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TNB->Rancheria India: Elk Valley Rancheria Indians

Posted on Friday, July 20 @ 20:55:48 CDT

Elk Valley Rancheria Indians.. KEYWORDS elk valley rancheria indians tolowa indians california indians Pacific Coast Athapaskans

The Tolowa live on the Smith River and Elk Valley Rancherias in Del Norte County, California. ELK VALLEY RANCHERIA is a federal reservation of Tolowa Indians in Del Norte County, near Crescent City, on the Pacific Coast just south of the Oregon border. The total area of the rancheria is 105 acres, with a population around 77.

Stumble It!

From an excavation of an abandoned village site, Point St. George, it was learned that before white people came there, the Tolowa made villages with separate locations for living, working and cemeteries to bury their dead.

*Ethnie:*	TOLOWA
*Language:*	Tolawan
*Family:*	Pacific Coast Athapaskan
*Stock:*	Athapaskan
*Phylum:*	Na-Dene
*Macro-Culture:*	Northwestern California

Speakers

1997 Sebeok

Aboriginal Locations

8 to 10 villages

Present Locations

ELK VALLEY RANCHERIA, Crescent City

SMITH RIVER RANCHERIA, Smith River

Year	*History*
1775	Bodega visited Trinidad Bay, but did not meet Tolowa
1793	Capt. George Vancouver visited Trinidad Bay and did not meet tribe, but may have caused Cholera epidemic which spread to Tolowa
1828	First White contact with Jedediah Smith
1850	Decade of measles and cholera epidemics as White settlers and miners encroached into territory
1872	Began practice of Ghost Dance
1929	Introduction of Indian Shaker movement

Year	Population	Source
1700	450	NAHDB calculation
1770	450	Kroeber estimate
1800	450	NAHDB calculation
1848	450	Cook estimate
1852	450	Cook estimate
1880	200	Cook estimate
1900	150	NAHDB calculation
1910	121	Census
2000	200	NAHDB calculation

Other speakers of the same language:

None

Culture and History

The Tolowa were a sedentary coastal hunter/gatherer tribe that relied heavily on fishing. The Pacific Coast Athapaskans arrived in the area late in the first millennium from Canada. The Tolowa were located on Crescent Bay, Lake Earl and the Smith River. They were nearly decimated from diseases brought with the White influx.

They made square-shaped semi-subterranean houses of redwood planks set into the earth along the sides, with earth, clay, flat beachstone or wood plank floors, and plank roofs meeting at a single central peak with a smokehole in the center and a rounded entrance hole at one end, similar to the dwellings of the Yurok, their near neighbors.

A ledge all the way around the inside of the house was used to store baskets full of dried food. In the working area, they worked.flint harpoons and arrowheads,and knives for butchering animals, and made stone adzes to hollow out redwood logs for canoes.

Obsidian did not naturally occur in the area, and the Tolowa would trade for it. Some obsidian actually came from as far away as Bend, in east-central Oregon. The Tolowa hunted seals and sea-lions, using redwood dugouts, going as far as Seal Rocks, about 6 miles offshore, and they fished for smelt, perch and cod from the beach and gathered shellfish, and got salmon, and eel from the rivers. They also hunted deer and elk, but this was not as important a supply of food for them as the rivers and sea provided.

They would travel inland to gather acorns Like most of the people in the area, they prized the dentalia shell, and large shells were reserved for their elite people, and shamen. Strings of dentalia were used as money in trade. (Gould: 1966)

The Tolowa gave the Karok smelt and dentalia, and got from them soaproot and pine nut beads. They gave the Rogue River Athabaskans women's basketry caps, eating baskets and trinket baskets. They obtained redwood dugouts from the Yurok. (Davis: 1966)

Following unspecified Indian-white conflicts during 1851-1852, Del Norte settlers attacked and burned the northernmost (Tolowa) village of Howonquet in 1853. About 70 people were killed. A well-remembered massacre occurred in the late fall of that year, at the (Tolowa) village of Yontocket on Lake Earl, north of Crescent City. During a winter dance, probably a ten-day World Renewal Dance, an armed contingent of Crescent City settlers attacked, killing a large number of dance participants, and burning the village to the ground.