The Yurok tribe is a Native American Indian tribe who lived on the Pacific coast of Northern California. Their culture was interrupted by trappers and the gold rush in the 19th century. They spoke their own language, built box-shaped houses, relied on acorns and fish for food, and had a monetary system based on shells. They lost much of their land and population during the gold rush and were forced into reserves. Today, they comprise the largest Native American group in California and have their own constitution.
Yurok (pronounced YOOR-ock) are a Native American Indian tribe who have long lived on the Pacific coast of Northern California in America. Yurok, meaning “downstream people”, comes from the Karok language; Karok means “upstream”. The culture of the Yurok Indians has been uninterrupted by non-Natives for much longer than that of most other Native American tribes. Trappers in the early 19th century and the 19th century gold rush changed the Yurok way of life.
The Yurok tribe spoke their own macro-Algonquian language called “Yurok”, which is closely related to the language of neighboring tribes. They built individual box-shaped houses with chimneys and sloping redwood roofs; they only used trees that had already fallen, however, as the tribe holds redwoods sacred. While many men and women wore little or no clothing, the buckskin clothes they made were heavily decorated with shells from the Pacific coast.
For food, the Yurok Indians relied primarily on acorns, which they could grind into a flour-like powder, and fish. They built canoes and used spears and nets to catch salmon, shellfish and other sea creatures. The men also hunted deer and other small game while the women gathered nuts and berries to supplement their diet.
Yurok villages were once ruled by the richest man in each town. So unlike many other Native American tribes, wealth was important to this group. The tribe’s monetary system was based on the shell of a mollusk known as a dentalium, although other measurements of wealth included items such as woodpecker scalps and obsidian. The Yurok Indians believed in what many consider modern ideas, including individually owned land and what today would be called a lawsuit.
While the Spanish and other non-Native peoples made infrequent visits to the land of the Yurok Indians beginning in the 1500s, the tribe remained relatively loose until the arrival of hunters in the early 19th century. Even the rugged terrain often inhabited by the Yurok did not deter hunters, nor did it keep away the groups that flocked to the area during the 19th Century Gold Rush. The Yurok Indians lost much of their land and about 1850% of their population during the gold expeditions, when they were forced into reserves. Missionaries began imposing Western-style customs and education on the tribe during this time.
The Yurok Indians comprise the largest Native American group in the state of California with over 4,400 state members. They live on the more than 63,000-acre (25,495-hectare) Yurok Reservation in rancherias alongside Native Americans of other tribes. In 1993, the Yurok Indians adopted their own constitution dealing with the laws of their territory. Residents of the Yurok Indian Reservation are now governed by a council they can elect.
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