Pomo
The Pomo are a Native American people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small group, the Tceefoka, lived in the vicinity of present-day Stonyford, Colusa County, where they were separated from the majority of Pomo lands by Yuki and Wintuan speakers.
The name Pomo derives from a conflation of the Pomo words and. It originally meant "those who live at red earth hole" and was once the name of a village in southern Potter Valley, near the present-day community of Pomo, Mendocino County. The word may also have referred to the local deposits of red magnesite or to the reddish, earthen clay soil of the area, rich in hematite. In the Northern Pomo dialect, -pomo or -poma was used as a suffix after the names of places, to mean a subgroup of people of the place. By 1877, the meaning of the word Pomo had been broadened, at least in the English language, to refer to not only the Pomo language but the entire group of people speaking it, as well—the people known as Pomo, today.
History
The people called Pomo were originally linked by location, language, and cultural expression. They were not socially or politically linked as a unified group. Instead, they lived in small groups or bands linked by lineage and marriage.Precontact
According to certain linguistic hypotheses, the Pomo descend from Hokan-speaking peoples; per this theory, a Hokan-speaking people migrated into the upland valley regions near Clear Lake ca. 7000 BCE, where their language evolved into Proto-Pomoan. Another theory places the Pomoan ancestral community in the Sonoma region, where coastal redwood forests met with inland valleys and mixed woodlands, bolstered by Clear Lake and its abundant natural resources. Around 4000 BCE to 5000 BCE, some of these people relocated into the areas of today's Russian River Valley and northward, near present-day Ukiah. Their language diverged into western, southern, central, and northern Pomoan, respectively.Another people, possibly Yukian speakers, lived first in the Russian River Valley and Lake Sonoma areas prior to being displaced by the Pomo, who subsequently took over the region. Modern archaeological analyses and discoveries have suggested that the local economy, which was based on women processing acorns by mortar and pestle, and first observed by the Spanish upon their arrival in Central California, may have developed during the Mostin culture period in the Clear Lake Basin.
[Tolay Lake] site
More than a thousand precontact charmstones and numerous arrowheads have been unearthed at Tolay Lake, southern Sonoma County, attributed to both Pomo and Coast Miwok people. A sacred site, the lake is a ceremonial gathering and healing place.Lake Sonoma sites
- At the "broken bridge" site, researchers using radiocarbon dating of artifacts determined it was inhabited ca. 3280 BCE, the oldest human habitation documented in the valley. They consider it part of the Skaggs Phase.
- "Oregon Oak Place" was dated at 1843 BCE; surveyors suggested that, compared to the lower river valleys, this remote area was only sparsely inhabited before the Pomo arrived.
The "Dry Creek" Phase lasted from 500 BCE to 1300 CE. During this phase, the Indigenous people settled the lands more extensively, and permanently. Archaeologists believe a Pomo group took over the lands from earlier peoples during this phase. They founded 14 additional sites in the Warm Springs and Upper Dry Creek areas. Bowls, mortars, and pestles appeared in this phase, probably used by women to pound acorns. The sites were more settled and, likewise, more "complex". Trade took place on a larger scale beyond the region. Decorative beads and ornaments were made in this phase, and approximately half of the artifacts were made of obsidian. Steatite or soapstone objects were also found, which must have been imported into the region through trade, as the rocks do not exist locally. Relatively soft and easy to carve, soapstone was used to make beads, pendants, as well as mortars. The largest and only substantial steatite mine in California existed on Catalina Island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of what is now Los Angeles County. The existence of steatite in Pomo and Northern California Native sites is a strong indicator of the size and complexity of Native California trade networks.
The next phase, named the "Smith Phase" after the Pomo consultants, lasted from 1300 CE to the mid-19th century. Researchers mapped 30 sites in this era, showing a gradual evolving and intensification of trends. Archery, and its associated applications, was a major technological advancement which greatly benefited the population. The production of shell beads, remained important, with drills being found in high numbers. Numerous clamshell beads, a major currency among the peoples of Central California, were also found, also suggesting a vast trade network.
Post contact
There were an estimated 8,000 to 21,000 Pomo among 70 tribes speaking seven Pomo languages at the time of European contact. The way of life of the Pomo changed with the arrival of Russians at Fort Ross on the Pacific coastline, and Spanish missionaries and European-American colonists coming in from the south and east. The Pomo who lived on the coastline and near Fort Ross were known as the Kashaya. They interacted and traded with the Russians.The Spanish missionaries stole or enslaved many of the southern Pomo from the Santa Rosa Plain to Mission San Rafael, at present-day San Rafael, between 1821 and 1828. Only a few Pomo speakers went to Mission Sonoma, the other Franciscan mission, located on the north side of San Francisco Bay. The Pomo who remained in the present-day Santa Rosa area of Sonoma County were often called Cainameros in regional history books from the time of Spanish and Mexican occupation.
In the Russian River Valley, a missionary colonized and baptized the Makahmo Pomo people of the Cloverdale area. Many Pomo left the valley because of this. One such group fled to the Upper Dry Creek Area. The archeology surveyors of the Lake Sonoma region believe that European and Euro-American encroachment was the reason why Pomo villages became more centralized; the people retreated to the remote valley to band together for defense and mutual support.
The Pomo suffered from the infectious diseases brought by the Euro-American migrants, including cholera and smallpox. They did not have immunity to such diseases and fatalities were high. In 1837 a deadly epidemic of smallpox, originating in settlements at Fort Ross, caused numerous deaths of native people in the Sonoma and Napa regions. Mission treatment of Pomo was similar to that of slavery, and many Pomo died due to inhospitable living conditions.
The Russian River Valley was settled in 1850 by the 49ers, and the Lake Sonoma Valley was homesteaded out. The US government forced many Pomo on to reservations so that the European-Americans could homestead the former Pomo lands. Some Pomo took jobs as ranch laborers; others lived in refugee villages.
During this time, two white settlers named Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone enslaved many Pomo people in order to work as cowboys on their ranch. They forced the Pomo Indians to work in very intense and unorthodox conditions and sexually abused the Pomo women. The Pomo men were forced to work in harsh conditions and were not given any respect by the settlers. Exasperated with the violence and oppression of Stone and Kelsey, they rebelled.
The Pomo men set up a sneak attack and killed both Stone and Kelsey. Because of the deaths of Kelsey and Stone, United States lieutenant J. W. Davidson and captain Nathaniel Lyon sent an army to retaliate against the Pomo people. During the Bloody Island Massacre of 1850, on an island in Clear Lake the 1st Dragoons US Cavalry slaughtered between 60 and 100 people, mostly women and children of the Clear Lake Pomo and neighboring tribes.
Shortly after the massacre, during 1851 and 1852, four reservations for the Pomo were established by the United States government in California. Pomo were also part of the forced relocation known as the "Marches to Round Valley" in 1856, conducted by the U.S. federal government. By using bullwhips and guns, white settlers demanded relocation to reservations of the Pomo Indian. The justification given was that to protect their culture, the Pomo Indians had to be removed from their ancestral land.
Richerson & Richerson stated that before the European conquests there was an estimated 3,000 Pomo Indians that lived at Clear Lake; after all of the death, disease, and killings, there were only about 400 Pomo Indians left.
One ghost town in the Lake Sonoma Valley excavations was identified as Amacha, built for 100 people but hardly used. Elder natives of the region remember their grandfathers hid at Amacha in the mid-1850s, trying to evade the colonizing settlers. They tell that one day soldiers took all the people in the village to government lands and burned the village houses.
From 1891 to 1935, starting with National Thorn, the artist Grace Hudson painted more than 600 portraits, mainly of Pomo individuals living near her in the Ukiah area. Her style was sympathetic and poignant, as she portrayed domestic native scenes that would have been fast disappearing in that time.
Population
Demographics
In 1770 there were about 8,000 Pomo people; in 1851 population was estimated between 3,500 and 5,000; and in 1880 estimated at 1,450. Anthropologist Samuel Barrett estimated a population of 747 in 1908, but that is probably low; fellow anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber reported 1,200 Pomo counted in the 1910 Census. According to the 1930 Census there were 1,143 Pomo, and by the 1990 Census there were 4,766.According to the 2010 United States Census, there are 10,308 Pomo people in the United States. Of these, 8,578 reside in California.