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Yokuts Trade Networks and Native Culture Change (23 pages)
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Page: of 23
620 Brooke S. Arkush
concerning the sources of early non-native materials among tribes of the
central California interior and the eastern Sierra Nevada. Both archaeological and historical data indicate that early Spanish exploration of upper
California and the establishment of various mission settlements along the
central California coast were primarily responsible for the widespread
distribution of non-aboriginal material culture elements (especially glass
beads and horses) among native groups of the above two regions.
This article combines ethnographic, historical, and archaeological
data to present a theoretical reconstruction of the eastward movement of
elements of Spanish and Mexican material culture along traditional native
trade routes from the Spanish missions and ranchos of the central California coast into the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada region during
the late 1700s and early 1800s. Within this scenario, the Yokuts Indians
are viewed as major facilitators of cultural change among native groups in
east central California.
The main thesis of this article is that Yokuts traders played an important role in the introduction of Euro-American trade items among various
native groups of the central California interior and eastern Sierra Nevada.
Specific groups probably included the Eastern Miwok, Monache, Tubatulabal, Kawaiisu, Mono Basin Paiute, Owens Valley Paiute, and Coso Shoshone (Fig. 1). The role of Yokuts traders as facilitators of early historic
culture change among interior California Indians has received little attention from the academic community and, in general, is poorly understood.
This paper also addresses the ways in which various native groups
of interior California and the western Great Basin incorporated aspects
of Euro-American material culture into their traditional societies. Some
groups such as the Plains Miwok and Valley Yokuts were able to do so,
and at the same time remained relatively free of Spanish and Mexican
domination. Native independence during early historic times was maintained through the raiding of horses from mission and rancho herds and
the development of guerilla warfare tactics to repulse punitive Spanish and
Mexican military expeditions.
Ethnographic Overview
During the ethnographic and early contact periods, the Yokuts (a name
meaning “persons” or “people” [Kroeber 1925: 488]) comprised forty to
sixty named groups, or tribelets, that inhabited all of the San Joaquin
Valley of central California and the foothills of the western slope of the
Sierra Nevada (Silverstein 1978: 446). The Yokuts language is classified as
a member of the California Penutian language family (Dixon and Kroeber