l tryl d AN E'IHNOHISTORY OF THE MATTOLE JAIIOS }i. IiffiCOE TABLE OF CONTENTS Page r. ABSTRACT i II. INTRODUCTION 'l A. Prehistory 1 B. Data Base 5 C. Methodology 7 IIT. ETHNOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND 10 rV. MATTOLE-WHITE CONTACTS PRE-1865 21 V" MASTOLE.WHITE RELATIONSHTPS POST.1955 55 VI. CONCLUSIONS 64 REFERENCES 69 Maps: 1. Mattole Territory with Tribelet Subdivisions 2. Reservations in Northwestern Cal i forni a I. ABSTRACT At present the prehistoric and early historic periods of the Mattore va11ey, situated within Humboldt county in northwestern california, are not welr understood. This study investigates the relationships of the Mattole rndians and the first white settrers within bhe contact setting of the Mattole va1.ey. Historical and anthropol0gical analyses of primary ethnographic and historical sources are used to (1) outline t{attole fndian and White land use patterns and (2) examine the turmoil resulting from the direct conflict between these Ewo patterns. Ethnohist,oric sources are examined and tribelet subdivisions within Ehe speakers of the Mattole language are defined for a better understanding of Mattole attitudes of social and political identity. This study concludes that the Mattole rndian culture disintegrated because (1) the whiEes prevented the Mattoles from using Ehe land and its resources in the traditional manner and (2) the social organization of the Mattole left them unprepared to nounE a significant force Eo resist the Whites and (3) the resulting near annihilation of the Mattoles and the peacemeal removal 0f the survivors to reservations or their attachment to white households lefb no viable group of Mattoles to perpetuate the culture. t Ri6r .Fr rnilal rn i io Dell petown r'l, Bior tr n;) tl LI --{ \ ....""""tt:I' t fivir Cr. .e I \o, I rc o)/ rf ,y $y:,LEo,, I,, I Iia .." I - .A. ^ott I aat' lrl a C, ( o. ffio\" ."" i (, I Gam l^R o I' -ID o- ? =J lne a I o 5 , 4 \ -."' Iey c Wt'. \#W iIAP 1 rrtMottole Lcinguoge Boundoryl I t...... Tribelct Boundoricr -N- ,-r-v--tSCALE 2 3 1 5milcs 8&. Cr. O | il Sourcc, Boumhof f ,i Ps g Smith lot. POINI -) ST GEORGE v (lomoth )- Rcr. t , 4,\ TRINIDAO V+ t \co, HUMBOTDT BAY Hcmboldr ta ,. ,ou CAPE MENDOCI SH E I,IE I cov E Mend*im l.l cr N"ri-ffi A -N- ;lr;r,f;, Ethnographic territory of ,tl,.l, ,' speakers of Mattole dialects I \ Reservations to which groups of l'"lattoles were taken I( II. INTRODUCTION A. Prehistory At the time of Euro-american settlement, the I{attole River va1ley in southern Humbordt county, california was inhabited by an rndian group speaking an Athapaskan language. we have few clues as to the identit,y of people inhabiting the southern Humboldt count,y area before Ehe influx of the Athapaskan speakers. Athapaskan peoples were probably the latest arrivals to california and are thought to have come from the north via oregon r s west coasL and rivers (Shipley 1978). Linguistic evidence suggests that ancestral Athapaskan speakers came into california somewhat less than a millennium ago (ttoijer I95O; Hymes 1957; whistler 1979). fhe california Athapaskan languages are Tolowa; Hupa-Chilu1a-Whilkut; Mattole, and Wailaki-Nongatl-Lassik-Sinkyone-Cahto (noijer 19G0, Shipley 1978). Glottochronological dating, comparing the reEention rate cognate of words among several languages within a given stockr has been used to determine that the date of separation of Hupa and Mattole speakers (both Athapaskan groups) lies somewhere between 1000 and 1300 years ago ( ttymes 1957 2292; Kroeber I9 5g :25g ) . This suggests that the Hupa and the california southern Athapaskan (i.e sinkyone, Nongatl, Lassik, wairaki cahto and Mattole) were at one time a single people who separated before, during, or after their migration into california. The Hupa settred along t,he lower Trinity River while Ehe california southern Athapaskan groups settred the drainages of southern Ilumboldt County. Several researchers have made educated speculations as to possible predecessors of the Athapaskans in northwestern california. whistler (1979) places ancestral Karok as the initial occupants of northwestern california. The Karok language is a linguistic isolat,e which may be a member of the Hokan language phylum. The wypot and the Yurok, who spoke languages distantly related to the Argonkian language family, moved into the area around A.D. 900 and A.D. 1100 respectively. According to whistler,s hypothesis, the Athapaskans did not move into california until A.D.1300 Another candidate for the oldest ethnolinguistic group in the study area are the yuki, speakers of a language belonging to the yukian ranguage family, a linguistic isolate with no close relationship with any known North American rndian language phylum. The yuki, arso physically different from their neighbors, were notabry shorter and possessed ronger crania than later-entering groups such as the At,hapaskans. However, two southern Athapaskan-speaking groups, the wailaki and cahto, shared physicar Eraits with the yuki at the time of whit'e contact- rt has been suggested that the wailaki and cahto were at one time northern yukian groups which adopted new cultural traits, including a new language, from the I At,hapaskans who settled in southern Humboldt, (eifford L925) . rn the southern l{umboldt area, there were at least three political-social groups: the Bear River, who rived along the drainage of the Bear River; the Betol, (from whom Ehe name Mattole apparently came) who hari villages at the mouth and on the lower reaches of Ehe Mattore River; and the cooskies who had villages on cooskie creek and the middle reaches of the Mattore River (cf. Map 1). A11 three groups spoke the same language, which is identified in the literature as Mattore. Loud (191g), Kroeber (1925) and Elsasser (19781 view the Bear River and the Betol-cooskie as separate political-social groups but subsume all the groups under the label,MattoIe. Goddard (Lg29), Nomland (1938), and Baumhoff (195g) refer to the Bear River group as Bear River and the Betol-cooskie groups as Mattole. unfortunately attempts .to compare and contrast the Bear River group with the MatEole groups are seriousry impeded by the scarcity of source materiar. I,ihile severar informants were used by ethnographers for the Bear River group, (e.9. Goddard (1929) and Nomland (193g) worked with at least four people), all ethnographers who tried to elicit material on the r{attole groups relied on t.he memory and viewpoints of Joe Duncan or his son rke Duncan (Merriam 1925; Li 1930i Driver 1g3g). Joe Duncan apparently came from one of the villages near the mouth of the MatLole River and was therefore a member of Ehe Betol band or tribelet. The cooskie tribelet is virtually not represented in the literature, since very few members of this group survived past the 1860's" The Mattole and Bear River groups freely intermarried and traded with one another and were each other I s most important al1ies when feuds developed with neighboring groups. perhaps Lhe best illustration of the close rerationship between the Bear River people and the Mattole groups is the fact that the Bear River rndians ca1led Ehemserves and the Mattole by the same name, Nekani (Nomland 1938 292) . According to victor Gorla (personal communication) , a linguist speciali zLng in pacific Coast Athapaskan languages, Nekani probably can be analyzed into Neka-ni: meaning ni 'people' and neka which is either a place name term or a term referring to a particular geographic feature (Cp. Sinkyone 'Ee1 River people, sin '?' , -kyo-'by', -ne 'people'). The Bear River people appear to have spoken a dialect of the Mattole language which differed 'somewhat from that of the Mattole, (Goddard 1g2gt29I). Just how different the Mattole dialect was from the Bear River dialect somewhat is vague. Fang_Kuei Li (1930), who accomplished the most comprehensive study of the Mattole language (working with Joe Duncanrs son rke Duncan) cornpared Mattole data with a word list he obtained from a Bear River woman (apparently Mrs. prince) r and concluded (Li 1930:2)r "rt seems that her diarecE is identical with Mattole morphol0gy, in and probably in vocabulary and differs only in a few phonetic respects,. on the basis of this close linguistic similarity Li classified the uattole and Bear River groups together as speakers of the Mattole language (l,i I930:1). ft is not known just how, if at all, the speech of Ehe cooskie differed from that of either the Betor or t,he Bear River. rn the discussion that follows herein, the term Mat.tole refers to speakers of the Mattole language, i.e. the Betol, Cooskie and Bear River peoples. B. Data Base very littre had been written concerning the tlattole by ethnographers working in t,he field when knowledgeable members of the rndian group were still alive. BoEh pliny Earle Goddard (L929) a'nd C. ilart Merriam (lg21) spent time in the Mattole area before 1930. Goddard concentrated primarily on linguistic investigations and ethnogeography while Merriam collected village listsr prace names, and random notes on native curture. The Goddard and Merriam mat,erial was synthesized by Baumhoff (195g) in his california Athapaskan Groups, providing gooci information on the ethnogeography of the Mattole but 1itEle on their everyday 1ife. Because of the crose relationship between these Mat'Eole groups, the use of ethnographic materiars compiled for the Bear River (coddarci LgZg; Nomland 193g) in place of non-existent Betor-cooskie information is justified in most cases. rn addition, to gain an understanding, at this late date, of who the Matt,ore speakers were and how they lived, one must refer to the more complete ethnographies done for neighboring southern Athapaskan groups who were closely reraEed to the Mattole ringuistically and culturally (oriver 1939, Nomland 1935, Essene L942).