The Timbisha ("Red Rock Face Paint")[1] are a Native American tribe federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California[2]. They are known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe[1] and are located in south central California, near the Nevada border.[3]
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History
They have lived in Death Valley, California region of North America for over a thousand years. In 1933 President Herbert Hoover created Death Valley National Monument, an action that subsumed the tribe's homeland within park boundaries. Despite their long-time presence in the region, the proclamation failed to provide a homeland for the Timbisha people. After unsuccessful efforts to remove the band to nearby reservations, National Park Service officials entered into an agreement with Shoshone leaders to allow the Civilian Conservation Corps to construct an Indian village for tribal members near park headquarters at Furnace Creek in 1938. Thereafter tribal members survived within monument boundaries, although their status was repeatedly challenged by monument officials.
Population
Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. (See Population of Native California.) Alfred L. Kroeber put the combined 1770 population of the Timbisha (Koso) and Chemehuevi at 1,500.[4] He estimated the population of the Timbisha and Chemehuevi in 1910 as 500.[4] Julian Steward's figures for Eastern California are about 65 persons in Saline Valley, 150-160 persons in Little Lake and the Coso Range, about 100 in northern Panamint Valley, 42 in northern Death Valley, 29 at Beatty, and 42 in the Belted Range.[5]
Recognition
With the help of the California Indian Legal Services, Timbisha Shoshone members led by Pauline Esteves began agitating for a formal reservation in the 1960s. The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, part of the Western Shoshone Nation, was recognized by the US government in 1982.[6] In this effort, they were one of the first tribes to secure tribal status through the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Federal Acknowledgment Process.
Reservation
The tribe's reservation, the Death Valley Indian Community was established in 1982. Located in Death Valley, Inyo County, California,[3] it was 40 acres large and 199 tribal members lived there as of 1990.[7]
Despite their recognition, the tribe still faced conflict with the National Park Service over gaining land within the monument. After much politicking and compromise, 7,500 acres (30 km2) of ancestral homelands were given back to the tribe in 2000 via the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act.[3]
Today
There are about 300 members of the tribe, approximately 50 of whom live at Furnace Creek within Death Valley National Park. Many spend the summers at Lone Pine, California in Owens Valley to the west.
Names
The Timbisha have been known as the California Shoshoni[8], Northern Death Valley Shoshone,[9]Panamint Shoshone[10], or simply Panamint. Julian Steward distinguished Northern Death Valley Shoshone from the Southern Death Valley Shoshone or Kawaiisu. Harold Driver recorded two Panamint subgroups in Death Valley, the o'hya and the tu'mbica in 1937.[9]
In the Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs periodically listed in the Federal Register, their name is presented as "Timbi-Sha", but this is a typographical error and ungrammatical in Timbisha. The tribe never hyphenates its name. Both The California Desert Protection Act and the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act spell their name correctly.
Notes
- ^ a b "Timbisha Shoshone Tribe of Death Valley." National Park Service. (retrieved 10 Dec 2009)
- ^ The name has been widely misspelled as "Timbi-Sha". This, however is an impossible spelling since "timbisha" is from tɨm 'rock' + pisa 'paint' and cannot be divided into Timbi-sha.
- ^ a b c California Indians and Their Reservations. SDSU Library and Information Access. (retrieved 10 Dec 2009)
- ^ a b Kroeber (1925), p. 883
- ^ Julian Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups (1938, Smithsonian)
- ^ Pritzker, 242
- ^ Pritzker, 241
- ^ Hinton, 30
- ^ a b Thomas, et al, 280
- ^ Miller, 99
References
- Hinton, Leanne. Flutes of Fire. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1994. ISBN 0-930588-62-2.
- Miller, Wick R. "Numic Languages." d'Azevedo, Warren L., Volume Editor. Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 11: Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1986. ISBN 978-0160045813.
- Pritzker, Barry M. A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0195138771.
- Thomas, David Hurst, Lorann S. A. Pendleton, and Stephen C. Cappannari. "Western Shoshone." d'Azevedo, Warren L., Volume Editor. Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 11: Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1986. ISBN 978-0160045813.
Additional reading
- Crum, Steven J. (1998),"A Tripartite State of Affairs: The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs,1934–1994," American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 22(1): 117-136).
- Haberfeld, Steven (2000), "Government-to-Government Negotiations: How the Timbisha Shoshone Got Its Land Back,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 24(4): 127–65. (Author, as of 2009, is exec. dir., Indian Dispute Resolution Service, Sacramento,CA.)
- Miller, Mark E. (2004), Forgotten Tribes: Unrecognized Indians and the Federal Acknowledgment Process (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). The Timbisha are one of four cases reviewed.
See also
External links
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