Tribe: The Yurok. There are seven federally-recognized Yurok tribes: the Big Lagoon, the Blue Lake, the Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad, the Elk Valley, the Resighini and the Smith River Rancherias, and the Yurok Tribe of the Yurok Reservation.
Meaning of Name: They are called the "Yurok," which means "Downriver People," by the Karuk who are their neighbors upstream on the Klamath River. The Yurok call themselves the "Olekwo'l," which means "Persons."
Location: Humbolt County and Del Norte County in Northern California, by the Klamath River. Some of their villages date back to the 1500 AD. They were not forcibly removed from their homeland, and continue to live on their ancestral land today.
Original Language: Yurok, which is part of the Algonquin language family. This particular branch dates back to about 5,000 BC, when the Algonquin-speaking tribes who were still in Alaska, split off, some going south down the West Coast, and others heading southeast to the Great Lakes region and the East Coast.
Tribal Affiliations: The Hupa and the Karuk tribes.
Traditional Enemies: Americans, especially during the Gold Rush.
Traditional Styles of Housing: Partially subterranean plank houses made of redwood, with a small round front door, a pitched roof and a chimney. Yurok villages also had large round plank male-only "spirit dance" houses with wide rectangular front doors, sweat-lodges, dance pits, and small women-only menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: Before contact with the white man, the men wore short deer grass skirts and the women more knee-length deer grass skirts with layers of necklaces to hide their breasts. They both wore moccasins or sandals, and ponchos when it got cold. The women wore fancy basket (tightly woven deer grass) skull-caps and the men wore very wide and tall rectangular beaded deerskin headbands. Both men and women had tattoos or wore face-and-body paint. After European contact, the women added a sleeveless shirt and may have exchanged their grass skirts for two longer and very decorated aprons, one worn frontwards and one worn backwards, which suggests that their pre-contract grass skirts were actually single-sided aprons. Both men and women wore bangs and their hair cut to shoulder-length.
Traditional Foods: The men fished for or hunted salmon, ocean fish, shellfish, smelt, eel, deer, elk, sea lions, rabbits, squirrels, bear, birds, and the women gathered mollusks, acorns, seaweed, Oregon myrtle (like bay leaves), Indian potatoes (a bulb called "corm,") deer grass (which was also used for making skirts and woven baskets), wild greens, mushrooms, nuts and berries. They do not seem to have grown crops.
Position of Women: The homes were probably owned by the women but constructed by the men while their wives were pregnant. The shamans and healers were women. Yurok women separated themselves from the tribe for ten days during their periods and lived in the menstrual lodges because this was the time in which their powers were considered to be at their height. This was like a monthly ten-day vacation from taking care of the children, cooking, cleaning, gathering foodstuffs, and the irritations of men. During this time, she concentrated on meditation and the accumulation of spiritual energy. Yurok women tried to time their periods to coincide with the new moon, at which time, they could all go down to a special pond in the forest, bathe and gather wood for the fire in the menstrual lodge. If a woman couldn't get her period precisely timed to coincide with everybody else's, she would sit in the moonlight and talk to the moon in order to get herself more in balance.
Yurok Courtship: Yurok weddings were of two kinds: a half-marriage and a full-marriage. When a young man had decided on a mate, he and two of his male relatives would ask the father of the potential bride for a bride-price. For sake of simplicity, let's say that the bride-price was ten deerskins and one hundred dentalia shells. The young Yurok man and his relatives would discuss this price, and if they could meet it, plans for a full-marriage would commence. However, if all that the young man and his relatives could scrounge up was five deerskin and fifty dentalia shells, plans for a half-marriage would commence, and only if the father of the bride needed extra men in the family or if the father of the groom did not like his son's choice in brides. Her social status and the social status of their children depended completely upon her father's bride price. The higher the bride-price as set by her father and paid by her groom-to-be, the more status she got. Her wedding dress, by the way, was woven of four colors: white for the east, blue for the south, orange for the west and black for the north. The couple also wore a lot of turquoise and silver jewelry, including a silver concho belt, to shield against poverty, hunger and bad luck.
Interesting Tidbits: Among the Yurok tribes, traditionally, the richest man leads the tribe. Land was as good as money, and deerskin, woodpecker scalps and long toothy Dentalium shells served as currency. Therefore, the leader of the tribe was the man who owned the most property, deerskin pelts, woodpecker scalps and Dentalium shells. The rich Yurok men who had the most stuff also performed the religious rituals, had the most political power, wore the best clothes, ate the best food, and were the finest speakers. This concept is unusual among Native American tribes, who usually valued sharing and community wellbeing above personal gain.... Also, like the women and their menstrual lodge, the men, in preparation for a wealth quest, would go into an all-male sweat lodge for ten days, during which time they would gash their legs with flakes of white quarts so that the flowing blood would purify them.
Traditional Religions: traditional tribal religion, Christianity
Slavery and the Yurok: A man could become a slave-laborer to his creditor due to indebtedness, possibly voluntarily, but more than likely not. His creditor was, of course, completely free to sell him off to another tribe in order to pay off the debt.
Current Population: There are more than 6,500 registered Yurok.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Basket-weaving and wood-carving. Otherwise, the tribe is extremely poor, and most Yurok live on reservations or Rancherias, which are small plots of land partially owned by the tribe. They are currently working on developing their tourism industry.
Famous Yurok: None that I have heard of.
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