Chumash traditional narratives include myths, legends, tales, and oral histories preserved by the Chumash people of southern California's Transverse Range, Santa Barbara-Ventura coast, and Channel Islands.

Early analysts expected Chumash oral literature to conform to the regional pattern of southern California narratives. However, little evidence was available before accounts from the papers of 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 Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which has remained unpublished: the shelf space in the Library of Congress dedicated to his work...

 began to be published in the 1970s. The narratives now seem to have stronger ties with central California than with the Takic

Uto-Aztecan languages

Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...

 and Yuman groups to the south. (See also Traditional narratives (Native California)

Traditional narratives (Native California)

The Traditional Narratives of Native California are the legends, tales, and oral histories that survive as fragments of what was undoubtedly once a vast unwritten literature.-History of Studies:...

.)

Sources for Chumash Narratives

• Applegate, Richard B. 1975. "Chumash Narrative Folklore as Sociolinguistic Data". Journal of California Anthropology 2:188-197. (Analysis of speech patterns in a myth.)
• Blackburn, Thomas C. 1974. Chumash Oral Traditions: A Cultural Analysis. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. (Revised and published in 1975.)
• Blackburn, Thomas C. 1975. December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives. University of California Press, Berkeley. (Revised version of Blackburn's 1974 dissertation; 111 Chumash narratives of various sorts, including Orpheus, collected by John P. Harrington between 1912 and 1928, with a detailed discussion by Blackburn.)
• Dougan, Marcia. 1965. "Why Hummingbird Became Eagle". The Masterkey 39:77-78. (A brief myth from Santa Rosa.)
• Heizer, Robert F. 1955. "Two Chumash Legends". Journal of American Folklore 68:34, 56, 72. (Collected by Lorenzo G. Yates in 1887.)
• Luthin, Herbert W. 2002. Surviving through the Days: A California Indian Reader. University of California Press, Berkeley. (An Ineseño tale, "The Dog Girl," recorded in 1913 from Maria Solares by John P. Harrington, pp. 382–395.)