Salinan

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The Salinan Native Americans lived in what is now the Central Coast of California, in the Salinas Valley. Said to have gone extinct by the Census of 1930, the Salinan Native Americans survived and are now in the process of applying for tribal recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

There were two major divisions, the San Miguel in the south, on the upper course of the Salinas river (which flows south to north), and the San Antonio in the north, in the lower part of the Salinas basin. There were also the a Playano group which lived on the Pacific coast in the vicinity of what is now San Simeon and Lucia.

This corresponded to the two Missions in the Salinas Valley.

The Salinans lived by hunting and gathering and were organized in small groups with little centralized political structure.

Contents 1 Language 2 Population 3 See also 4 References

[edit] Language

The Salinan language is a language isolate. It may be a part of the hypothetical Hokan stock. Sapir (1925) included it in a subfamily of Hokan, along with Chumash and Seri; this classification has found its way into more recent encyclopedias and presentations of language families, but serious supporting evidence has never been presented.

[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) put the 1770 population of the Salinan as 3,000. Sherburne F. Cook (1976:187) similarly estimated that there were at least 3,000 Salinans.

[edit] See also

• Salinan traditional narratives
• Kuksu religion
• Chalon

[edit] References

• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
• Cook, Sherburne F. 1976. The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization. University of California Press, Berkeley.
• Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
• Sapir, Edward. 1925. The Hokan affinity of Subtiaba in Nicaragua. American Anthropologist 27: (3).402-34, (4).491-527.