Miwok

Origins of Miwoks still debated

By Jennifer Henderson
Archaeological evidence suggests the Coast Miwok have lived in West Marin for at least 3,500 years. Four hundred years ago, there were 113 villages around Tomales Bay, by Park Service estimates, and at the time of DrakeÕs arrival in California, roughly 2,500 Miwok lived on this coast.

However, within 60 years of Spanish missionariesÕ arrival in 1776, some 90 percent of the Miwok population in Marin and Sonoma counties had died from diseases, such as small pox and measles, in addition to the slave-like conditions of the Spanish missionary system.

Miwok were late arrivals The origins of the Coast Miwok are still unknown. The group migrated to California much later than other Indians, whose origins predate the Coast Miwok by up to 40,000 years.

In 1984, Otto von Sadovsky, a professor of anthropology at California State University-Fullerton, used linguistic evidence to argue that 3,000 years ago, the Coast Miwok arrived in West Marin after a 30-year migration from tribal settlements east of the Ural Mountains in Siberia.

Relationship to Siberian tribes argued Von Sadovsky claimed that up to 80 percent of the languages used by two tribes in northwest Siberia and 19 tribes in California are related. If local Miwoks still spoke their traditional language, he said, their words would be understood by the 6,000 Vogul-speaking and 17,000 Ostyak-speaking tribesmen of Siberia.

Some Miwok experts, however, are skeptical of his conclusions.

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