Yurok

Yurok, North American Indians who lived in what is now California along the lower Klamath River and the Pacific coast. They spoke a Macro-Algonquian language and were culturally and linguistically related to the Wiyot. As their traditional territory lay on the border between divergent cultural and ecological areas, the Yurok combined the typical subsistence practices of Northwest Coast Indians with many religious and organizational features common to California Indians.

Traditional Yurok villages were small collections of independent houses owned by individual families. Avoiding unified communities and an overall political authority, village residents sometimes shared rights to general subsistence areas and to the performance of certain rituals. Other rights, such as the right to use specific areas for fishing, hunting, and gathering, generally belonged to particular houses. These rights were acquired by inheritance or dowry, as part of blood money settlements, or by sale. In addition to dwellings, villages had sweat houses, each of which served as a gathering places for the men of an extended patrilineal family. There were also separate shelters to which women retired during menstruation.

The traditional Yurok economy focused on salmon and acorns. The people also produced excellent basketry and made canoes from redwood trees, selling them to inland tribes. Wealth was counted in strings of dentalium shells, obsidian blades, woodpecker scalps, and albino deerskins. Acquiring wealth was an important goal in Yurok culture. Feuds were common, and payments of blood money were precisely defined according to the seriousness of the offense; the value of a man’s life depended on his social status.

Traditional Yurok religion was concerned with an individual’s effort to elicit supernatural aid, especially through ritual cleanliness, and with rituals for the public welfare. The tribe did not practice the potlatch, masked dances, representative carving, and other features typical of their Northwest Coast neighbours. The major ceremonies were those of the World Renewal cycle, which ensured an abundance of food, riches, and general well-being. This cycle included the recitation of magical formulas, repeating the words of an ancient spirit race, and other acts. The spiritual power to cure disease was granted only to women, giving these shamans prestige and a source of wealth (see also shamanism).

Early 21st-century population estimates indicated some 6,000 individuals of Yurok descent.