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Anthropological
and historical literature consistently portrays Esselen- and Southern Costanoan-speaking peoples (also known as Rumsen Ohlone) as separate
tribes. Bi- and multi-lingualism was common among the
native peoples united through networks of marriage, trade, subsistence
practices, military alliance, and ceremonial obligations cross-cutting the
larger Monterey Bay and Central Valley
regions. The two languages are considered members of different language
families. Esselen is classified as Hokan and Rumsen Ohlone or Southern Costanoan as Penutian.
These languages became grammatically and phonologically similar through
widespread bilingualism and intermarriage. Loan words, most importantly
kinship terms, are also evident between these languages. The official name of
the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation challenges the misunderstanding that a
strict linguistic, cultural, and political division existed historically
between Esselen and Southern Ohlone/Costanoan peoples.
As early as the 1700s,
the Spaniards called the Native American people of the Central
Coast, from the San
Francisco peninsula to Big Sur, costeños or coast-dwellers. Later, Anglo-Americans
in California
pronounced this term "Costanos" by. This
term was eventually adapted as Costanoan by linguists and anthropologists in
reference to the linguistically-related indigenous people of this long
coastline and interior valleys. Another tribal name is Ohlone,
which has been applied to the aboriginal tribes of both the San
Francisco and Monterey
Bay areas since the
late 1960s. Ohlone or Oljon
was the name of a ranchería on the coast of
the San Francisco
peninsula. In the 1900s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Bureau of
American Ethnology (BAE) identified the elders of the Ohlone/Costanoan
Esselen Nation as Costanoan.
While Costanoan is
largely accepted as our people's Identification, our people and others have
used other important names throughout history as cultural and social
identifications. Esselen, Rumsen, Montereyeño, Carmeleño,
Sureño, and Guatcharron
are all names that appear in historical documents.
The name
"Esselen," the historical self-identification of some of our rancherías, derives from Ex'seien,
which means "The Rock." The term is related to the statement,
"Xue elo xonia euene" ("I come
from The Rock"). Contemporary tribal members,
while no longer speaking the traditional languages of our ancestors (the last
fluent speaker, Isabel Meadows, died in 1939), still use words of Esselen and
Rumsen Ohlone (Southern Costanoan) origin. While it is now an official
place-name, members of the Esselen Nation refer to the mountainous interior
of Carmel Valley, an area of profound spiritual and historical significance,
as Cachagua, a name derived from the Esselen word Xasiuan.
Today, as a tribe
representing this vast region, we have chosen a legal name that reflects the
diversity in identification through time. We are the Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen
Nation.
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