Rumsen
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...
Native American people of 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...
. The Rumsen language was spoken from the Pajaro River
Pajaro River
The Pajaro River is a river in Northern California, forming part of the border between Santa Cruz County and Monterey County and between San Benito County and Santa Clara County.-History:...
to Point Sur, and on the lower courses of the Pajaro, as well as on the Salinas
Salinas River (California)
The Salinas River is the largest river of the central coast of California, running and draining 4,160 square miles. It flows north-northwest and drains the Salinas Valley that slices through the Coast Range south from Monterey Bay...
and Carmel River
Carmel River
The Carmel River is a river on the Central Coast of California in Monterey County that originates in the Santa Lucia Mountains. The river flows northwest through the Carmel Valley with its mouth at the Pacific Ocean south of Carmel-by-the-Sea. It is often considered the northern boundary of Big Sur...
s, and the region of the present-day cities of Salinas
Salinas, California
Salinas is the county seat and the largest municipality of Monterey County, California. Salinas is located east-southeast of the mouth of the Salinas River, at an elevation of about 52 feet above sea level. The population was 150,441 at the 2010 census...
, Monterey
Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...
and Carmel. One of eight languages within the Costanoan (alias Ohlone
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...
) branch 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...
, it became one of two important native languages spoken at the Mission San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo
Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo
Mission San Carlos Borroméo del río Carmelo, also known as the Carmel Mission, is a Roman Catholic mission church in Carmel, California. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and a U.S...
founded in 1770, the other being 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...
.
The Rumsen local tribe, from which the language name was derived, held the lower Carmel River Valley and neighboring Monterey Peninsula at the time of Spanish colonization. Their population of approximately 400-500 people was distributed among at least five villages within their territory. An early twentieth-century mapping of a specific village called Rumsen on the Carmel River, several miles inland from the Mission in Carmel, may or may not be accurate. Mission registers indicate that "Tucutnut", about three miles upstream from the mouth of the Carmel River, was the largest village of the Rumsen local tribe.
The last fluent speaker of Rumsen (and probably the last fluent speaker of any Costanoan language) was Isabel Meadows
Isabel Meadows
Isabel Meadows was the last fluent speaker of the Rumsen Ohlone language and a primary Rumsen consultant to J.P. Harrington.Her father, James Meadows, was a professional whaler and her mother, Loretta Onesimo, was Rumsen Ohlone....
, who died in 1939. The Bureau of American Ethnology
Bureau of American Ethnology
The Bureau of American Ethnology was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution...
linguist John Peabody Harrington
John Peabody Harrington
John Peabody Harrington was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the native peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which has remained unpublished: the shelf space in the Library of Congress dedicated to his work...
conducted very extensive fieldwork with Meadows in the last several years of her life. These notes, still mostly unpublished, now constitute the foundation for current linguistic research and revitalization efforts on the Rumsen language.
History
The Rumsen were the first Costanoan people to be seen and documented by the Spanish explorers of Northern California, as noted by Sebastian VizcaínoSebastián Vizcaíno
Sebastián Vizcaíno was a Spanish soldier, entrepreneur, explorer, and diplomat whose varied roles took him to New Spain, the Philippines, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Japan.-Early career:...
when he reached Monterey in 1602. Since this first Spanish contact, Manila galleon
Manila Galleon
The Manila galleons or Manila-Acapulco galleons were Spanish trading ships that sailed once or twice per year across the Pacific Ocean between Manila in the Philippines, and Acapulco, New Spain . The name changed reflecting the city that the ship was sailing from...
s may have occasionally ventured up the California coastline and stopped in Monterey Bay between 1602 and 1796.
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 Rumsen people's lives changed when the Spaniards came from the south to build the Mission San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo and the Monterey Presidio
Presidio of Monterey, California
The Presidio of Monterey, located in Monterey, California, is an active US Army installation with historic ties to the Spanish colonial era. Currently it is the home of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center .-Spanish fort:...
in their territory. The Rumsen speakers were moved into this mission and were baptized over the years between 1771 and 1808. They lived at the mission and its surrounding ranches and were 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...
, until the missions were secularized (discontinued) by the Mexican Government in 1834. Some Mission San Carlos Indian people were formally deeded plots at secularization, only to lose those plots during the Rancho Period. See also: Ohlone: History.
At least since the mission era, the people of the Esselen Nation claim close association with the Rumsen Ohlone, through Mission integration and intermarriage.
Rumsen-speaking tribes
Dialects of the Rumsen language were spoken by four independent local tribes, including the Rumsen themselves, the Ensen of the Salinas vicinity, the Calendaruc of the central shoreline of Monterey Bay, and the Sargentaruc of the Big SurBig Sur
Big Sur is a sparsely populated region of the Central Coast of California where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. The name "Big Sur" is derived from the original Spanish-language "el sur grande", meaning "the big south", or from "el país grande del sur", "the big...
Coast. The territory of the language group was bordered by Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
to the west, the Awaswas
Awaswas
The Awaswas people are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California...
Ohlone to the north, the Mutsun Ohlone to the east, the Chalon
Chalon
The Chalon are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone people of Native Americans who lived in Northern California. Chalon is also the name of their spoken language, listed as one of the Ohlone languages of the Utian family...
Ohlone on the south east, and the 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...
to the south.
- Ohlone tribes and villages in the Monterey Bay Area