The Aboriginal Population of the North Coast of CaliforniaCook, Sherburne Friend
History
The Aboriginal Population of the North Coast of California
Cook, Sherburne Friend
Indians of North America -- California; Indians of North America -- Statistics
For the Witukomnom Foster lists 15 places, of which 9 are designated as
nohots and 6 as "small." Two points are apparent. First, the informants
of Foster were recalling the _important_ villages which they had seen
or been told about but had forgotten the minor sites, hence the great
preponderance of nohots. In the second place, it is unnecessary for
purposes of calculation to know the names or the number of the
peripheral "parasitic" rancherias if we know the primary towns, the
nohots, for, knowing a nohot, we know a community. Thus we may
immediately set the population of the Witukomnom as at least 1,710
persons. If the informants gave incomplete data, then the number would
be higher.
For the Ukomnom Foster lists 38 place names, most but not all of which
lay in Round Valley. Of these 6 are specified as nohots. This would
yield as a first approximation a population of 1,140. But for the
Ukomnom we have some help from Kroeber. Many of Foster's remaining
places are designated merely "rancheria," since his informants could
remember no further details. For one of them, Kroeber says that there
was a dance house present, which makes the site a nohot instead of a
rancheria. Kroeber's group B includes the village of Pomo, which is not
mentioned by Foster. This was the seat of a head chief, and therefore a
nohot. In addition, Kroeber includes in this group 6 villages in
Williams Valley. Foster says regarding "Flint Valley," by which he is
evidently referring to the same locality, that his informants could
remember no villages. This seems to be an instance where Kroeber's
earlier informants could recall villages which Foster's later ones had
forgotten, for there is no ground for doubting the accuracy of
Kroeber's work. There is no implication that any of these sites was
large, hence they may be regarded as the small type of village with
about 25 persons apiece. We can therefore count 8 nohots plus 6
rancherias, which gives a population of 1,670 for the entire group.
A further check on the Ukomnom is provided by Foster's map of Round
Valley (p. 158). In the valley proper he shows 37 inhabited villages,
of which 25 are named and 12 are unnamed. Of the former, 7 are known to
have been nohots. Taking the nohots at 90 persons and the other sites
at 25 persons, one gets a total population of 1,380. A balance of 300
is by no means excessive for Williams Valley and the peripheral hills.
Incidentally, this figure for Round Valley yields a density of roughly
45 persons per square mile, one which surpasses any other in California
but one which is quite in accord with all the accounts of early
settlers and explorers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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