DAIRYLAND REGION
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DAIRYLAND REGION – CHAUCHILA LOCAL TRIBE
One hundred and nine Chauchilas were baptized at Franciscan missions between 1819 and 1841. That number is lower than the typical 140-160 for Yokuts groups converted during the early 1820s, suggesting that many Chauchilas chose not to join the missions. Mexican correspondence from the late 1820s documents the Chauchila as “horse thieves.” By the 1830s. By the 1830s they seem to have moved their core area east into the Le Grand region, probable homeland of the Thayapthre Yokuts prior to the mission period (see the CPNC Le Grand region monograph). It is suggested here that the Chauchila and Thrayapthre amalgamated into a single group, perhaps in the late 1820s, certainly by the end of the 1833 malaria epidemic, under the Chauchila apellation. Leaders in Mariposa War resistance to American settlement in 1850-1851, they were settled during the 1850s on the Fresno River Reservation (see the CPNC Le Grand and Raymond region monographs for details). Today’s Indian groups of the Madera County foothills probably include individuals with Chauchila Yokuts ancestry. There may also be families of Chauchila Yokuts ancestry in the Mission San Juan Bautista descendant community.
Environment
The Dairyland region is in the San Joaquin Valley just east of the northward-flowing San Joaquin River. Elevation varies from 120 feet on the west to 235 feet on the east. Numerous small streams flow westward through this plain on their way from the Sierra Nevada to the San Joaquin River. Two of them, Ash Slough and Berenda Slough (distributary branches of the Chowchilla River), flow southwestward through the heart of the region. The Chowchilla River itself runs along the region’s northern border, while the Fresno River flows westward through the southern part of the region. Pre-contact? vegetation was grassland, with willow thickets and occasional cottonwood trees along the stream channels.
Spanish Period Expedition References
No Spanish expeditions are known to have entered the Dairyland region prior to Chauchila movement to the missions. The Moraga-Muñoz party of 1806 probably traveled just to the east of the region on their southward journey.
Mission Register References
Beginning in 1819 and ending in 1841, 109 people identifiable as Chauchilas were baptized at Franciscan missions to the west. Most of them (103 people) went to Mission San Juan Bautista, but three were baptized at Santa Clara and one each were baptized at Santa Cruz, Soledad, and San Carlos Borromeo. Additionally, a few of the many Soledad converts listed only as “Tulares” people may have been Chauchilas, given the wide area from which that mission drew a few of its tribally-identifiable converts. None of the baptized Chauchilas were identified as a captain, suggesting that the leader of the group never joined a mission.
San Juan Bautista. Of the 103 Chauchilas at San Juan Bautista, most (71 people) were baptized during the years 1819 through 1822, initially in clusters next to groups of Nopchinches and Eyulahuas, the last with Heuchis, Uthrocos, and Silelamnes. The remaining 32 people, baptized between 1823 and 1841, went into the mission alone or in small groups with Copchas, Heuchis, Cuccunus, or Hoyimas. Scribes at San Juan Bautista spelled the group name Chausila, with the exception of one entry spelled Chaucila by Father Anzar in the 1830s. Father Arroyo exercized some flair in 1820, variously marking the “nación de los Chausilas,” the “tribu o casta de Chausila,” and “raza de los Chausilas” (SJB-B 2443, 2462, 2469); one cannot read any deep political subtlety into any of the terms as he used them. Of interest for later history, a 19-year-old man, baptized as Jose de los Reyes by Father Anzar in 1837, is the most likely mission register entrant to have been the Jose Reyes of later James Savage and Gold Rush fame (SJB-B 4298).
San Carlos Borromeo. One Chauchila appears in the Mission San Borromeo baptismal register, a man baptized on the verge of death on April 12, 1820. The entry for the man, christened Felipe de Jesus, states that he was the father of a catecumeno (adult in training prior to baptism) at Mission San Juan Bautista and that he was from “la Raza de Chausila, de la Rancheria y parage nombrado Huahali” (SCA-B 3170 by Fr. Sarría). This man recovered and re-aggregated to San Juan Bautista, where he died in 1825 (SJB-D 2139).
Santa Cruz. A woman baptized at Santa Cruz on November 15, 1820 was stated to be from “Chaguil” (SCR-B 1882). She was married to a Chaneche/Yeurata Yokuts man (Los Banos region) who was baptized the same day (SCR-B 1867). Of note, her husband was one of the last Chaneche converts, suggesting that he had been living with her among the Chauchilas years after the Chaneche were brought to the missions.
Soledad. One probable Chauchila appears in the Mission Soledad baptismal register. She was a 40-year-old woman baptized as Perpetua on July 24, 1828 from “la Ranchería Tasyla en el Tular, asi el Norte de esta Misión” (SO-B 2029). Her mother, a 70 year old woman from “la Ranchería llamada Euce en el Tular, Norte de esta Misión,” thus probably a Heuchi of the Madera region, was baptized at Soledad in late 1829 (SO-B 2045).
Santa Clara. Three Mission Santa Clara entries of the 1830s document Chauchila baptisms, of which two seem to refer to a single individual. First, in SCL-B 8675 on October 10, 1834, Father Moreno describes the baptism of a young girl brought from the “Chauciles” during a raid by citizens of San Jose into the Sierra Nevada. The same information was repeated in SCL-B 9872, an entry by the same priest in April of 1838, including information to the effect that he was writing down information about a past event (see full quote in the Early Expeditions section below). Finally, an 18-year-old “naturál de los Chauciles” was christened Jose Mariano at Santa Clara on June 27, 1841 (SCL-B 10,151).
Mission Marriage Patterns. The Chauchilas who went to the missions were spouses in 21 pre-mission marriages, 20 at San Juan Bautista and one at Santa Cruz. Most of the married Chauchilas had spouses also identified as Chauchila (26 individuals among 13 events), while two were married to Nopchinche Yokuts (Santa Rita region), two to Heuchi Yokuts (Madera region), one to an Eyulahua Yokuts (Firebaugh region), and one to a Copcha Yokuts (Cottonwood Creek region).
Arroyo de la Cuesta’s 1822-1827 Padron. Chauchila was the fifth group listed in Father Arroyo de la Cuesta’s 1822-1827 Padron. In the preamble to the work he noted, “I will enter the Chauchilas and also the Gueche [Heuchi of Madera region], who together make only a half-sized group.” Then in the text introduction to the group, he wrote “Padron of the Chausila nation who have come from gentility” with a list of 65 individuals, and immediately thereafter an introduction to the Heuchi, as follows: “I continue to the Geuche Nation, who are nearly one with the Chausilas.”
Mexican Period Expedition References
Smith 1827. Jedediah Smith passed through the Dairyland region in March of 1827, on his way north from San Bernardino to the Stanislaus River with scores of trappers and more than 100 horses. In his diary review, he noted the absence of Indian people in a stretch of land that included the Dairyland region:
- Since I struck the Peticutry [San Joaquin river] I had seen but few indians. The greater part of those that once resided here having (as I have since been told) gone in to the Missions of St. Joseph and Santa Clara [Smith in Brooks 1977:146].
Rodriguez 1828. The Mexican military under Sebastian Rodriguez raided the Chauchila in 1828. Because the Chauchila seem to have moved their center of operations from the Dairyland region eastward by that time, details of the Rodriguez raid are discussed in the CPNC Le Grand region monograph.
Ferguson, 1834. A Mexican party from the town of San Jose brought back a Chauchila girl from a horse raid into the Sierra foothills in 1834. Because of the location of the event, and the probable 1834 location of the Chauchila to the east of the Dairyland region, its details are presented in the CPNC Le Grand region monograph.
1846-1910 Historical References
The Chauchila Yokuts may have hunted and gathered in the Dairyland region during the 1840s, but their history switches entirely to areas to the east during the mid and late nineteenth century. (See the CPNC Le Grand region monograph for references to the Chauchila between 1846 and 1910.)
Classic Ethnographic References
Kroeber 1925. Kroeber assigned a very large area to the Chauchila, including the Dairyland region and parts of the adjacent El Nido, Le Grand, and Madera regions. He wrote:
- The Chauchila or Chauchili, more correctly Chaushila or Chaushilha (plural Chaweshali), sometime also called Toholo, “lowlanders, westerners,” by the hill tribes, were in the plains along the several channels of Chowchilla River, in whose name their appellation is perpetuated [1925:485].
Because Kroeber gave the Le Grand region to the Chauchila (rather than the Thrayapthre, as suggested in this study) and the foothill Raymond region further east to the Pohonichi Miwok, he argued “the Chauchila are the first Yokuts tribe to have no upland neighbors of their own stock, the southern Miwok now being the easterners.” Kroeber identified two village locations that he assigned to the Chauchila:
- They lived at Shehamniu on this stream [Chowchilla River], apparently at the eastern edge of the plains, some miles below Buchanan. Halau, “cane,” near Berenda, which may have been in their range or that of the Heuchi, recalls a town of the same name on far distant Kern Lake [1925:485].
Kroeber mapped Shehamniu at a spot that is within this study’s Le Grand region (see the Le Grand region text regarding J. C. Fremont’s 1845 attack on the Chaucila tribe in that area, perhaps at Shehamniu); it may have been a village of the combined Chauchila and Thrayapthre after the population destruction caused by the malaria epidemic of 1833. Halau, in the Madera region, was certainly a Heuchi village prior to Spanish disturbance. Kroeber’s field notes suggest that his documentation for the Chauchila tribe may have been obtained in 1904 from Molly, a part-Hoyima Yokuts woman living on the Fresno River near Raymond (Kroeber Field Notes,[BANC MSS C-B 925], Notebook 5709-21 column 1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).
Aginsky 1943. Burt Aginsky (1943:394) gathered cultural information in 1936 from Valley Yokuts-speaker John Ned Jones, aged 74, who was living in the town of Friant in Fresno County. Aginsky did not document Mr. Jones’ local tribe affiliation.
Newman 1944. Stanley Newman (1944) secured Chauchila linguistic material from “Johnny Jones” at Friant in 1931. We are virtually certain that this Jones was the person Burt Aginsky interviewed at Friant.
Gayton 1945. Bill Wilson, a 90-year-old Dumna, told Gayton that the “Chauši'la” had lived on the Fresno River at Madera. Note that most evidence indicates that the early Madera region people were the Heuchi Yokuts. Gayton’s information combines with that of many others to suggest that “Chauchila” became a catch-all phrase for many groups of the east side of the San Joaquin Valley between the Merced and San Joaquin rivers.
Latta 1949. In his first edition, Latta (1949:inside cover) mapped the Chauchila (his Chauchila) tribal area generally across the El Nido, Dairyland, and Le Grand regions. His map reproduces Kroeber’s (1925) locations for the villages of Halau and Shehamniu in such a way as to suggest that Shehamniu was a Chauchila village and Halau may have been either a Heuchi or Chauchila village. Latta (1949:3) called the Chauchila “the first Yokuts tribe about which anything definite is known”, perhaps in reference to Fremont’s 1845 documentation about them.
- These people were the only warlike tribe of Yokuts. They ranged along the Chowchilla River from the San Joaquin River on the west to the Sierra foothills on the east (Latta 1949:3).
Latta chose the Chauchila as the exemplary Yokuts tribe of the San Joaquin Valley plains. “This tribe has been known since its earliest contact with white people for its hostile attitude and horse stealing,” he wrote (1949:34). He hypothesized about their pre-contact lifeways, emphasizing the value in which they probably held horses. Then he devoted four pages to Fremont’s Memoir excerpt regarding an 1845 encounter with displaced Chauchilas, probably on the west edge of the Raymond region (Latta 1949:34-38). All in all, his information for the region, and for the Chauchila Yokuts, seems second hand, and definitely lacks the rich detail his informants gave him for areas south of the San Joaquin River.
Recent Ethnographic References
Cook 1955. In his study of the aboriginal population of the entire San Joaquin Valley, Cook (1955:76) mapped the combined Dairyland, southern El Nido, southern Le Grand, northern Madera, northern Raymond, and Nipinnawassee regions as lands of the “Chauchila.” He noted that the vicinity was “very poorly represented in the early documentary sources,” but did cite Rodriguez to suggest that the original “Chauchila” population was probably 400 (Cook 1955:51). While Cook’s (1955:50-54) textual discussion of population density in the area does not comport with his mapping units, he does suggest an aboriginal population of 5.05 persons per square mile in the eastern San Joaquin Valley south of the Merced River and north of the Kings River.
Latta 1977. In his 1977 edition, Latta changed the group name spelling to “Chauchela” and completely re-wrote his material on the group. He reprinted the Fremont Memoir excerpt in one section (1977:237-241) and added another section on their geography in which he attributed the villages of Halau and Shehámniu to the Chauchila group on the basis of information from Pahmit, a Dumna, and George Rivercomb, half-Chukchanci (1977:156-159). He also added a story from J.A. Aguila to the effect that the Chauchila had a village on the east bank of the San Joaquin River “a short distance downstream from opposite the later headquarters of Miller & Lux Frémont Ranch, which is east of Ingomar” at the time they were raiding cattle in Coast Range ranchos (1977:157). All three of these villages seem to have been within the territories of other local tribes at the time of Spanish mission outreach prior to 1821.
Wallace 1978. The California volume (Heizer 1978) presents three chapters of Yokuts material, one each for Northern Valley, Southern Valley, and Foothill Yokuts groups. The CPNC Dairyland region is covered in the Northern Valley chapter, written by William Wallace (1978). Its accompanying map places the “Chawchila” on the north side of the Chowchilla River in a way that suggests they were centered in the CPNC El Nido and Le Grand regions (1978:462). He also listed “Chawchila” as an independent local tribe, and followed Kroeber in giving the villages of Shehamniu in the Le Grand region and Halau in the Madera region to them (1978:470). Overall, Wallace’s presentation of ethno-geographic information for his Northern Valley Yokuts area was not systematic and not always accurate.
