E.A. Schwartz
This site contains the California section of John R. Swanton's compilation of ethnographic data The Indian Tribes of North America, published as a government document in 1952 by the Smithsonian Institution.
The data is in a single file (click on "Full Text" on the left), and may also be accessed through an alphabetical list of names of tribes and two interactive maps, linked at left. The file is relatively large (more than 150kb) and may take some time to load via a dial-up connection – as much as a large photograph.
The format of the published work has been retained as much as possible for optimum readability in hypertext markup language. The principal differences are the use of bulleted paragraphs in place of paragraphs with hanging indentation, and the use of red sans serif type for names of tribes.
Sources are linked to entries in a file of the California sources from Swanton's bibliography.
This online version is designed and intended to be a usable scholarly source for term papers. It may be cited as:
John R. Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 145 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1952), available from Native American Documents Project, http://www.csusm.edu/nadp/swanton/, Internet, accessed [date], [page number].
Names: Commonly-used names of tribes have changed over the past half-century in some cases. For example, many members of the group Swanton designates as "Diegueño" refer to themselves as Kumeyaay, and that name has been incorporated into the names of some reservation communities. To further the possibilities for confusion, the same people are sometimes referred to as Ipai or Tipai, names usually given for two Kumeyaay language groups.
Moverover, Swanton includes a group he lists separately as the Kamia, with Comeya and Tipai as alternate names, and tells us both the Kamias and the Pimas identified Kamias and Diegueños as members of a single group.
In another case, some members of the group most often called "Luiseño," seeking to connect with their pre-mission-era identity, have begun using the name Payoomkawichum ("western people"), or a variation.
This is only faintly echoed by Swanton, who gives "Ghetcham or Khecham" as an alternate name for the Luiseños but adds that it was derived "from the native name of the San Luis Rey Mission" (missing the significance of the use of a similar name, "Gaitchim," for the Juaneño people, another Shoshonean-speaking group whose home country is immediately north of that of the Luiseños.)
Other Problems: Although this compilation remains useful, it embodies outdated ideas about ethnography and the data it presents should be approached cautiously and thoughtfully. Swanton's introduction suggests the nature of the ethnographic scholarship that went into the data, and consideration of his introduction (click on "Full Text" on the left) will inform one's study of the data.
Even in 1952, many anthropologists questioned the application of the concept of "tribes" in California, preferring instead to use the term "tribelets." In other words, native peoples in California (and elsewhere) prior to colonization and Americanization tended to be organized politically on a village or extended-family level, and the larger groups listed here are defined by language and culture, not political organization.
(Students sometimes confuse the language groups mentioned under "Connections" by Swanton with tribal groups. All speakers of languages classified as Shoshonean are by no means Shoshone people, and although speakers of Athapascan languages may be found in California, the homeland of the Athapascan people is in Alaska and northwestern Canada.)
Most of the information gathered here was gathered by people who were not professional ethnologists and made up their methodology on the spot. Even professionals could not even agree how to represent spoken native words on paper. And native informants may have made up, withheld, or distorted information, perhaps to please an interesting visitor, or encourage an obnoxious scholar to move on, or misdirect a potential adversary. (Some information here comes from military reports.)
Notwithstanding reasonable doubts about the methods of the gatherers of this data, their native informants are now beyond further questioning. Now we can only ask questions of the data itself.
Population estimates shown here are based on work accepted now by few anthropologists. Scholars now estimate that California's pre-colonial populations were two to ten times higher than the estimates shown here.
For a brief discussion of the demographic issue, see Sherburne F. Cook, "The Aboriginal Population of Upper California," in R.F. Heizer and M.A. Whipple, The California Indians: A Source Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 66-72.
Pronunciations: Swanton did not provide a key to the pronunciations indicated by his diacritical markings, so the following is based on common standards. Some of the diacritical characters not present in hypertext markup language have been replaced by somewhat similar characters.
| ä: | "a" as in father, calm |
| â: | "a" as in ate, favor |
| å: | "a" as in banana, parade |
| ã: | "a" as in cat, garret |
| é: | "e" as in even, scene |
| ê: | "e" as in novel, recent |
| ë: | "e" as in defect, edge |
| ï: | "i" as in fine, idea |
| ô: | "o" as in cord, adorn |
| ù: | "u" as in cure, unit |
| ú: | "u" as in hurry, upset |
| û: | "u" as in burn, occur |
| ü: | the "ü" sound found in German, combining "u" with a short "i" sound, as in für, Lübeck |
| (n): | a barely vocalized "n", indicated as a superscript "n" by Swanton |