Chochenyo
Encyclopedia
Ohlone
The Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are a Native American people of the central California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley...
people of Northern California
Northern California
Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...
. The Chochenyo resided on the east side of the San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
(the "East Bay"), primarily in what is now Alameda County
Alameda County, California
Alameda County is a county in the U.S. state of California. It occupies most of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 1,510,271, making it the 7th most populous county in the state...
, and also Contra Costa County
Contra Costa County, California
Contra Costa County is a primarily suburban county in the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 1,049,025...
, inland to the Mount Diablo coastal mountains.
Chochenyo (also called Chocheño and East Bay Costanoan) is also the name of their spoken language, one of the Costanoan dialects in the Utian family
Utian languages
Utian is a family of indigenous languages spoken in the central and north portion of California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke languages in the Utian linguistic group...
. Linguistically, Chochenyo, Tamyen
Tamyen
The Tamyen are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Ohlone people groups of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. The Tamyen lived throughout the Santa Clara Valley...
and Ramaytush
Ramaytush
The Ramaytush are one of the linguistic subdivisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California. Historically, the Ramaytush inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in the area which is now San Francisco and San Mateo Counties.The Ramaytush...
are thought to be close dialects of a single language.
The Ohlone tribes were hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
s who moved into the San Francisco Bay Region around 500 AD, displacing earlier Esselen
Esselen
The Esselen were a Native American linguistic group in the hypothetical Hokan language family, who resided on the Central California coast and the coastal mountains, including what is now known as the Big Sur region in Monterey County, California...
people. In Chochenyo territory, recent datings of the ancient Emeryville Shellmound
Emeryville Shellmound
The Emeryville Shellmound, in Emeryville, California, is a once-massive archaeological shell midden deposit...
s and Newark Shellmounds attest to people residing in the Bay Area since the 4000 BC
4th millennium BC
The 4th millennium BC saw major changes in human culture. It marked the beginning of the Bronze Age and of writing.The city states of Sumer and the kingdom of Egypt were established and grew to prominence. Agriculture spread widely across Eurasia...
.
Chochenyo territory was bordered by the Karkin to the north (at Mount Diablo), the Tamyen
Tamyen
The Tamyen are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Ohlone people groups of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. The Tamyen lived throughout the Santa Clara Valley...
to the south and southwest, the San Francisco Bay to the west, and overlapped a bit with the Bay Miwok
Bay Miwok
The Bay Miwok were a cultural and linguistic group of Miwok, a Native American people in Northern California who lived in Contra Costa County. They joined the Franciscan mission system during the early nineteenth century, suffered a devastating population decline, and lost their language as they...
and Yokuts to the east.
During the California Mission Era, the Chochenyos moved en masse to the Mission San Francisco de Asís
Mission San Francisco de Asís
Mission San Francisco de Asís, or Mission Dolores, is the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco and the sixth religious settlement established as part of the California chain of missions...
(founded in 1776) in San Francisco, and Mission San José of Fremont (founded in 1797). Most moved into one of these missions and were baptized, lived and educated to be Catholic neophytes, also known as Mission Indians
Mission Indians
Mission Indians is a term for many Native California tribes, primarily living in coastal plains, adjacent inland valleys and mountains, and on the Channel Islands in central and southern California, United States. The tribes had established comparatively peaceful cultures varying from 250 to 8,000...
, until the missions were discontinued by the Mexican Government in 1834. Then the people found themselves landless. A large majority of the Chochenyo died from disease in the missions and shortly thereafter, only a fragment remaining by 1900. The speech of the last two native speakers of Chochenyo was documented in the 1920s in the unpublished fieldnotes of the Bureau of American Ethnology
Bureau of American Ethnology
The Bureau of American Ethnology was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution...
linguist John Peabody Harrington
John Peabody Harrington
John Peabody Harrington was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the native peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which has remained unpublished: the shelf space in the Library of Congress dedicated to his work...
.
Today, the Chochenyo have joined with the other San Francisco Bay Area Ohlone people under the name of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. The Muwekma Ohlone are currently petitioning for U.S. federal recognition.
Chochenyo tribes and villages
The East Bay and eastward mountain valleys were populated with dozens of Chochenyo tribes and villages. See:- Ohlone tribes and villages, East Bay Area
External links
- Chochenyo revival ("Release")
- Chochenyo revitalization – language at UCB "Faith in Words" 2004 archived version
- Muwekma Ohlone Tribe website
- Muwekma request for federal tribal recognition Court opinion 9/21/06
- Chochenyo language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian LanguagesSurvey of California and Other Indian LanguagesThe Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas...