramento River.
In the present day, many Sierra Miwok live in or close to their traditional territories and Indian rancherias, including at:
Culture
The Plains and Sierra Miwok lived by hunting and gathering, and lived in small local tribes, without centralized political authority. They are skilled at basketry and continue the traditions today.
Religion
The original Plains and Sierra Miwok people world view included Shamanism. One form this took was the Kuksu religion that was evident in Central and Northern California, which included elaborate acting and dancing ceremonies in traditional costume, an annual morning ceremony, puberty rites of passage, shamanic intervention with the spirit world, and an all-male society that met in subterranean dance rooms. Kuksu was shared with other indigenous ethnic groups of Central California, such as the Pomo, Maidu, Ohlone, Esselen, and northernmost Yokuts. However, Kroeber observed less "specialized cosmogony" in the Miwok, which he termed one of the "southern Kuksu-dancing groups", in comparison to the Maidu and other northern California tribes.
Traditional narratives
The record of myths, legends, tales, and histories from the Plains and Sierra Miwok is one of the most extensive in the state. These groups participate in the general cultural pattern of Central California.
Mythology
Miwok mythology is similar to other natives of Central and Northern California. The Plains and Sierra Miwok believe in animal and human spirits, and see the animal spirits as their ancestors. Coyote is seen as their ancestor and creator god.
Divisions
There were four definite regional and linguistic sub-divisions: Plains Miwok, Northern Sierra Miwok, Central Sierra Miwok, and Southern Sierra Miwok.
Plains Miwok
The Plains Miwok inhabited a portion of the Central Valley's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and adjacent plains in modern southern Sacramento County, eastern Solano County, and northern San Joaquin County. They spoke Plains Miwok, a language of the Miwokan branch of the Utian language family.
Villages and local tribes
Classical anthropologists recorded a number of specific Plains Miwok villages, but it remained for work by Bennyhoff in the 1950s and 1960s to recognize multi-village territorial local tribes as the signature land-use organization of the Plains Miwok. The published specific village locations were:
Among the important landholding local tribes at the time of Spanish colonization in California were:
Post-contact history
The majority of the members of the Plains Miwok local tribes moved to colonial Franciscan Mission San José, in some cases through attraction and in other cases through intimidation, between 1812 and 1833. By 1815 they represented 14% of the Indian people at that mission, and by 1830 they had reached 42% of the mission's population. In 1834 and 1835, hundreds of Plains Miwok survivors of the Central Valley's 1833 malaria epidemic were baptized at Mission San José. By the end of 1835, Plains Miwok was the native language of 60% of the Indian people at the mission.
Between 1834 and 1838 the Alta California missions were secularized (closed as religious and agricultural communes). Many Plains Miwoks moved back to their home areas, where between 1839 and 1841 John Sutter played the local groups off against one another in order to gain control of the lower Sacramento Valley. Other Plains Miwok families remained in the San Francisco Bay area, intermarried with Ohlone, Patwin, and Yokuts peoples, and found work on local Mexican ranchos.
Northern Sierra Miwok
The Northern Miwok inhabited the upper watersheds of the Mokelumne River and the Calaveras River. One settlement site is within the present day Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park near Volcano. They spoke Northern Sierra Miwok, a language in the Utian linguistic group.
Historic villages
The authenticated Northern Sierra Miwok villages are:
Central Sierra Miwok
The Central Sierra Miwok inhabited the upper watersheds of the Stanislaus River and the Tuolumne River. They spoke Central Sierra Miwok, a language in the Utian linguistic group.
Historic villages
The authenticated Central Sierra Miwok villages are:
Southern Sierra Miwok
The Southern Miwok inhabited the lower banks of the Merced River and the Chowchilla River, as well as Mariposa Creek. They spoke Southern Sierra Miwok, a language in the Utian linguistic group.
The Merced River flows from the High Sierras, through Yosemite Valley, and into the San Joaquin Valley near present-day near Livingston.
The Mono tribe people (considered Northern Paiute) occupied the higher eastern Sierras and the Mono Lake Basin, and entered Yosemite from the east. The Mono name for the Southern Miwok was qohsoo?moho. Miwoks occupied the lower western foothills of the Sierras and entered from the west. Disputes between the two tribes were violent, and the residents of the valley, in defense of their territory, were considered to be among the most aggressive of any tribes in the area.
When encountered by immigrants of European descent, the neighboring Southern Sierra Miwok tribe referred to the Yosemite Valley residents as "killers". It is from this reference and a confusion over the word for "grizzly bear" that Bunnell named the valley Yosemite. The native residents called the valley awahni. Today, there is some debate about the original meaning of the word, since the Southern Miwok language is virtually extinct, but recent Southern Miwok speakers defined it as "place like a gaping mouth." Those living in awahni were known as the Awahnichi (also spelled Ahwahnechee and similar variants), meaning "people who live in awahni". The naming of the Ahwahnee Hotel was derived from the Miwok word.
Historic villages
The authenticated Southern Sierra Miwok villages are:
Post-contact history
After Euro-Americans entered Yosemite Valley and the adjacent Sierras, and established Yosemite National Park, the residents were of both Paiute-Mono and Miwok origin. They had either fought to a stalemate or agreed to peaceful coexistence and had intermixed to a limited extent.
Population
Alfred L. Kroeber estimated there to be 9,000 Plains and Sierra Miwok combined in 1770, but this is an arguably low estimate. Richard Levy estimated there were 17,800. In 1848 their population was estimated at 6,000, in 1852 at 4,500, in 1880 at 100, and in 1910 the population was estimated at 670.