964 



WISHOSK WISHOSKAN FAMILY 



[B. A. K. 



Wishosk. A small tribe, whose name 

 Powell adopted for the AVishoskan lin- 

 guistic family, on the coast of n. California 

 about Humboldt bay. The word seems 

 to be a misapplication of their own name 

 for their Athapascan neighbors, Wishashk. 

 Wiyot (see below) , which has sometimes 

 been used as an equivalent, is therefore 

 probably a better term than Wishosk, 

 though not entirely exact. The Wishosk 

 territory extended from the mouth of 

 Mad r., lat. 41°, to a short distance above 

 Blue Lake; thence the boundary followed 

 the watershed, between the streams that 

 flow into Humboldt bay and those that 

 drain into Mad and Eel rs., southward to 

 Eel r., probably slightly below Fortuna 

 (though some accounts make the Wishosk 

 territory extend up Eel r. to the mouth 

 of Van Duzen fork), and across it to the 

 Bear River range, which formed the 

 southern boundary, back to the coast 

 perhaps 5 or 6 m. n. of C. Mendocino. 

 This territory included Lindsey, Jacoby, 

 Freshwater, and Salmon crs., and Elk and 

 Salt rs. The entire stretch of the coun- 

 try of the Wishosk is scarcely 30 m., and 

 the greatest breadth is not more than 12 

 or 14 m. As this limited territory is 

 heavily timbered with redwood, the 

 people lived almost exclusively along the 

 edge of salt water or on the banks of the 

 two larger rivers flowing into the ocean 

 in their domain. For this reason the 

 Wishosk probably depended less on 

 acorns for food than most of the tribes of 

 California, products of the sea, including 

 the fish that ran up the streams, consti- 

 tuting their chief source of subsistence. 



The Wishosk were surrounded on the 

 land side by Athapascan tribes, except at 

 the N., where lower Mad r. formed the 

 boundary between themselves and the 

 coast Yurok. The Wishosk call the Atha- 

 pascan languages WishVlak, the Yurok lan- 

 guage Dendkvatelak. For themselves as 

 a body they have, like the other tribes of 

 N. w. "California, no geographic or specific 

 name, calling themselves simply 'peo- 

 ple.' They call their language, however, 

 as distinctfrom other languages, SuWtelik. 

 They recognize 3 divisions in their coun- 

 try: the territories about Mad r., Hum- 

 boldt bay, and Eel r., which they call 

 Batawa^t, Wiki^, and Wi^yat, respec- 

 tively. On the addition of -daredalitl 

 these terms denote the people of the dis- 

 tricts; thus Wiki-daredalitl, are the people 

 living on Humboldt bay. These, how- 

 ever, are only geographically natural and 

 convenient names, and did not reflect any 

 real political divisions. As was customary 

 in N. w. California the only organization 

 of a political or social nature that they 

 possessed consisted of village settlements. 

 They showed no trace of a totem ic or 

 gentile system. They spoke only one 



dialect; the distinction between the 

 Viard and the Wiyot rests on faulty 

 orthography. The general name for 

 them and their country among the 

 neighboring tribes is some form of the 

 word Wiyot; the Yurok call them Weyet; 

 the Karok, Waiyat; the Sinkyone, the 

 Athapascans about the lower s. fork of 

 Eel r., call them Dihvishne and their 

 country Weyat. 



The whole Humboldt bay region was 

 rapidly settled by the whites after 1850. 

 The Wishosk suffered considerably at 

 their hands, a large party being massa- 

 cred on Indian id., near Eureka, on a 

 mistaken suspicion. The numbers of the 

 Wishosk were placed at 800 in 1853, but 

 all figures are only estimates. Atpresent 

 there survive about 70, who live in their 

 original country without recognition by 

 the Government, supporting themselves 

 by civilized labor. 



In general culture the Wishosk re- 

 sembled the tribes of the lower Klamath 

 and Trinity. They had square board 

 houses with gabled ropfs built about 

 excavations, redwood canoes, and twined 

 basketry, similar in all essentials to those 

 of the Yurok, Karok, and Hupa. The 

 women also tattooed their chins. They 

 lacked the Deerskin dance and the Jump- 

 ing or Woodpecker dance of these three 

 tribes. They had a puberty ceremony 

 for girls, that included dancing. Accord- 

 ing to their mythology the creator was 

 Gudatrigakwitl, 'Above-old-man.' This 

 deity is more distinctly a creator than 

 most of the corresponding mythological 

 characters of other tribes of n. w. Cali- 

 fornia. On the whole but little is known 

 about the religion of the Wishosk. Their 

 language is also very little known. It is 

 complex and obscure, and appears to re- 

 semble the adjacent Yurok in general 

 structure, but to be an entirely unrelated 

 and independent family. (a. l. k.) 



Dilwishne. — A. L. Kroeber.'inf'n, 1904 (Sinkyone 

 name for the Wishosk and their language). 

 Humbolt Bay Indians.— U. S. Stat., xn, 199, 1863. 

 Koquilth.— Powers in Cont. N. A. EthnoL, in, 100, 

 1877 (given as a Wishosk division). Ko-wilth. — 

 Powell, ibid., 478. Ock-co-witth.— Buchanan (1853) 

 in H. R. Ex. Doc. 76, 34th Cong., 3d sess., 24, 

 1857. Solotluck.— Ibid., 23 (cf. Sul(ttelik follow- 

 ing). Sulatelik. — A. L. Kroeber, inf'n, 1904 (used 

 by the Wishosk to designate tlieir own language; 

 it comes nearer to being a tribal name for them- 

 selves than any other term). Waiyat. — Ibid. 

 (Karok name). " Walla-Walloo.— Gibbs (1851) in 

 Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, in, 133, 1853 (said to 

 be so culled by the tribes to the N.). Wee 

 Shotch. — Buchanan, op. cit., 24. Weyat. — A. L. 

 Kroeber, inf'n, 1904 (Sinkyone name for Wishosk 

 country). Weyet.- Ibid. (Yurok name). Wish- 

 osk.— Gibbs, op. cit. 



Wishoskan Family. A linguistic family 

 represented bv the Wishosk Indians 

 (q. v.). 



>Wish-osk.— Gibbs in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, 

 111,422, 1853 (given as the name of a dialect on Mad 

 r. and Humboldt bay). =Wish-osk.— Powell in 

 Cont. N. A. Ethnol., in, 478, 1877 (vocabularies of 

 Wish-osk, Wi-yot, and Ko-wilth); Gatschet in 



