Chalon
Encyclopedia
Ohlone
The Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are a Native American people of the central California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley...
people of Native Americans who lived in Northern California
Northern California
Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...
. Chalon (also called Soledad) is also the name of their spoken language, listed as one of the Ohlone (alias Costanoan) languages of the Utian family
Utian languages
Utian is a family of indigenous languages spoken in the central and north portion of California, United States. The Miwok and Ohlone peoples both spoke languages in the Utian linguistic group...
. Recent work suggests that Chalon may be transitional between the northern and southern groups of Ohlone languages.
The original Chalon homeland area is the subject of some local controversy. Initial studies in the early twentieth century placed them in the portion of the Salinas Valley
Salinas Valley
The Salinas Valley lies south of San Francisco, California.The word "salina" is spanish for salt marsh, salt lake or salt pan.-Geography:The Salinas Valley runs approximately south-east from Salinas towards King City. The valley lends its name to the geologic province in which it's located, the...
that surrounds the modern town of Soledad, as well as in the adjacent lower Arroyo Seco area to the west and Chalon Creek are to the east. In contrast, a late twentieth century study gives the Spanish-contact period Chalon people the rugged Coast Range valleys centered farther to the east, including upper Chalon Creek, the San Benito River
San Benito River
The San Benito River is a river on the Central Coast of California. From its headwaters near San Benito Mountain in the Diablo Range, it flows northwest between the Diablo Range and the Gabilan Range, traveling for about before its confluence with the Pajaro River, about upstream from the river's...
east of the Salinas Valley
Salinas Valley
The Salinas Valley lies south of San Francisco, California.The word "salina" is spanish for salt marsh, salt lake or salt pan.-Geography:The Salinas Valley runs approximately south-east from Salinas towards King City. The valley lends its name to the geologic province in which it's located, the...
, and the small creeks around San Benito Mountain
San Benito Mountain
San Benito Mountain is a mountain located in the Diablo Range of California. The mountain, which rises to an elevation of , is the highest point in San Benito County and the Diablo Range and is also the highest point in the San Francisco Bay Area, though due to distance from other cities and the...
. The latter study assigns most of that Salinas Valley area to the Eslenajan local tribe of Esselen
Esselen
The Esselen were a Native American linguistic group in the hypothetical Hokan language family, who resided on the Central California coast and the coastal mountains, including what is now known as the Big Sur region in Monterey County, California...
speakers.
Specific Chalon material culture was never documented, but beyond doubt it was a hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
culture based upon deer and acorn harvest, typical of the ethnographic California culture area. Chalon territory was bordered by the Mutsun (another Ohone division) to the east, Rumsen
Rumsen
Rumsen is one of eight language divisions of the Ohlone Native American people of Northern California...
(another Ohlone division) to the north, Esselen
Esselen
The Esselen were a Native American linguistic group in the hypothetical Hokan language family, who resided on the Central California coast and the coastal mountains, including what is now known as the Big Sur region in Monterey County, California...
in the Salinas Valley to the west, Salinan
Salinan
The Salinan Native Americans lived in what is now the Central Coast of California, in the Salinas Valley. Said to have gone extinct by the Census of 1930, the Salinan Native Americans survived and are now in the process of applying for tribal recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.There...
to the south, and Yokuts in the San Joaquin Valley to the east.
During the era of Spanish missions in California
Spanish missions in California
The Spanish missions in California comprise a series of religious and military outposts established by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order between 1769 and 1823 to spread the Christian faith among the local Native Americans. The missions represented the first major effort by Europeans to...
, the Chalon people's lives changed with the founding of Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad
Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad
Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad is in the Salinas Valley near Soledad, in central Monterey County, California. The mission was founded on October 9, 1791 for the increasing settlement of upper Las Californias Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and for the Indian Reductions to convert...
in 1791. Most Chalon speakers moved into the mission between 1795 and 1814, where they were baptized, lived and educated to be Catholic neophytes, also known as Mission Indians
Mission Indians
Mission Indians is a term for many Native California tribes, primarily living in coastal plains, adjacent inland valleys and mountains, and on the Channel Islands in central and southern California, United States. The tribes had established comparatively peaceful cultures varying from 250 to 8,000...
. At Mission Soledad many Chalon married local Esselen speakers, while others married Yokuts who were brought into the mission between 1806 and 1834. The Soledad mission was discontinued by the Mexican Government in 1835 during the period of secularization
Secularization
Secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions...
, at which time the survivors scattered. Most went to work on the farms and ranches of west-central California, while many with Yokuts ancestry moved east into the San Joaquin Valley.
Chalon mobile bands and villages
The term Chalon was documented by the Franciscan priests in their Mission Soledad ecclesiastical records. The term definitely applied to a region, since individuals were baptized from specific villages such as "Ponojo del Chalon" and "Zusotica del Chalon." Anthropologist A.L. Kroeber, who first mapped the Chalon language area, presumed that it entirely surrounded Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad on the Salinas River; he mapped the specific village of Wacharo-n adjacent to the mission itself. A recent alternative analysis places the Eslenajan local tribe of EsselenEsselen
The Esselen were a Native American linguistic group in the hypothetical Hokan language family, who resided on the Central California coast and the coastal mountains, including what is now known as the Big Sur region in Monterey County, California...
language speakers as the inhabitants of the Soledad vicinity at the founding of the mission, places the Guachirron local tribe as Rumsen speakers farther north near Monterey Bay, and places the villages of Chalon to the east of the Salinas Valley.
External links
- Chalon language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian LanguagesSurvey of California and Other Indian LanguagesThe Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas...