PREPARATORY NOTES FOR COALINGA REGION – CHENEN LOCAL GROUP

By Randall Milliken

The Coalinga region of western Fresno County has a single significant modern town, Coalinga. We model a pre-mission population of 200 for the area and a baptized adult population of ±80. As of 2008, the Chenen of Mission San Miguel are thought to have come from this region. The Escoyzama people at Soledad are considered to have been the same people, due to time of baptism and the small number of Chenen people in any records. The "zama" ending seems to be a Salinan word for houses, indicating that the speakers were Salinans. If they were the same group as the Chenen people, the evidence suggests that they were bilingual in Costanoan and Salinan.

Environment

Rainfall averages only nine inches; summer surface water was probably supplied by Los Gatos Creek, fed by the higher rainfall of the Priest Valley region to the west. the northern and downstream watershed of Los Gatos Creek, from Juniper Ridge on the west to the edge of the San Joaquin Valley on the east The hills and valleys of the southern and eastern portions of the region were covered with grassland, while the mountainous northwest quarter was a mosaic of chaparral and blue oak woodland.

Early Expedition References

To be developed.

Mission Register References

Ten different groups named in the mission records are assigned to the Coalinga region. In order of number of adults represented, they include Quetaayno (13 adults), Lysol (11 adults), Zula (nine adults), Staquel (17 of 29 adults), Quetspoy (eight adults), Questmeu (six adults), Teyeyau (four adults), Tepaseyat (three adults), and Zisjazama (one adult), as well as three unspecified easterners from Mission San Antonio. None of these group names, with the exception of Staquel, appeared in the Mission San Miguel records. Lysol people also appeared at Mission Soledad, but until more work is done, we assign five Soledad individuals to the region. All of these groups appeared in their greatest numbers at the missions during the 1804-1806 period, the very end of concerted Coast Range missionization. Adult baptisms for the region reached the half-way point in July 1805.

1840-1900 Historical References

To be developed.

Classic Ethnographic References

To be developed. Special attention to works by Harrington, Kroeber, Mason, and Merriam.

Recent Ethnographic References

Gibson 1983. Gibson (1983:280) mapped the intermarried Staquel and Chenen groups in the Los Gatos Creek region: Chenen at the present town of Coalinga and Staquel in the Juniper Ridge area to its west. We give the Coalinga vicinity to Staquel, as well as Jacalitos Creek in our Avenal region. We place Chenen farther southeast on Zapato Chico Creek in our Avenal region. Results of further analyses of genealogies for this area from Missions San Antonio, San Miguel, and Soledad may support our conclusion or may indicate that Gibson (1983) was more likely to have been correct.

Milliken 2006a. Milliken (2006a:27) noted that Coalinga is one of the regions in which difficulties emerge in assigning communities to the region, due to very atypical marriage patterns. An example of a group with unexplainable kinship ties is Chenen, a large community baptized at San Miguel which had marriage ties to the presumed San Juan Creek groups (Etsmal and Pel), to east-side groups (Staquel and Sulaltap), and to groups in the western part of the Cholam Hills region (Joyuclac, Loyam, and Cheyne). Chenen kinship patterns are nearly identical to those of the Cholam group, a still larger group also baptized at Mission San Miguel. Yet, unexpectedly, no pre-mission marriages between Chenen and Cholam people have been discovered through selective kinship-chart diagramming. For this study, Chenen is tentatively assigned to the Los Gatos Creek region, following Gibson’s (1983:237-238) suggestion that the group came from "Chane," a pool of water on the plain east of Coalinga. Yet the Chenen community is not intermarried with either Quetspoy or Lisoli, two communities that have been assigned with Chenen to the Los Gatos Creek region. Full kinship charting and renewed study are needed for these groups and all other groups currently assigned to the contiguous Los Gatos Creek, Wartham Creek, Cholam Hills, and Kettleman Plain regions.