Pacific Coast Athabaskan is a geographical and possibly genealogical grouping of the

Athabaskan Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, ...

language family.

California Athabaskan

* California Athabaskan **

Hupa The Hupa (Yurok: / 'Hupa people') are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group in northwestern California. Their endonym is for Hupa-language speakers in general, and for residents of Hoopa Valley, also sp ...

(dining'-xine:wh, a.k.a. Hoopa-Chilula) *** dialects: **** Hupa **** Tsnungwe ***** tse:ning-xwe ***** tł'oh-mitah-xwe **** Chilula-Whilkut ***** Chilula ***** Whilkut ** Mattole–Bear River *** dialects: ****

Mattole The Mattole, including the Bear River Indians, are a group of Native Americans in California. Their traditional lands are along the Mattole and Bear Rivers near Cape Mendocino in Humboldt County, California. A notable difference between the Ma ...

**** Bear River **

Wailaki The Eel River Athapaskans include the Wailaki, Lassik, Nongatl, and Sinkyone (Sinkine) groups of Native Americans that traditionally live in present-day Mendocino, Trinity, and Humboldt counties on or near the Eel River and Van Duzen River o ...

("Eel River", spoken by the

Eel River Athapaskan peoples The Eel River Athapaskans include the Wailaki, Lassik, Nongatl, and Sinkyone (Sinkine) groups of Native Americans that traditionally live in present-day Mendocino, Trinity, and Humboldt counties on or near the Eel River and Van Duzen River o ...

) *** dialects: **** Sinkyone **** Wailaki **** Nongatl **** Lassik **

Cahto The Cahto (also spelled Kato, especially in anthropological and linguistic contexts) are an Indigenous Californian group of Native Americans. Today most descendants are enrolled as the federally recognized tribe, the Cahto Indian Tribe of the L ...

(a.k.a. Kato) (sometimes included in Eel River) Often the Mattole and Wailaki-speaking groups together are called Southern Athapaskans. Their languages were similar to each other, but differed from the northern California tribes whose languages were also part of the Athapaskan family. They are not to be confused with the Apachean peoples (the

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

and

Navajo The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...

) - also known as Southern Athabascans - of the

Southwestern United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...

and

Northern Mexico Northern Mexico ( ), commonly referred as , is an informal term for the northern cultural and geographical area in Mexico. Depending on the source, it contains some or all of the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua (state), ...

, who speak the

Southern Athabaskan languages Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States (including Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah) with two outliers in Oklahoma and Texas. The languages are spoken in ...

. The family has also been called Californian Dene.

Oregon Athabaskan

* Oregon Athabaskan **

Upper Umpqua Upper Umpqua is an extinct Athabaskan language formerly spoken along the south fork of the Umpqua River in west-central Oregon by Upper Umpqua (Etnemitane) people in the vicinity of modern Roseburg. It has been extinct for at least seventy ye ...

(a.k.a. Etnemitane) ** Lower Rogue River (a.k.a. Tututni, Coquille) *** dialects: **** Upper Coquille ***** Coquille (a.k.a. Mishikwutinetunne) ***** Flores Creek (a.k.a. Kosotshe, Kusu'me, Lukkarso) **** Tututni ***** Tututunne ***** Naltunnetunne ***** Mikwunutunne (a.k.a. Mikonotunne) ***** Joshua (a.k.a. Chemetunne) ***** Sixes (a.k.a. Kwatami) ***** Pistol River (a.k.a. Chetleshin) ***** Wishtenatin (a.k.a. Khwaishtunnetunnne) **** Euchre Creek (a.k.a. Yukichetunne) **** Chasta Costa (a.k.a. Illinois River, Chastacosta, Chasta Kosta) ** Upper Rogue River (a.k.a. Galice–Applegate) *** dialects: **** Galice (a.k.a. Taltushtuntede) **** Applegate (a.k.a. Nabiltse, Dakubetede) ** Chetco-Tolowa *** dialects: **** Chetco **** Smith River (a.k.a. Tolowa) **** Siletz Dee-ni (modern Chetco-Tolowa variant with word from Chasta Costa, Applegate, Galice, Rogue River, and other members of the

Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in the United States is a federally recognized confederation of more than 27 Native American tribes and bands who once inhabited an extensive homeland of more than 20 million acres from northern Calif ...

) Linguists differ on the classification of the Lower Rogue River, Upper Rogue River, and Chetco-Tolowa branches as being either separate languages, or dialects of one macrolanguage, comprising a dialect continuum centered on the Lower Rogue River dialect group with the Chetco-Tolowa and Upper Rogue River groups being peripheral. The latter view is common among tribal elders and language revitalizationists, who note a high degree of mutual intelligibility and shared cultural identity. In the absence of a single, unambiguous English name for the dialect group, some learner-speakers refer to it in English as Nuu-wee-ya', an

endonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

common to all three varieties meaning "our language".

References

Bibliography

* See: Athabaskan languages#Bibliography * {{Athabaskan languages