Chumash
- Chumash is also an alternate spelling of Humash, a Hebrew word for a section of the Bible.
The Chumash Indians, a Native American tribe, mainly inhabited the southern coastal regions of California, in the vicinity of what is now Santa Barbara and Ventura, extending as far south as Malibu. They also occupied the three northern islands of the Santa Barbara group, a part of the Channel Islands. Modern place names with Chumash origins include: Malibu, Point Mugu, Piru, Lake Castaic, and Simi Valley.
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History
Estimates of their population range from 10,000 to 20,000 before contact with Spanish settlers in Mexico, though the population had apparently been devastated by disease prior to that. By 1900, this population had declined to just 200, though there are now some 5,000 people who identify themselves as Chumash.
Languages
The Chumash spoke seven closely related Chumashan languages which can not be connected to any other language family. For a while, it was assumed the Chumash family was part of the Hokan language phylum, but this was based solely on a few easily borrowed words, such as that for shell-bead money.
The name Chumash is from the Syuxtun Aqliw (Santa Barbara language) and refers to the people from an island they named Micchumash (Santa Cruz Island). Chumash literally means "makers of shell bead money". When outsiders came, they called all people within the "Chumash" language family, which embraces seven distinct languages, "Cchumash". The different spelling here shows that there is aspiration after the [ch] sound. Cchumash people working on resuscitating the languages, are working to create a fixed orthography as of November 15, 2005.
Lifestyle
The Chumash were hunter-gatherers, who were adept at fishing. They are one of only two New World people who regularly navigated the ocean (the other was the Tongva, a neighboring tribe located to the South). Some settlements built plank canoes called tomols, which facilitated the distribution of goods, and could even be used for whaling. Remains of a developed Chumash culture, including rock paintings (petroglyphs) apparently depicting the Chumash cosmology, can still be seen.
Artifacts
Anthropologists eagerly sought Chumash baskets as prime examples of the craft, and two of the finest collections are at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris, France. The Museum of Natural History at Santa Barbara is believed to have the second-largest collection of Chumash baskets.
Possible pre-Columbian contact with Polynesians
Recent research indicates that the Chumash may have been visited by Polynesians between AD 500 and 700, nearly 1,000 years before Christopher Columbus reached North America. [1]
Modern times
On September 9, 2001, members of the Chumash tribe paddled from the mainland to Santa Cruz Island in a tomol, the first such crossing of the Santa Barbara Channel in 125 years. Their craft Elyewun ("swordfish"), is reported to have been circled by a pod of at least 30 dolphins during part of their voyage.
The Chumash run a casino in Santa Ynez, California. The tribe is featured in the book Sky Coyote by Kage Baker.
External links
- Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians
- Inezeño Chumash Language Tutorial
- Chumash Casino
- The Antelope Valley Indian Museum at California Department of Parks and Recreation - includes a searchable database of its collections with many artifacts.
