The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, CaliforniaCook, Sherburne Friend
History
The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, California
Cook, Sherburne Friend
Indians of North America -- California -- San Joaquin Valley; San Joaquin Valley (Calif.) -- Population
The Kings and Kaweah watersheds may be considered at this point in
their entirety (see maps 1 and 3, areas 3 and 4). If we deduct 730
persons for the San Joaquin basin, the estimates for the Mono on the
two former streams was estimated by the village method as 870, by the
stream mileage method as 1,653, and by the area method as 2,465. If one
regards some of these figures as too high, he should bear in mind that
the natives on the Kings and Kaweah rivers were exposed to more intense
contact with the white race for a longer period before 1850 than those
on the relatively sheltered North Fork, and that their extermination
proceeded with tremendous velocity after that date. This fact may well
account for the inability of either Kroeber or Merriam to find more
than a few villages on the Kings and Kaweah, as compared with the
success of Gifford on the North Fork. The more exposed villages may
simply have disappeared before the era reached by the memory of modern
informants. If this is so, the stream mileage and area comparisons may
be more accurate than otherwise might be supposed.
Considerable evidence for a rather high population in this region at
the midpoint of the nineteenth century is to be derived from
contemporary accounts and from statements obtained by Merriam. Among
the papers in his collection is a clipping from the Stockton Record of
February 21, 1925, containing an article by Walter Fry of the United
States Park Service. Included is an account of early days on the Kaweah
by Hale D. Thorpe, obtained by Mr. Fry in 1910. Mr. Thorpe says:
When I first came to the Three Rivers country in 1856, there
were over 2,000 Indians living along the Kaweah River above
Lemon Cove. Their headquarters camp was at Hospital Rock....
There were over 600 Indians then living at the camp.
The Indians were mostly Mono, of the Patwisha tribe. Dr. Merriam
evidently consulted Mr. George W. Stewart concerning this matter, since
the file also contains a letter from Mr. Stewart written to Dr. Merriam
on March 29, 1926, stating that this camp was occupied only during the
summer and that there were several permanent rancherias along the
stream. Mr. Thorpe's figure of 2,000 probably refers to Indians of all
tribes, since by 1856 all the natives from the delta region had been
driven up the river. The 600 at or near Hospital Rock were undoubtedly
Mono.
In his manuscript entitled "Ho-lo-ko-ma, Cole Spring, Pine Ridge,"
Merriam has the following to say:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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