The Rumsen language (also known as Rumsien, ''San Carlos Costanoan'' and ''Carmeleno'') is one of eight Ohlone languages, historically spoken by the Rumsen people of

Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

. The Rumsen language was spoken from the Pajaro River to Point Sur, and on the lower courses of the Pajaro, as well as on the Salinas and Carmel Rivers, and the region of the present-day cities of Salinas, Monterey and

Carmel Carmel may refer to: * Carmel (biblical settlement), an ancient Israelite town in Judea * Mount Carmel, a coastal mountain range in Israel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea * Carmelites, a Roman Catholic mendicant religious order Carmel may also ...

History

One of eight languages within the

Ohlone The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the ...

branch of the Utian family, it became one of two important native languages spoken at the

Mission San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Río Carmelo, or Misión de San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, first built in 1797, is one of the most authentically restored Catholic mission churches in California. Located at the mouth of Carmel Valley, Californ ...

founded in 1770, the other being the Esselen language. The last fluent speaker of Rumsen was

Isabel Meadows Isabel Meadows (July 7, 1846 – 1939) was an Ohlone ethnologist and the last fluent speaker of the Rumsen Ohlone language. She also spoke Esselen. She worked closely with the anthropologists from the Smithsonian Institution for more than five ye ...

,Hinton 2001:430
/ref> who died in 1939. The

Bureau of American Ethnology The Bureau of American Ethnology (or BAE, originally, Bureau of Ethnology) was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior D ...

linguist John Peabody Harrington conducted very extensive fieldwork with Meadows in the last several years of her life. These notes, still mostly unpublished, now constitute the foundation for current linguistic research and revitalization efforts on the Rumsen language. The Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe has been in the process of reestablishing their language. They have begun efforts to teach their tribal members Rumsen and are working to complete a revised English - Rumsen Dictionary. The Rumsen website can be found at www.costanoanrumsen.org.

Rumsen-speaking tribes

Dialects of the Rumsen language were spoken by four independent local tribes, including the ''Rumsen'' themselves, the ''Ensen'' of the Salinas vicinity, the ''Calendaruc'' of the central shoreline of Monterey Bay, and the ''Sargentaruc'' of the

Big Sur Big Sur () is a rugged and mountainous section of the Central Coast of California between Carmel and San Simeon, where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. It is frequently praised for its dramatic scenery. Big S ...

Coast. The territory of the language group was bordered by Monterey Bay and the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

to the west, the

Awaswas The Awaswas people, also known as Santa Cruz people, are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California. The Awaswas lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains and along the coast of present-day Santa Cruz County from pre ...

Ohlone to the north, the

Mutsun Mutsun (also known as San Juan Bautista Costanoan) is a Utian language spoken in Northern California. It was the primary language of a division of the Ohlone people living in the Mission San Juan Bautista area. The Tamien Nation and band is ...

Ohlone to the east, the Chalon Ohlone on the south east, and the

Esselen The Esselen are a Native American people belonging to a linguistic group in the hypothetical Hokan language family, who are indigenous to the Santa Lucia Mountains of a region south of the Big Sur River in Big Sur, Monterey County, Cal ...

to the south.Milliken, Randall. 1987. ''Ethnohistory of the Rumsen''. Papers in Northern California Anthropology No. 2. Salinas, CA: Coyote Press.

Phonology

Notes

References

* Breschini, Gary S. and Trudy Haversat. 1994. Rumsen Seasonality and Population Dynamics. In ''The Ohlone Past and Present'', pp. 183–197, Lowell J. Bean, editor. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press. * Hackel, Steven W. 2005. ''Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850''. University of North Carolina Press. * Hinton, Leanne. 2001. ''The Ohlone Languages'', in
The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice
', pp. 425–432. Emerald Group Publishing . * Kroeber, Alfred L. 1925. ''Handbook of the Indians of California''. Washington, D.C: ''Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin'' No. 78. (map of villages, page 465) * Levy, Richard. 1978. ''Costanoan'', in ''Handbook of North American Indians'', Vol. 8 (California). William C. Sturtevant, and Robert F. Heizer, eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. / 0160045754, pages 485–495. * Milliken, Randall. 1987. ''Ethnohistory of the Rumsen''. Papers in Northern California Anthropology No. 2. Salinas, CA: Coyote Press. * Teixeira, Lauren. ''The Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area, A Research Guide''. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication, 1997. .

External links