Wiyot people

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This page deals with the Wiyot people. For their language, see Wiyot language.

The Wiyot people are a native people of Humboldt Bay, California, whose presence dates from more than 8,000 years ago.

Contents 1 Population 2 Culture and religion 3 History 4 Recent events 5 See also 6 External links 7 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 ^[1]) put the 1770 population of the Wiyot at 1,000. Sherburne F. Cook initially offered an estimate of 1,500 ^[2] but subsequently raised this to 3,300 ^[3]. Kroeber reported the population of the Wiyot in 1910 as 100.

About 500 Wiyot live in Northern California today, still well below their mid-19th Century population of 2,000. In 2000, the Wiyot established the Table Bluff Reservation on 88 acres of their homeland. The reservation is 16 miles south of Eureka between Loleta and the South Jetty of Humboldt Bay. Some 350 people are enrolled in the Table Bluff Reservation—Wiyot Tribe. "Table Bluff Rancheria of Wiyot Indians of California" is the name under which the United States federal government previously listed the Table Bluff Reservation in the Bureau of Indian Affairs list of federally recognized tribes;^[4] "Table Bluff Reservation- Wiyot Tribe" is the current designation.^[5] "Table Bluff Reservation- Wiyot Tribe" is the current designation (Department of the Interior 2005). Some people of Wiyot descent are enrolled in the Bear River Rancheria.

The Wiyot suffered a devastating onslaught of violence by American settlers in the 1850s and 1860s, wiping out the majority of those alive in 1850 and dispossesing them of their lands. Surviving members of the tribe intermarried with neighboring groups, including the Yurok.

[edit] Culture and religion

The Wiyot language's last native speaker, Della Prince, died in 1962. Some Wiyots are attempting a revival of the language.

A central act in the Wiyot people's spirituality is an annual World Renewal Ceremony held at Tuluwat village. Indian Island, formerly called Duluwat Island, was and is the center of Wiyot world. On the island a ceremonial dance was held to start the new year. The ceremony was called the World Renewal ceremony. All people were welcomed, no one was turned away. The ceremony lasted seven to ten days. It was held at the village site of Tutulwat on the northern part of the island. Traditionally the men would leave the island and return the next day with the day's supplies. The elders, women and children were left to rest on the island along with a few men.

The people ate mostly clams and acorns and made long carved log canoes. Healers and ceremonial leaders were mostly women, who got their powers on mountain tops at night.

[edit] History

The Wiyot and Yurok are the farthest southwest people whose language has Algonquian roots. Their traditional homeland ranged from Mad River through Humboldt Bay (including the present cities of Eureka and Arcata) to the lower Eel river basin. Inland, their territory was heavily forested in ancient redwood. Their stretch of shoreland was mostly sandy, dunes and tidal marsh, not rocky cliffs, such as begin a bit further south.

The Wiyots were among the last natives in the United States to encounter white settlers. Spanish missions extended only as far north as San Francisco Bay. The Russian fur traders, whose 18th-century invasion in search of the sea otter had devastated the Pomo, were uninterested in their sandy shorelands, not a sea-otter habitat. The Wiyot people suffered from immigrating Americans following their victory in the Mexican-American War:

Humboldt Bay was finally discovered by the seafaring exploration of Douglass Ottinger in 1850. White settlement followed immediately. A military post called Fort Humboldt was founded February 9, 1853. Among the miners, farmers, ranchers and loggers pouring into California, many settled at what is now Eureka. Relationships between the local non-natives and Indians became hostile, marked by raids and vigilante justice.

On February 25, 1860, the Wiyot experienced a tragic massacre which not only devastated their numbers, but has remained a pervasive part of their cultural heritage and identity. World Renewal ceremonies were being held at the village of Tutulwat, on "Indian Island" about a mile and a half offshore from Eureka in Humboldt Bay. The leader of the Humboldt Bay Wiyots was Captain Jim. He organized and led the ceremony to start a new year.

A group of Eureka men came to the island in the early morning after the last ceremony was completed. They were armed with hatchets, clubs and knives. They left their guns behind so the noise of the slaughter would be only screams — which don't carry far — rather than gunshots. This was not the only massacre that took place that night. Two other village sites were raided, on the Eel River and on the South Spit. Reports of the number of Wiyots killed that night vary from 80 to 200.

The 1860 massacre was well documented historically and was reported in San Francisco and New York by a young American writer who would later use the pen name Bret Harte. Bret was working as a printer's helper and assistant editor at a local newspaper at the time, and his boss was temporarily absent, leaving Harte in charge of the paper. Harte published a detailed account condemning the event, writing, "a more shocking and revolting spectacle never was exhibited to the eyes of a Christian and civilized people. Old women wrinkled and decrepit lay weltering in blood, their brains dashed out and dabbled with their long grey hair. Infants scarcely a span along, with their faces cloven with hatchets and their bodies ghastly with wounds."

On the contrary, the Humboldt Times newspaper editorialized, "For the past four years we have advocated two—and only two—alternatives for ridding our country of Indians: either remove them to some reservation or kill them. The loss of life and destruction of property by the Indians for ten years past has not failed to convince every sensitive man that the two races cannot live together, and the recent desperate and bloody demonstrations on Indian Island and elsewhere is proof that the time has arrived that either the pale face or the savage must yield the ground."

The Times apparently represented the mainstream opinion in the area at the time. An investigation failed to identify a single perpetrator, although those who did the killing were rumored to be well known. Harte quit his job one month later and moved to San Francisco, where an anonymous letter published in a city paper is attributed to him, describing widespread community approval of the massacre.

The Wiyot people were decimated. They were corralled at Fort Humboldt for protection. This was another California case of the Army protecting Indians from their own violent citizens. Survivors were herded mostly to Round Valley, establishd as an Indian ("reservation") within California. They kept escaping and returning to their homeland.

By 1850, there were about 2000 Wiyot and Karok people living within this area. After 1860, there was an estimated 200 people left. By 1910 there were less than 100 full blood Wiyot people living within Wiyot territory. This rapid decline in population was due to disease, slavery, target practice, protection, being herded from place to place (survivors' descendants describe this as "death marches"), and massacres.

Memorials have been held annually at Tuluwat village, on what is now known as Indian Island, since 1992; and a major cultural and environmental restoration project is underway there.

In 2000, the Wiyot established the Table Bluff Reservation on 88 acres of their homeland. The reservation is 16 miles south of Eureka between Loleta and the South Jetty of Humboldt Bay. Some 350 people are enrolled in the Table Bluff Reservation—Wiyot Tribe.

[edit] Recent events

In a step towards making amends, in June of 2004 the Eureka City Council transferred 67 acres of Indian Island back to the Wiyot tribe. The tribal chairwoman who headed the negotiations for years and eventually succeeded, Cheryl Seidner, is a descendant of an ancestor who survived the 1860 massacre as an infant.^[6] Tuluwat, the sacred Wiyot village of Indian Island, is currently being restored by the Wiyot tribe. Eureka businesses have stepped forward to donate supplies and trash barges, and the citizens of Eureka have donated to a Tuluwat restoration fund. It is hoped that soon the Wiyot will be able to once again perform their traditional world renewal ceremony upon the island, perhaps by 2007.

[edit] See also

• Wiyot traditional narratives

[edit] External links

• Wiyot Tribe homepage
• SF Chronicle article on Wiyot and Duluwat Island

[edit] References