NORTH FORK REGION – NUMEROUS MONO HAMLETS

North Fork Mono is the name ethnographers have applied to the Numic Shoshonean speakers who inhabited the North Fork region at the time of western contact. The North Fork region of Madera County is now sparsely populated, containing only the tiny towns of North Fork, Wishon, and Chawanakee. At western contact the people were spread across the region in numerous small hamlets; the largest contained 40-60 people, while the smallest consisted of a single family. Family composition of villages changed from year to year, and village locations changed over the years. Life was not organized under the direction of strong chiefs.

Three controversial North Fork region boundary areas deserve attention. First, in the southwest, questions exist about a possible Yokuts-speaking group, the Toltichi, in the canyon of the San Joaquin River in the present Kerchoff Lake vicinity. Second, the area south of the San Joaquin River is mapped within the region and inferred here to have been North Fork Mono hunting and gathering territory, but it may well have been used just as often by people from the Auberry and Cold Springs regions. Third, the Bass Lake/Crane Valley area in the northwest has been assigned entirely to North Fork Mono territory by most ethnographers. We split that area, placing its western portion in the adjacent Coarse Gold region, due to its proximity to the historic-era Chuckchansi Yokuts village at Oakhurst.

The North Fork Mono were first documented in the written record during the Mariposa Indian War of 1851, at which time they are said to have fled over the Sierra to the Bishop region They returned within a few years. Today large numbers of North Fork Mono people continue to live in the North Fork region and surrounding areas of Madera County.

Environment

The North Fork region lies in the upper portion of the Sierra foothills. Its eastern border is defined by the 4,000-foot elevation line, above which winter snows impeded year-round resource exploitation. The lowest point in the region, in the San Joaquin River canyon where the river leaves the region west of Kerkchoff dam, is only 1,000 feet above sea level. The San Joaquin River is the key watershed of the region. Most important of its many tributaries that pass through the region is Willow Creek, the North Fork of which gives the region its name. A small upper tributary of Fine Gold Creek runs south and then west through the western part of the region. Native vegetation was predominately mixed blue oak-grey pine foothill woodland with many open grassy meadows. Interior live oak dominated the lower canyon walls of the San Joaquin River. Black oak stands still are common in the north-central part of the region from the town of North Fork to the foot of Bass Lake. Ponderosa pine-black oak forest predominated on ridges overlooking the region on the east.

Spanish Period Expedition References

No Spanish Period expeditions are known to have entered the North Fork region.

Mission Register References

The North Fork region is east of the area of systematic Franciscan mission outreach. While a few Pohonichi neighbors to the north went to Mission San Juan Bautista in the 1820s, and a few Dalinchi from just to the west went to Mission Soledad (mostly in the 1830s), no baptized individuals can be specifically tied to the North Fork region. This does not preclude the possibility that they do exist among the small number of people baptized in the 1830s and 1840s as “Tulares” people or under some unrecognizable group names. One such person may have been a member of the Toltechi, a small Yokuts group vaguely documented by Kroeber. This was a lone young “Chochichi” man—Carlos Solunu—who was baptized at Mission Soledad in 1831 (SO-B 2080). He married a Pitcachi woman soon thereafter (SO-M 633), and upon her death he married a Gashowa woman in 1833 (SO-M 2139).

Mexican Period Expedition References

No Mexican Period expeditions are known to have entered the North Fork region.

1846-1900 Historic References

Mariposa Indian War of 1851. A regional uprising took place during 1850 and 1851 against invading gold miners and traders in the Chowchilla, Fresno, and San Joaquin river uplands (Mariposa, Nipinnawassee, Raymond, and Coarse Gold regions). The resisting groups seem to have been led by Chauchila Yokuts from the edge of the San Joaquin Valley. The North Fork people lived above the gold mining area, but they seem to have become involved through retreat of other groups up into their territory to escape the settler militia. (See the CPNC Le Grand region monograph for a more detailed overview of the Mariposa Indian War).

Treaty N, 1851. The people of the North Fork region did not sign federal Treaty N along with the other upper San Joaquin River tribes on April 29, 1851 (Heizer 1972:71-81; Phillips 2004:27, 30). Instead, they seem to have fled deep into the Sierra, or across the Sierra to the Bishop region. The following text from Treaty N seems to be refer to them:

It is also expressly understood that the mona or wild portion of the tribes herein provided for, which are still out in the mountains, shall, when they come in, be incorporated with their respective bands …; and the tribes above named pledge themselves to use their influence and best exertions to bring in and settle the said monas at the earliest possible day [in Heizer 1972:74-75].

The specific “Monas,” presumably Monos, mentioned here were almost certainly the North Fork people, since the Posgisa Shoshoneans of the adjacent Auberry region to the south did sign Treaty N.

Classic Ethnographic References

Merriam 1902. C. Hart Merriam visited two villages of the “Nim of the North Fork of San Joaquin River” in October of 1902. On October 2 he visited one of two camps of “so-called Mono Indians,” on a knoll in North Fork Gulch. There he spoke with a onld man named Che’-pah:

He calls his people Nim or Neum and says they came over here from the east side of the mountains a long time ago because they were afraid of the soldiers. He says they came through Mammoth Pass and by way of the Minarets. He says he has a brother living at Bishop. He says the “Monos” occupy the San Joaquin canyon on both sides (in this region) and that there is one camp called Keough Ranch near Crane Flat on the way from here to Fresno Flat [Merriam 1967:439].

Without context, one might conclude that this text supports Mono habitation in the general North Fork area only since historic contact. On the contrary, we interpret the statement to refer to the flight of the Monos over to the Owens Valley at the time of the Mariposa Indian War, and their subsequent return home. Merriam passed a few days in the North Fork region, visiting some other camps. He summarized:

There are numerous camps of Mono (Nim) Indians in the region about North Fork, and South Fork (so-called) of North Fork; and between North Fork and the San Joaquin River, and on the sloping north side of the canyon [1967:442].

Unfortunately, his published text is confusing about specific locations and lacks a sense of temporal narrative. Ethno-geographic researchers should examine the Merriam [1902-1934] California field notebook entries for the days cited above.

Barrett 1908. Samuel Barrett’s 1908 map of Miwok language boundaries show the Mono-Yokuts boundary farther west, in the Bass Lake area, than the CPNC North Fork-Coarse Gold regional boundary (1908:Map 3). In fact, it gives all of the Willow Creek drainage to the Shoshoneans, reserving a small area of the Fresno River drainage at Fresno Flat for the Yokuts and portion of the Fresno Flat valley west of Oakhurst for the Miwok. Barrett did not discuss his basis for mapping the entire Crane Valley (current Bass Lake) area as Mono territory. It is suggested here that he just followed drainages, something that early twentieth-century ethnographers typically did when they were lacking real information.

Kroeber 1925. Kroeber, like Barrett in 1908, mapped the entire Willow Creek drainage north of North Fork within his “Monachi (Mono)” Shoshonean territory, and relegated only a small wedge of land at Oakhurst, his townsite of Fresno Flats, to Yokuts speakers (1925:Plate 47). He devoted very little text to the Mono groups. He noted that Yokuts groups had “several distinctive names” for their upland Shoshonean neighbors and wondered if “the Mono have borrowed the tribal organization of the Yokuts, or the latter merely attribute their own political unity to each Mono group to which its habitat gives a topographic unity” (Kroeber 1925:585). Regarding the North Fork people, he wrote:

On the North Fork of the San Joaquin, close to the Chukchansi, Dalinchi, and half-mythical Toltichi, as well as the uppermost of the southern Miwok on Fresno River, was a Mono band that survives in some strength today, but for which no ‘tribal’ name is known [1925:585].

Kroeber’s “half-mythical Toltichi” is a mysterious group. On his Yokuts map, (1925:Plate 47) he places the Toltichi Yokuts and their village of Tsopotipau in the canyon of the San Joaquin River in the Kerchoff Lake vicinity, in the southwest portion of the North Fork region as mapped in this CPNC report. In text regarding the Toltichi, he wrote:

The Toltichi (plural Toletachi), the “stream people,” were the Yokuts tribe farthest up the San Joaquin and neighbors of the Mono. They are extinct. The recorded fragments of their speech show many distortions, not only from northern foothill but from all forms of Yokuts. It is doubtful whether these divergences are due to faulty recollection or are real modifications caused by prolonged contact of a small and remote mountain group with people of alien language, as in the case of the Paleuyami. It is even conceivable that the Toltichi were Monos, who mispronounced the Yokuts which many of them had partly learned. Tsopotipau, at the electric power site on the large bend of the river below the entrance of the North Fork, was Toltichi [1925:481].

Kroeber’s informant was a Dumna relative of a Toltichi who had died around 1875. The distortions may well be artificial, introduced in an attempt to make Toltichi appear more distinctive (see Kroeber 1907:354-357). The junior author [Smith], having examined Kroeber’s notes, states that all the Kings River Yokuts dialects are very similar lexically, and Toltichi is no exception in this regard, except for a peculiar numeral system. The area Kroeber gives to the Toltichi is less the one-quarter the size of the smallest of the well documented Yokuts local tribes. It is an area little larger than a single village and its immediate hinterland. Perhaps Tsopotipau was a mid-nineteenth century, short-term settlement of a refugee Kings River Yokuts during the Mariposa Indian War and early Fresno River Reservation period.

Gifford 1932. Gifford’s 1932 report provides a rich study of North Fork Mono ethnogeography. He documented individual people, land-use patterns, and 67 individual village locations. Some of his findings are highlighted here:

Sixty-seven sites were inhabited in late pre-American and early American times [list and map provided].

Although the names of 500 individuals of various generations were recorded from informants, it is likely that the population at any one time did not exceed 300.

Living sites were at springs and small streams on the sunny slopes and not in precipitous canyons such as that of the San Joaquin. Each spring was named and its name applied to the camp hard by….

At the bottom of the deep San Joaquin canyon there were only camps for fishing. Moreover, the white oaks and post oaks growing there furnished inferior acorns; while black oak acorns were the Mono favorites. Thus there

was no incentive to permanent settlement along the river….

Chiefs (bohenabi) and assistant chiefs (nitdenabi) had purely ceremonial moiety functions….

Hamlets and camps were not limited to one moiety or moiety division, except by chance….

Each individual, in the course of a normal lifetime, lived in many hamlets and camps. The Northfork Mono lacked definite large central villages such as the Pomo possessed. Even the largest hamlet was ephemeral, and in a few seasons the households comprising it were living elsewhere, often in association with new neighbors [Gifford 1932:17-19].

Family groups shifted residence from lower areas to higher summer residences after the snow melt, Gifford (1932:17) also tells us. Hamlets contained from one to eight huts. The hamlets not marked as summer camps were spread through the areas below 4,000 feet, most often below 3,000 feet. An exception was Saganiu, just above 4,000 feet on the west side of the San Joaquin River above Chawanakee Flat; it faced south, receiving both morning and afternoon sun.

Three areas on Gifford’s (1932:18) map are especially pertinent to the current CPNC North Fork region boundaries as a rough estimation of the North Fork Mono year-round land-use area at western contact:

• None of the 67 mapped hamlets was in Crane Valley, the current site of Bass Lake. None was closer than 2.2 miles south of Bass Lake, suggesting that Crane Valley had been hinterland for both the North Fork Mono and the Yokuts speakers at Fresno Flat (Oakhurst).

• Gifford did not map any Mono villages at Kerkchoff Lake, where Kroeber had place the Toltichi and their village of Tsopotipau. The nearest village he mapped was two miles east, overlooking the confluence of Willow Creek and the San Joaquin River. By proximity, however, that area could easily have been within the land-use area of the North Fork villagers.

• South of the San Joaquin River, in the Sugarloaf Hill vicinity that is included in the CPNC North Fork region, Gifford did not map any North Fork Mono villages. However, no villages of other groups are documented there either, and rugged ridges at Meadow Lakes to the south suggest that the benches south of the river in the North Fork region were probably North Fork land-use areas.Driver 1937. For the Cultural Element Distribution study, Driver worked with most of the Sierran Numic-speaking groups in 1935, but he did not work his way north of the Kings River drainage. He did gather a bit of information about North Fork Mono people from a Mono speaker of the Cold Springs region, just south of the San Joaquin River drainage:

Driver 1937. For the Cultural Element Distribution study, Driver worked with most of the Sierran Numic-speaking groups in 1935, but he did not work his way north of the Kings River drainage. He did gather a bit of information about North Fork Mono people from a Mono speaker of the Cold Springs region, just south of the San Joaquin River drainage:

The North Fork Mono were called Pazo´utc and Yayantci by the Hodogida [see Cold Springs region CPNC report]. The first is a subdivision of one of Gifford’s moieties, the second a moiety. This is at least evidence that the Hodogida did not know the difference between social divisions and local groups and had no moieties themselves. It may add strength to Gifford’s theory that the North Fork moieties and their subdivisions were once local groups [1937:58].

Aginsky 1943. For the Cultural Element Distribution study, Aginsky worked with Hausen Lavell, aged 65, a Mono living at North Fork; Topsy Strombeck, aged 50, a Mono-Gashowa living at Auberry; and Lucy and Dick Sherman, aged about 90, living 10 miles from Auberry. His large-scale map gives all of the Willow Creek drainage to the Mono, including the current Bass Lake area, and gives all of Fresno Flat (Oakhurst vicinity) to Miwok speakers, probably following Kroeber (1925:Plate 37). Although his text lacks ethnogeographic information, Aginsky’s relevant field notes should be checked for more information.

Gayton 1948. Gayton did not do field work north of the San Joaquin River, and she did very little field work north of the Kings River drainage. She did capture a scrap of ethnogeographic information about the North Fork people from Bill Wilson (Latta’a Pahmit), a Dumna Yokuts of Millerton:

North of the Posgisa, on the North Fork of the San Joaquin were the Yaya’ či (Yayanchi) [Gayton 1948:153].

Note that Gayton here offers the cover term “Yayach” for the North Fork Mono. Like the names currently used for most other Western Mono groups, it is a Yokuts name. Perhaps due to serendipity, it was never applied by subsequent ethnographers to the North Fork people.

Recent Ethnographic References

Cook 1955. In his study of the aboriginal population of the entire San Joaquin Valley and adjacent Sierra, Cook (1955:76) mapped the North Fork Mono in the area generally equivalent to the CPNC North Fork region. He used Gifford’s village and family information as the basis for an estimate of an early historic-period North Fork population, which he then modified to project back to aboriginal times:

For the North Fork Mono … we may accept as the best estimate obtainable a population of 440 for the period near 1850 and of 640 for precontact time [1955:37].

He also used the North Fork population data as a baseline for projecting aboriginal population densities elsewhere in the south-central Sierra (see Cook 1955:38-39).

Latta 1977. Latta, who confined his study to Yokuts-speaking groups, identified the location of Tsopotipau as “at the electric power site on the large bend of the river below the entrance to North Fork." He quotes his Chukaymina informant, Dr Bob (Mulul), as saying that he knew the last “Tolteche” Yokuts person, a man with the same name as him - Mulul – who died and was buried at Dunlap [Latta 1977:162].

Spier 1978. Spier (1978a:426) offered contradictory ethnogeographic information for the North Fork area in his review of the “Monache” or Numic Shoshoneans of the western Sierra. In text, he agreed with earlier ethnographers, giving the North Fork Shoshoneans only lands within the North Fork region as mapped in this monograph:

The Northfork Mono moved about—seasonally, by reason of a death, or simply for variety—within a home territory centered on the North Fork of the San Joaquin River. Some hamlets were on the adjacent Fine Gold Creek and others were at Hooker’s Cove on the San Joaquin [Spier 1978a:427].

This textual description fits with the classic ethnography. Spier’s (1978a:426) map, however, erroneously extends Mono lands farther west down the San Joaquin River to lower Fine Gold Creek and the head of Millerton Lake (Dalinchi Yokuts territory). Spier (1978a:435-436) did, by the way, present a valuable summary of the etymology of various names applied to the western Sierran Shoshoneans.