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Yurok
Yurok Culture
Yurok people sometimes discussed with Pacific Northwest region.
Common thread with them: reliance on salmon fishing.
In almost all other respects, they are radically different than the other PNW groups.
Concept of the World
Klamath River defined the Yurok world.
Similar way of life to the Hupa, their neighbors.
Aversion to travel; xenophobia
Architecture
Most villages located on Klamath River.
Entire population about 3,000. Villages consisted of 3 to 7 houses.
Main types of structures were houses and sweat lodges.
Sweathouse
Place for men and boys to gather, purify themselves.
Men sometimes slept there.
Women not forbidden, and sometimes used sweathouse for purification and sleeping, too.
Subsistence
Salmon was central food source.
Men hunted deer and elk.
Women gathered acorns and other plants and seeds.
Salmon fishing by dip net from platform, by harpoon, and gill nets.
Fish weirs also used.
Acorns
Acorns main food source for many Indians in California, especially where salmon and other marine resource weren’t available.
Made good food, but required much processing to remove tannic acid.
After processing, acorn meal baked into cakes or eaten as a gruel.
Cultivation
No food crops grown by the Yurok.
They did grow tobacco, for ceremonial use.
In fact, were careful not to use wild tobacco because it might have grown over a grave - - Yurok had great aversion to things associated with death.
Focus on Wealth
Yurok were very unusual in their extreme focus on accumulating and retaining wealth.
Accumulated wealth displayed periodically, as way of establishing social status.
Wealth measured primarily in dentalium shells; also valued were woodpecker scalps, deerskins, and obsidian blades.
Men had several lines tattooed on their arms so they could measure the length of dentalium strings.
Yurok did not travel to acquire shells and other items of wealth, but acquired them from traders.
Dentalium shells graded by size.
Significance of Wealth
Wealth represented not only status but also the spiritual qualities deemed necessary to "attract" it.
Fully developed class system existed in Yurok culture, with aristocracy down to poor people and slaves.
Children of aristocracy taught behavior appropriate to people of that class – e.g. table manners.
Legal System
Yurok recognized a legal system with rules and procedures for resolving disputes and making amends for wrongdoing.
Deviation from proper behavior required compensation.
Inability to pay required compensation resulted in slavery of debtor to creditor.
Knowledge of law was province of high status, or "real" men.
Social Life
Male line predominated in kinship, but mother’s relations were also recognized.
Personal ambition and individualism highly emphasized, to the point that the Yurok barely recognized associations with one another as a social group.
Definitions of Success
To the extent that political authority was recognized, it was in wealthy older men.
Worth measured by ownership of property, and was difficult to move up in status because wealth inherited along clan lines.
Men spend much time thinking about and attempting to acquire wealth.
Wealthy people employed sorcery to try to foil the ambitions of poor people to acquire more wealth.
Children
Most Yurok births in spring, because of prohibition of intercourse inside houses.
Theme of self-reliance begins early with babies.
Teaching by example and experience.
Proper behavior relating to the dead.
Knowledge of Yurok law.
Law as regulator of material wealth.
Girls and Women
Basket weaving key skill for girls and women.
First menstruation ceremony focused on purification and acquisition of wealth.
Menstrual seclusion also focused on this.
Analogy: men’s purification in sweathouse, for purpose of improving ability to attract wealth.
Marriage
Marriage outside clan and family. Large village: marriage within village, if appropriate spouses available.
Types of marriage:
Full marriage, with full bridewealth.
Half marriage, with bride service and permanent low status (25% of marriages).
Religion
One of few occasions of cooperation among families was putting on ceremonies.
Kepel fish weir construction was most elaborate, accompanying construction of the weir and harvesting first salmon.
Jumping Dance: final event at Kepel, giving men opportunity to display wealth.
Ceremonies
Deerskin Dance the other major event.
Men wore skin of civet or deer, necklaces of dentalium shells.
Carried pole with deer head.
As always, display of wealth an important component of the dance.
Shamanism
Primary role of shamans was to cure.
Unusual in the role of women: most Yurok shamans were women.
Female shamans dealt with psychological/spiritual illnesses, requiring removal of "pains" that caused the illness.
Male shamans used plants for teas to cure physical illnesses.
Sorcery: Shamans held in suspicion because might misuse power for material gain.
European Influences
Early version of Ghost Dance: 1870.
U.S. Forest Service road near Chimney Rock.
Political disadvantage from Yurok emphasis on individualism and lack of political organization.
Separate reservation created in 1988.
Current Culture
Reservation land only 7,700 acres.
Fewer than 20 people speak language, and only one female shaman remains.
Have hired anthropologist with hope of documenting and preserving cultural heritage.
