Bay Miwok - Landholding Groups or Local Tribes

Landholding Groups or Local Tribes

The names and general territorial areas of seven Bay Miwok-speaking land-holding groups have been inferred through indirect methods, based for the most part on information in the ecclesiastical records of missions San Francisco and San Jose. In a 1961 Ph.D. dissertation, James Bennyhoff used data from the Alphonse Pinart transcripts of the mission records to identify four more East Bay local territorial groups, in addition to the Saclan, as members of this unique Miwok language group. "The major clues to the linguistic affiliation of these river mouth tribelets are provided by the personal names of female neophytes recorded in the baptismal registers ... Ompin, Chupcan, Julpun, and Wolwon are linked together by the use of a distinctive constellation of endings which appear in female personal names," he wrote. Milliken subsequently used the same technique, applied to the original mission records, to identify two additional local tribes—Jalquin and Tatcan—as Bay Miwok speakers. Milliken then inferred and mapped the relative locations of all seven groups, using clues from historic diaries together with mission register information regarding intermarriage patterns among East Bay local tribes. The locations of the seven Bay Miwok local tribes are generally as follows:

• At and surrounding present-day City of Concord: Chupcan.
• In south portion of present-day City of Oakland, in present City of San Leandro, and on San Leandro Creek to the east: Jalquin.
• Along lower Marsh Creek (east of Antioch): Julpun.
• At present-day City of Pittsburg and north to rural south Solano County: Ompin .
• At and surrounding present-day cities of Lafayette and Walnut Creek: Saclan.
• At and surrounding present-day City of Danville, on San Ramon Creek: Tatcan.
• At Mt. Diablo and along Marsh Creek: Volvon (also spelled Wolwon, and Bolbon).

Another group, the Yrgin of present-day City of Hayward and Castro Valley, had Chochenyo Ohlone signature female name endings, rather than Bay Miwok name endings. Yet they were so highly intermarried with the Jalquin that it seems possible that they and the Jalquin formed a single bilingual local tribe.