Pre-European contact, were there fewer Native Americans in what is roughly California today relative to other parts of North America? If so, why?

by booger_dick

I'm not very well-read in Native American studies, but I recently looked at a list of tribes that lived mostly in and around California, and I hadn't really heard of any of them.

You regularly hear about the Sioux, Navajo, Cherokee, Arapaho, etc, but the Californian tribes don't seem to be as well known. Is that because there weren't as many Native Americans in California relative to the size of the area as in other parts of North America? And if so, why was that? Was it something about the geography/climate? Something else? The West coast is considered "desirable" these days, but was there something about it that wasn't conducive for their lifestyle?

And if there were, relatively-speaking, as many Native Americans in California per square mile as anywhere else in the US, then why aren't those tribes as well known as their prairie/southwest/northeast counterparts?

miloburrows

There were actually more Native Americans in California before the European conquest than anywhere else in North America!

They aren't as famous for a number of factors:

  1. Culturally, they weren't as interested in warfare as the tribes in the Great Plains or on the Eastern Seaboard. Because California has a tremendous amount of natural resources, there wasn't as much conflict over them; and because the resources were tied to water and seasons aren't generally as harsh in California, tribal migration (and potential conflict arising from unexpected contact) was focused on moving up and down mountains rather than, say, across the continent.

This means that they were less likely to be remembered as contributing to the "savage/noble warrior" stereotype that was extremely common among traditional early twentieth century historians.

  1. Because of the wealth of natural resources, Californian tribes remained hunter-gatherers long past the time other Native Americans became pastoral or agriculturally centric.

  2. This means that Californian tribes didn't do the things that make them famous in Western eyes. They didn't create the monolithic city architecture that the Native Americans in Mexico and the Southwest did, they didn't develop writing, and they didn't engage in the comparatively complex political structures of the tribes in the East. In other words, they lacked the cultural signifiers that made them "important" to early twentieth century historians. This also means that didn't leave much in the way of archaeological evidence, so modern historians have comparatively fewer avenues to understanding them.

  3. Many Californian Native tribes were conquered by the Spanish rather than Anglo-Americans, and so their history is more generationally removed from us than the ones with which we had long-standing wars. Also, by the time Anglos arrived on the scene, more than 90% of the Native Californian population had already died of disease or violence.

Edited for autocorrection.