Kumeyaay

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The Kumeyaay, also known as the Diegueño and sometimes confused with the Luiseño, are a Native American people of the extreme southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. They live in the states of California and Baja California. In Spanish the name is spelled kumiai.

There are thirteen Kumeyaay reservations in southern San Diego County and four kumiai ejidos in Baja California.

They are divided into three historic groups. Along the coast two groups were separated by the San Diego River: The northern Ipai (extending from Escondido to Lake Henshaw) and the southern Tipai (including the Laguna Mountains, Ensenada, and Tecate). The Kamia group lives the Mexican state of Sonora.

Nomenclature and tribal distinctions are not well-settled. It is safe to say that the Kuymeyaay speak a Yuman tongue of the Yuman-Cochimí family and from the migration out of Yuma, Arizona, several linguistically distinct but related groups developed: the Cucapah, the Kumeyaay, the Paipai, and the Kiliwa. The population of the last of these groups, located on the outskirts of Ensenada, has dwindled to three or four speakers.

The Kumeyaay live on 13 reservations in San Diego County, California (Barona, Campo, Capitan Grande, Cuyapaipe, Inaja, Jamul, La Posta, Manzanita, Mesa Grande, San Pasqual, Santa Ysabel, Sycuan, and Viejas), and on four reservations in Baja California (La Huerte, Neji, San Antonio Neidus, and San Jose La Zozza). The group living on a particular reservation is referred to as a "band," such as the "Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians."

The meaning of the term Kumeyaay is unknown but Ipi or Tipi means person, although in contemporary times it is taken to mean Indian. Kumeyaay in the southern areas also refer to themselves as MuttTipi, which means "people of the earth."

1 Population
2 See also
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Population

Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. (See Population of Native California.) Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) proposed that the population of the Kumeyaay in 1770, exclusive of those in Baja California, had been about 3,000. Frederic Noble Hicks (1963:65-66) raised this estimate to 5,100-5,700. Katharine Luomala (1978:596) suggested that the region could have supported 6,000-9,000 Kumeyaay. Florence C. Shipek (1986:19) went much farther, estimating 16,000-19,000 inhabitants.

Kroeber reported the population of the Kumeyaay in 1910 as 800.

[edit] See also

Kumeyaay traditional narratives

[edit] External links

[edit] References

Hicks, Frederic Noble. 1963. Ecological Aspects of Aboriginal Culture in the Western Yuman Area. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.
Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
Luomala, Katharine. 1978. "Tipai-Ipai". In California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 91-98. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Shipek, Florence C. 1986. "The Impact of Europeans upon Kumeyaay Culture". In The Impact of European Exploration and Settlement on Location Native Americans, edited by Raymond Starr, pp. 13-25. Cabrillo Historical Association, San Diego.