The Karkin people (also called ''Los Carquines'' in Spanish) are one of eight
Ohlone peoples,
Indigenous peoples of California
Indigenous peoples of California, commonly known as Indigenous Californians or Native Californians, are a diverse group of nations and peoples that are indigenous to the geographic area within the current boundaries of California before and afte ...
.
History
The Karkin people have historically lived in the
Carquinez Strait
The Carquinez Strait (; Spanish: ''Estrecho de Carquinez'') is a narrow tidal strait located in the Bay Area of Northern California, United States. It is part of the tidal estuary of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers as they drain int ...
region in the northeast portion of the
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay (Chochenyo language, Chochenyo: 'ommu) is a large tidal estuary in the United States, U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the cities of San Francisco, California, San ...
estuary. They spoke the
Karkin language, the only documentation of which is a single vocabulary obtained by linguist-missionary Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta at
Mission Dolores in 1821 from Karkin speaker Mariano Antonio Sagnegse. According to de la Cuesta, ''karkin'' means 'to trade.'
[Beeler 1961] Although meager, the records of Karkin show that it constituted a distinct branch of Costanoan/Ohlone, strikingly different from the neighboring
Chochenyo and other Ohlone languages spoken farther south and across the bay.
It is believed that there were about 200 Karkin speakers before colonization.
Starting in 1787, some Karkin people began moving to
Mission Dolores in present-day San Francisco. In 1804 and 1807, Karkins resisted attempts by Mission Indians to recapture fugitive Indians who had escaped the mission. The last Karkins moved to the mission between 1809 and 1810. At the end of 1817, 49 Karkins were living at Mission Dolores. By the end of 1823, 35 Karkin people lived at Mission Dolores, Mission San Francisco Solano, and Mission San Jose, seven of whom had been born in the missions.
[Milliken, Shoup, and Ortiz 2009:122]
In 1925,
Alfred Kroeber
Alfred Louis Kroeber ( ; June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the fi ...
, then director of the
Hearst Museum of Anthropology, declared the Ohlone extinct, which directly led to its losing federal recognition and land rights.
The Confederated Villages of Lisjan is a tribe made up of Karkin and six other neighboring indigenous groups.
is a Karkin and
Chochenyo activist who co-founded Indian People Organizing for Change and the
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust,
and is the spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan.
See also
*
Sogorea Te Land Trust
Notes
References
* Beeler, Madison S. 1961. "Northern Costanoan." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 27: 191–197.
* Callaghan, Catherine A. 1997. "Evidence for Yok-Utian." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 63:18–64.
* Golla, Victor. 2007. "Linguistic Prehistory." ''California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity''. Terry L. Jones and Kathryn A. Klar, eds., pp. 71–82. New York: Altamira Press. .
* Levy 1978, cited in
"Karkin"'. Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 16 August 2021.
* Milliken, Randall T. 1995. ''A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Region, 1769–1810''. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press.
* Milliken, Randall T. 2008. ''Native Americans at Mission San Jose''. Banning, CA: Malki-Ballena Press. .
* Milliken, Randall; Shoup, Laurence H.; Ortiz, Beverly R.; Archaeological and Historical Consultants Oakland, California (June 2009)
Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today(PDF) (Report). National Park Service Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, California. Retrieved 16 August 2021.
External links
Karkin languageoverview at the
Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...
Costanoan/Ohlone Indian Language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karkin People
Ohlone
Indigenous peoples of California
Mission Indians
History of Contra Costa County, California
History of Solano County, California
History of the San Francisco Bay Area
Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area
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