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The Yuki are a Native American tribe from the zone of Round Valley, in what today is part of the territory of Mendocino County, Northern California. Divisions of this tribe are thought to have settled as far south as Hood Mountain. In their language, the Yuki called themselves Ukomno'm ("Valley People"). The name Yuki is, in fact, an adaptation of the Wintu term "yuki" (meaning "enemy") used to designate them by their neighbors, the Nomlaki, and from which the white explorers learned of their existence circa 1850.
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History
Unlike most Californian tribes, the Yuki engaged in hostilities with other native tribes that surrounded them on several occasions. As the white settlers began to flock to Northern California in the early 1850s, the Yuki were driven out of their lands, repeatedly decimated in raids conducted by the local ranchers and the authorities and taken into slavery. In 1856, the Round Valley area was turned into the Indian reservation of Nome Cult Farm (later to become Round Valley Indian Reservation), where thousands of Yuki and members of other local tribes were forced to inhabit, usually in extremely precarious conditions. These events later led to the Mendocino War (1859), where hundreds of Yuki were either massacred or taken by force to Nome Cult Farm.
Population
- Further information: Population of Native California
Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber estimated the 1770 population of the Yuki proper, Huchnom, and Coast Yuki as 2,000, 500, and 500, respectively, or 3,000 in all.1 Sherburne F. Cook initially raised this total slightly to 3,500.2 Subsequently, he proposed a higher estimate of 9,730 Yuki.3
Reportedly, only 100 Yuki remain today, and the Yuki language is spoken by no more than a dozen individuals.
Language
The Yuki people had a quaternary (4-based) counting system, based on counting the spaces between the fingers, rather than the fingers themselves.4
See also
Notes
References
- Cook, Sherburne F. 1956. "The Aboriginal Population of the North Coast of California". Anthropological Records 16:81-130. University of California, Berkeley.
- Cook, Sherburne F. 1976. The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization. University of California Press, Berkeley.
- Harrison, K. David 2007. When Languages Die. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
External links
- Revolution, Revolutionary Communist Party
- Four Directions Institute
- Round Valley history
- Central California culture
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