Pomo
Pomo is an artificially created term for various Native American groups that lived in the California cultural area. At the beginning of the 19th century there were about 14,000 Pomo, in 1975 there were only 496. They speak a Hoka language .
The Pomo did not see themselves as such, but saw themselves as members of their respective small, completely autonomous groups. The groups spoke different dialects, identical to the seven geographical divisions of the Pomo, the Southwestern (also Kashaya ), Southern, Northern, Central, Northeastern, Eastern or Southeastern Pomo. The size of the individual villages varied greatly. It is estimated that they were home to between 125 and 1500 people each. Usually a few families, around 20 to 30 people, lived together in large houses. The Pomo gathered acorns , berries and plant seeds and hunted antelopes , deer and small game . They also ate caterpillars and grasshoppers .
Because of their shamanistic ideology, the Pomo knew various ceremonies with which they wanted to secure the goodwill of the spirits. Presumably the Pomo were very peaceful people; there is little evidence of warlike activity. The individual groups of the Pomo were characterized by different forms of culture. Depending on the group, there was individual or communal land ownership. Part of the chieftainship was inherited, and part of the Pomo elected their chief. Sometimes the structure of the tribal system was rather simple, other times it was quite complex.
Southeastern Pomo
The Southeast Pomo lived in three villages spread out on islands in East Lake and Lower Lake . The climate was characterized by long dry seasons in summer and heavy rainfall in winter. The land in the villages themselves was owned by the family, while that outside the villages was administered by the local authorities. Each village was headed by a chief, but his competencies are unclear. The Southeastern Pomo supplemented the usual diet of the Pomo with fish . They traded with neighboring ethnic groups .
Around 1812, the Spaniards advanced into the southeastern Pomo area. A little later, American trappers reached Clear Lake . Spanish ranchers soon settled in this area as well. The first serious conflict arose in 1850 when Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone, two American ranchers settled in the Clear Lake Valley in 1847, forced the Pomo to work harvesting their grain under false promises of food payments. After realizing the real intentions of the ranchers, they refused to cooperate and ultimately defended themselves against brutal excesses on the part of the two ranchers and killed them. The US Army then sent a force to punish the insurgent warriors under Chief Augustine. After this unit searched in vain for the warriors, they massacred a settlement with over 200 old people, women and children on one of the islands in Clear Lake and another 75 people along the Russian River. It went down in history as the Bloody Island Massacre .
Shortly before 1850, the Americans conquered the region around the lakes. A year later, numerous European and American settlers began to settle there. The Southeastern Pomo were again forced to work on their farms ; so much of their traditions were lost. Many Indians died as a result of introduced diseases such as smallpox , whooping cough , measles , tuberculosis and the like. The population of the Pomo fell very sharply within a short time. More and more they had to give way to the whites and were forced onto poor reservations. They often evaded mission stations . In 1878 and 1879 different groups of the Pomo together bought 90 acres of land, which they worked together. The population continued to decline. Around 1911, 431 Southeastern Pomo still lived mostly on white farms; before the arrival of the whites, they were believed to have numbered around 3,000 souls. A year later, the government set up a reserve to which some Pomo moved. Others moved to the cities or lived on one of six farms.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bloody Island atrocity remembered at Saturday ceremony , Lake County News, May 13, 2007, (accessed May 16, 2017)
- ↑ [1] ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The Bloody Island Massacre, by Gordon Kooshdakaa, Manataka® American Indian Council Archives, 2010
- ↑ [2] The Kelsey Brothers, a Californian disaster
