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The ancient tie

In the 19th century, anthropology became a scientific practice of studying societies to better understand the fabric that held together their existence. One of the interesting things anthropologists discovered in the years right after first contact with American settlers was that there was a major factor that grouped their tribes in to seven main tribal groups in the western United States. This tie was the basic structure and sound of their language. In some cases, there may have been tribes in California that traded over far distances predominantly along language ties, rather than with their geographically closer neighbors. In other cases, there may have been tribes with similar languages who were no longer even aware of one another as they were spread out from one end of the state to the other, and into nearby states as well, and developed trade patterns with people closer to them geographically.

How did these language groupings come to be?

In the migrations that took place from the European and Asian land masses over 10,000 years ago, across the Bering Strait and into what is now Alaska, and then down into North, central and South America, different groups a special language among them, made migrations over thousands of years. Every generation or two a small group might leave a village in Canada and push southwards into Montana. In another generation they might see a few families move south and west towards the Sierras. And then a few generations later move down towards the sea level deserts, and then eventually out towards the Pacific shore. Eventually these people, for example, had created a linked series of settlements all the way out to San Clemente and Santa Catalina Islands.

And so it came to be that peoples sharing the same language base were living in many different locations. They always had neighbors who did not speak their language as their ancestors had moved there from some other language group with a village to the north or east.

In some cases the villages remained linked through thousands of years of trade. Goods, stories, and news was passed from a tribe out on San Clemente - along with a specialized trade bead - inland across the high desert. Later in the year someone else from the high desert headed northeast to trade with villages known to be friendly on the eastern side of the sierras. Eventually the stories, trade goods, news - and the tell-tale unique shell beads - ended up in a village on the back side of the Sierras, many hundreds of miles inland from San Clemente. We learned of this trade pattern at the California Islands Symposium in 1999 from Camp Trail guide Mark Raab, a professor at CSU Northridge who was surprised to see that the unusual squared shell beads made on San Clemente as a form of money were also showing up in excavations in the eastern Sierras.

In other cases the groups who shared a common language base in the earliest days of California discovery may very possibly have completely lost touch with one another. For example, the Shasta in the far north of California shared the same Hokan language base as the native Chumash Canalino out on Santa Cruz Island. And these two geographically separate peoples shared a language base with the Washo living up at Lake Tahoe, and with the Yuma and Mohave living down in the inland southern deserts. In fact, it is thought that the Hokan language group must have been the first early migrating discoverers of California as their language group is the most widely distributed in the state (meaning many, many generations of exploration and settlement would have had to have taken place to disperse their language base to so many different locations).

· Take a look at the Camp's interpretive reports on Professor Raab's findings that are posted in Camp Internet under the 5th California Islands Symposium, 1999. Find out what type of shells were used to make this shell money that found its ay far inland.

Main Language Groups

Across California examples of the main language groups ( which also linked them to other tribes all over the United States ) were :

· Algonkian - Yurok and Wiyot
· Athabascan - Tolowa, Hupa, Mattole, Nongatl, Sinkgone, Lassih, Wailkai, Kato
· Penutian - Modoc, Wintun, Miwok, Yokut, and Costanoan
· Hokan - Shasta, Achomawi and Atsugewi, Yana and Yaki, Chimaribo, Pomo, Washo, Esselen, Salinan, Chumash, Digueno, Yuma, Halchidhoma, and Mohave
· Uto-Aztecan - Gabrielino, Cahuilla, Liuseno, Cupeno, Serrano, Paiute, and Shoshone
· Yukian - Yuki

·Play a language game.

If you needed to trade for pencils, and had an eraser to trade, but your neighbor to your right didn't speak your language - how would you communicate your interest in trading to the other person? Give it a try! Don't speak a word of English; just convey what you want to do with body language. Did it work or not? Now turn to your left and trade something of your choice and speak your common language. Isn't it amazing anything ever can get traded between peoples who didn't speak the same language? But it did and still does today! One way is over the Internet, which is giving people a way to learn to trade across national boundaries much more freely and productively.