Anthropologists commonly divide the Miwok into four geographically and culturally diverse ethnic subgroups. These distinctions were unknown among the Miwok before European contact.
The Miwok lived in small bands without centralized political authority before contact with European Americans in 1769. They had domesticated dogs and cultivated tobacco, but were otherwise hunter-gatherers.
The Sierra Miwok preferentially harvested acorns from the
California Black Oak; in fact, the modern-day extent of the California Black Oak forests in some areas of Yosemite National Park is partially due to preferential cultivation by Miwok tribes. They burned understory vegetation to reduce the fraction of Ponderosa Pine. They also exploited nearly every other kind of edible vegetable matter, including bulbs, seeds, and fungi. They hunted with arrows, clubs or snares, depending on the species and the situation. Grasshoppers were a highly prized food source, as were mussels for those groups adjacent to the Stanislaus River.
The Miwok mythology was similar to other Native American myths of Northern California. (They and many of their neighbors shared a religion called
Kuksu.) Miwoks believed in animal and human spirits, and spoke of animal spirits as their ancestors. Coyote in many tales figures as their ancestor, creator god, and a trickster god. The Sierra and Plains Miwok, as well as the Bay Miwok, believed this world began at
Mount Diablo, following a flood. (Read their legends online in
MIWOK MYTHS by Edward Winslow Gifford.)
Population and Geography
Yokuts, Shoshone, Washo, and Maidu Indians were neighbors of the Plains and Sierra Miwoks. Map from
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY Vol. 6 Nos. 2 and 3,
"THE GEOGRAPHY AND DIALECTS OF THE MIWOK INDIANS"by S. A. BARRETT and
"ON THE EVIDENCES OF THE OCCUPATION OF CERTAIN REGIONS BY THE MIWOK INDIANS" BY A. L. KROEBER
(online at
http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/miwok_geography_1908.pdf)
Anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber estimated that in 1770 there were 500 Lake Miwok, 1,500 Coast Miwok, and 9,000 Plains and Sierra Miwok, totaling about 11,000 people. This may be a serious under count; for example, Kroeber did not realize the tribal bands in Contra Costa County were Miwoks because they had nearly completely lost their language before he started his research. Today there are about 3,500 Miwok in total.
Influences on popular culture
The Ewok, a fictional species of forest-dwelling creatures featured in the Star Wars films, are named after the Miwok.