The Central Culture Area
The central culture area covered about half the present territory of California and included three-fifths of all the Native people.
Along the central coast and throughout the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys the climate was mild, and plant and animal life was abundant. Tribal dress and housing reflected the mild climate, and both were often minimal. Material-culture items, such as weapons and tools, were generally simple and unornamented, but in basketry the people of the central area exceeded all others in skill and accomplishment.
The basic unit of political organization was the village community, or tribelet, comprising several small villages with an area of two hundred to three hundred square miles. The acknowledged leader or chief of a tribelet customarily resided in the community's principal village. There was a strong sense of territoriality among the various tribes of the central area, and trespassing was often met by forceful opposition. Warfare, however, was rare and usually limited to small conflicts with few casualties.
Among the many tribes of the central culture area are the Yokuts, Miwok, Maidu, and Pomo.
The Yokuts occupied the San Joaquin Valley from the Kern Lake area in the south to the mouth of the San Joaquin River in the north. Within this vast territory were three distinct cultural groups: the Southern Valley, Northern Valley, and Foothill Yokuts.
The southern San Joaquin Valley once was filled with tule-covered wetlands, an area teeming with aquatic birds, migrating ducks and geese, schools of trout and perch, and great herds of tule elk and pronghorn antelope. The Southern Valley Yokuts fished from canoe-shaped rafts or balsas made of dried tules lashed together.
The Northern Valley Yokuts relied heavily on salmon and acorns for subsistence. Using harpoons and dragnets, they caught spawning salmon in the fall and spring. From the groves of valley oaks, they gathered great quantities of acorns that were ground into meal and cooked as a thick soup or gruel.
The mountainous territory of the Foothill Yokuts supplied them with a wide variety of food resources: deer, quail, acorns, mussels, trout, ducks, wild oats, manzanita berries, pine nuts, rabbits, and ground squirrels. The Foothill Yokuts developed several ingenious strategies for capturing game. They stalked their prey wearing disguises made of deer heads, antlers, and skins. They caught quail by constructing long fences with noose traps, powered by bent sticks under tension, set at openings every twenty to fifty feet.
The Miwok were one of the most populous groups in California, occupying areas from the Pacific Coast to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. They included several major linguistic and cultural groups, each of which was further divided into distinct subgroups and numerous individual tribelets.
Variations in Miwok architecture reflected the great diversity of local conditions and materials within Miwok territory. Among the Miwok who lived in the Sacramento Valley, the more substantial families lived in semisubterranean earth-covered homes. In the upper foothills of the Sierra Nevada, houses were made of three or four layers of bark slabs. The homes of the Coast Miwok were built of interlocking poles of willow or driftwood to which were lashed horizontal poles. Bunches of grass or reeds were tied in rows of thatch on the pole frame.
The Maiduan language was spoken by groups variously known as the Maidu, Konkow, and Nisenan. Each group spoke related but distinct forms of the Maiduan language.
The usual settlement pattern among the Maidu was a cluster of three to five small villages around a more populous, centrally located village. Lands for hunting and fishing were held in common by the tribelet or village-community. Each tribelet was an autonomous entity and served as the primary unit of political organization. The leader played a fairly minor role in the day-to-day affairs of the community and served primarily during times of war or in negotiations for peace.
The northern California people known collectively as the Pomo were actually seven different cultural groups, each speaking distinctly different languages within the Hokan linguistic family. Their territory centered on the valley of the Russian River and covered nearly all of the river's draining basin.
The most remarkable technological achievement of the Pomo was their basketry. The baskets of California Indians are generally of the highest quality, and the Pomo are the best known of the California basketmakers. Pomo baskets, including both twined and coiled ware, were executed in a great variety of shapes from flat plate styles to nearly perfect spheres. Intricate geometrical and banded patterns were often outlined with brightly colored feathers, plumes, beads, and shells.