The West Coast, today’s California, was the homeland of the largest Indian population in all North America, and the most varied of all native inhabitants. There were perhaps 350,000 people in California, split into more than a hundred distinctive tribes, most of whose names have little or no meaning left today, and there were at least that many dialects of six or seven different basic languages.
Most of these West Coast people led extremely simple lives, in some cases nearly as primitive as the Great Basin Indians, even though food in California was usually available in abundance. There were few arts and crafts among the people, only the most rudimentary tribal organizations, and nowhere was there any such person as a chief or even a leader of some sort. Most of the groups simply inhabited some small territory of their own, which had been in their possession since the beginning of time; many California Indians, in fact, claimed to have sprung from the very ground which they now inhabited.
The northwest corner of California was the territory of Athabascan tribes like the Hupa, the Tolowa, and the Mattole, whose cultures closely resembled those of the Northwest Coast people. In northern California, too, were found Algonquian Yurok who, together with their relatives, the Wiyot, presented later researchers with intriguing questions. No one knows how or when these Algonquian Indians reached the West Coast, but it must have been a long time ago. When they were first encountered by white men, their speech was very different from that of their ancestors, and they lived much like all the other California Indians rather than any Algonquians known to history. Neither did any of their traditions or legends give any hints of relatives in the East. Their only connection to other Algonquians, in fact, was their language, different as it was; in no other respect did they indicate any relationship to other Indians, not even to their neighbors, the Wiyot. Like so many human groups living in isolated, self-contained cultures, the Yurok thought of themselves as the most important and superior tribe on earth. It has even been speculated that the Yurok’s California territory may have been the cradle of all Algonquian tribes, but it seems more reasonable to conclude that at some distant time they had simply wandered into this far country, and in the easy and pleasant California environment had gradually abandoned the ways of their Algonquian forefathers.
Just to their south lived the Yuki, who spoke a language all their own, and in the mountain valleys of the interior, the Hokan-speaking Karok, Shasta, and Yanon. Just north of today’s city of San Francisco, in the basin drained by the rivers which flow into San Francisco Bay, lived the Penutian Patwin, Maidu, Miwok, Wintun, Yokut and others. Southward and eastward, into the desert country, the lands were inhabited by Shoshonean tribes – Cahuilla, Serrano, Gabrielino, Fernandino, Luiseno, Diegueno and others, all of whom were quite obviously named by the early Spanish settlers to California who were either unwilling or unable to pronounce the Indians’ original native names. And Yuman tribes extended throughout southern California, parts of Baja California, and eastward into Arizona.
Though these Indians were regarded by the white pioneers as simple, even primitive people, they did possess one cardinal virtue not always found among primitive cultures: they collected and stored food for future use, and thus seldom, if ever, went hungry. They gathered seeds, roots, and wild vegetables, which were available throughout most of the year. Many, perhaps most of California Indians, seem to have existed in large part on acorns – a strange choice, for the bitter taste of the acorn hardly makes it an ideal food staple. Among the dubious ingredients of the acorn is a heavy dose of tannic acid which, when taken in any sizeable quantity, becomes a poison. The California Indians were aware of all this, but since acorns were so abundant they soon found a way of treating them to make a rich, nutritious food. They pounded the kernels into a meal and sifted them until fine yellow flour was produced. Warm water was then poured over this meal, letting it filter through, taking with it some of the tannic acid and bitter materials. This process was repeated several times until the taste became satisfactory. The meal was used to make a mush or baked into unleavened bread. A variety of other seeds were similarly prepared, or they were dried and roasted. Though deer and other large game were always available, the California Indians seldom bothered to hunt them; instead, they concentrated on small animals such as rodents and birds, and even used earthworms and caterpillars and grasshoppers for food. Along the coast, seafood in all its various forms became a major portion of the people’s diet. The fact was that California was a kind of native paradise, where food of some kind was always at hand and where the climate was usually comfortable.
In the mild California climate, housing and clothing were of little concern to the people. Men often went naked, or wore simple loincloths of animal skins, while the women wore short skirts, basketry hats, and occasionally cloaks of plantfiber or skins. Most California housing was simple affairs of frameworks of poles, bent and tied into shape and covered with earth, thatch, or slabs of bark. Only the Maida in the Sacramento Valley constructed earth lodges, while the northern Yurok copied the plank houses of the Northwest Coast tribes.
Archaeologists think that there was little change in the economic life of the California natives from the time when they first arrived there thousands of years ago – a state of affairs no other parts of North America could claim. Possibly, people like the Penutians were the most ancient immigrants into this region and always enjoyed the ease of California living, though if they were later arrivals, they quickly adopted the habits of those they encountered, and settled down to enjoy the steady security which life in this area promised. But an easy life and economic security are seldom the breeding ground for social changes social changes; the California Indians, at any rate, seem never to have been troubled by reformers, revolutions, or troublemakers of any kind, and even their mythology, their religious beliefs and their ceremonies showed little drama and impact on the people.
Life in California, if simple for the most part, seems to have been pleasant and effortless, and its native people were probably the most peaceful in all North America. If some of the northern tribes carried on occasional feuds with other groups, such hostility amounted to little more than squabbles among kinship groups. For the rest, the inhabitants of California led leisurely lives in their sunny climate. Whites, on the other hand, generally despised them for their utter lack of ambition and energy, and the West Coast Indians inevitably became one of the special victims of white greed during the days of the California gold rush.