Cummings Valley is in California's Tehachapi Mountains .
20-610: Cummings Valley was settled by the Kawaiisu people before the arrival of white Americans , largely of Irish origin , in the 1850s. The region's agriculture began with livestock and dry farming as water was not imported until 1973. This water consists of 20,000 acre-feet of water annually from the State Water Project pumped 3,425 vertical feet from the Grapevine area. These imports, including their use to recharge
40-422: A few fluent speakers and a variable number of partial speakers. Choynimni went extinct in 2017. Wikchamni, Chukchansi, Tachi, and Yawelmani were being taught to at least a few children during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Chukchansi is now a written language, with its own alphabet developed on a federal grant. Chukchansi also has a phrase book and dictionary that are partially completed. In May 2012,
60-561: A focus of much linguistic research. The Yokuts language consists of half a dozen primary dialects. An estimated forty linguistically distinct groups existed before Euro-American contact. Glottolog concludes that these dialects fall into four distinct languages: Palewyami Yokuts , Buena Vista Yokuts , Northern Yokuts , Tule-Kaweah Yokuts . Almost all Yokuts dialects are extinct, as noted above. Those that are still spoken are endangered. Until recent years, Choinimni , Wikchamni , Chukchansi , Kechayi , Tachi and Yawelmani all had
80-477: A genetic relationship between Yokuts, Utian, Maiduan, Wintuan, and a number of Oregon languages to be definite (cf. DeLancey and Golla 1997 ). Regardless of higher-order disagreement, Callaghan (1997) provides strong evidence uniting Yokuts and the Utian languages as branches of a Yok-Utian language family. The term "Delta Yokuts" has recently been introduced in lieu of the longer "Far Northern Valley Yokuts" for
100-720: A tribe of indigenous people of California in the United States . The Kawaiisu Nation is the only treatied tribe in California, Ratified Treaty (No. 256), 9 Stat. 984, Dec. 30, 1849. This Treaty with the Utah Confederation of tribal nations. They have never given up their territorial rights to any of their ancestral land to the United States. The Kawaiisu Nation had preexisting treaties with Spain and those were recognized by Mexico until 1849 when California
120-616: Is an endangered language spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California in and around the San Joaquin Valley by the Yokuts people . The speakers of Yokuts were severely affected by disease, missionaries , and the Gold Rush . While descendants of Yokuts speakers currently number in the thousands, all constituent dialects apart from Valley Yokuts are now extinct . The Yawelmani dialect of Valley Yokuts has been
140-549: The Caliente, Paiute, Tehachapi Valley Indians , and Tehachapi Indians , but they called themselves depending on dialect Nuwu, New-wa, Nu-oo-ah or Niwiwi , meaning "The People." The tribal designations as "Kawaiisu" are English adoptions of the Yokutsan words used by the neighboring Yokuts. They self-identification term Nüwa ("People") is commonly used by themselves and in the newspapers and media. Before European contact,
160-769: The Yokuts , another group living in the San Joaquin Valley .Since 1863 after the Kawaiisu Massacre at Tillie Creek, they have often been in conflict with the tribe in the mountains north of them. The Kawaiisu are famous for their petroglyphs and rock art . Starting in the early 1850s, a 175 year genocide of the Kawaiisu people and their culture begin by European settlers, militias and the US Army. The ongoing cultural genocide continues to this day centered in Kern County,Ca. In 2011, The Kawaiisu Project received
180-695: The "Desert Kawaiisu" and the "Mountain Kawaiisu". The Kawaiisu are related by language and culture to the Southern Paiute of southwestern Nevada and the Chemehuevi of the eastern Mojave Desert of California . They may have originally lived in the desert before coming to the Tehachapi Mountains region, as early as many thousands of years ago. The Kawaiisu participated in cooperative antelope drives (driving herds of antelope into traps so they could be more easily slaughtered) with
200-764: The Chana Lake Naval Weapons Center. Kawaiisu complex basket weaving was recognized as the finest in the Americas. Much of inventory of the Kawaiisu baskets are held and hidden by UC Berkley in a private collection. The Kawaiisu language is a member of the Southern Numic division of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The Kawaiisu homeland was bordered by speakers of non-Numic Uto-Aztecan languages. The Kawaiisu have been mislabeled and mistakenly known by several other names, including
220-752: The Governor's Historic Preservation Award for its efforts to document the Kaiwaiisu language and culture, including "the Handbook of the Kawaiisu, language teaching ... the Kawaiisu Language and Cultural Center, [and] the Kawaiisu exhibit at the Tehachapi Museum." A local newspaper noted in 2010, "There are also several hundred living Kawaiisu descendants, even though a pervasive misconception believes them to be all gone." Estimates for
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#1732791208128240-549: The Kawaiisu lived in 100s 0f permanent winter villages of 60 to 100 people. They often divided into smaller groups during the warmer months of the year and harvested plants(included pinon nuts) in the mountains and deserts. They hunted animals and fished for food and raw materials. They were known for their mining and trading of obsidian throughout the western Americas and deep into Mexico. They were also known for their building of sturdy tulle boats used for fishing and transportation. Some believe they were divided in two regional groups:
260-650: The Linguistics Department of Fresno State University received a $ 1 million grant to compile a Chukchansi dictionary and grammar texts, and to "provide support for scholarships, programs, and efforts to assemble native texts and create a curriculum for teaching the language so it can be brought back into social and ritual use." Yokuts is a key member in the proposed Penutian language stock. Some linguists consider most relationships within Penutian to be undemonstrated (cf. Campbell 1997 ). Others consider
280-517: The dialect spoken by the people in the present Stockton and Modesto vicinities of San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, California, prior to their removal to Mission San Jose between 1810 and 1827. Of interest, Delta Yokuts contains a large number of words with no cognates in any of the other dialects, or for that matter in the adjacent Utian languages, although its syntax is typically Northern Valley Yokuts. This anomaly has led Whistler (cited by Golla 2007 ) to suggest, "The vocabulary distinctive of some of
300-533: The late 1880's. A major massacre and a death march occurred in 1863 and 1864. Tribal members learned to escape to the remote mountains and hid their true heritage. Kawaiisu members sometimes called themselves the "Coso People" or even joined other tribes to protect themselves and their families. Today , the Kawaiisu's own tribal records indicate that total eligible members may be as high as 100,000 and with one family having up to 10,000 eligible members. Yokutsan languages Yokuts , formerly known as Mariposa ,
320-579: The natural water basin have been impacted by the ongoing climate-change -caused megadrought . Agriculture remains a large part of the Cummings Valley economy, including greenhouses and vineyards . Stallion Springs and the California Correctional Institution are both located in Cummings Valley. The dominant geographical feature in Cummings Valley is Cummings Mountain to the southeast. Many portions of
340-763: The northern Mojave Desert , to the north and northeast of the Antelope Valley , Searles Valley , as far east as the Panamint Valley , the Panamint Mountains the western edge of Death Valley and to the Pacific Coast. - The Kawaiisu considered the Coso Range near Ridgecrest Ca. the site of their creation and their most sacred land. They are well known for their rock art/Po-o-ka-di that exists throughout their territory, including on
360-437: The pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber proposed the combined 1770 population of the Kawaiisu as 1,500. He estimated the surviving population of the Kawaiisu in 1910 as 500. The Kawaiisu culture is matriarchal. The estimates of the Kawaiisu tribal membership is grossly under counted. Tribal members were hunted down and enslaved or killed from about 1850 until
380-414: The valley retain their valley oak -dominated, natural savannah state. Other oaks in Cummings Valley include black oaks . 35°07′N 118°36′W / 35.11°N 118.60°W / 35.11; -118.60 This Kern County, California -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Kawaiisu The Kawaiisu Nation (pronounced: "ka-wai-ah-soo" ) are
400-654: Was becoming a State. Tribal members lived in a series of small and large permeant villages in the Tehachapi Valley and to the north across the Tehachapi Pass in the southern Sierra Nevada , toward Lake Isabella and Walker Pass and all the way to the Pacific. Historically, the Kawaiisu also traveled eastward and westward on food-gathering trips to areas in
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