Anthropologists commonly divide the Miwok into four geographically and culturally diverse ethnic subgroups. These distinctions were not used among the Miwok before European contact.[7]: 4
The Miwok lived in smallbands without centralized political authority before contact with European Americans in 1769. They haddomesticated dogs and cultivatedtobacco, but were otherwise complexhunter-gatherers.
The Sierra Miwok harvested acorns from theCalifornia Black Oak. In fact, the modern-day extent of the California Black Oak forests in some areas ofYosemite National Park is partially due to cultivation by Miwok tribes. They burnedunderstory vegetation to reduce the fraction ofPonderosa Pine.[28] Nearly every other kind of edible vegetable matter was used as a food source, including bulbs, seeds, and fungi. Animals were hunted with arrows, clubs or snares, depending on the species and the situation. Grasshoppers were a highly prized food source, as weremussels for those groups adjacent to theStanislaus River. Coastal Miwok were known to have predominantly relied on food gathered from the inland side of the Marin peninsula (modern San Pablo bay, lakes, and land based foods), but to have also engaged in diving forabalone in thePacific Ocean.
The Miwok ate meals according to appetite rather than at regular times. They stored food for later consumption, primarily in flat-bottomed baskets.
TheMiwok creation story and narratives tend to be similar to those of other natives of Northern California. Miwok hadtotem animals, identified with one of twomoieties, which were in turn associated respectively with land and water. These totem animals were not thought of as literal ancestors of humans, but rather as predecessors.[29]
Miwok people played mixed-gender games, with both men and women in each team, on a 110-yard (100 m) playing field calledposcoi a we'a. Similarly tosoccer, the object of the game was to kick or carry an elk hide ball to the opposing team's goalpost, but the rules varied by gender. Women could handle the ball in any way they chose, using any part of their bodies to control it, including kicking the ball or picking it up and running with it. In contrast, men were only allowed to kick the ball. However, a man could pick up a woman who was holding the ball and run to the goal with her.[30][31][32]
Benjamin Barry (Miwok), World War II veteran and fire chief in parade dress[33]
In 1770, there were an estimated 500 Lake Miwok, 1,500 Coast Miwok, and 9,000 Plains and Sierra Miwok, totaling about 11,000 people, according to historianAlfred L. Kroeber, although this may be an undercount; for example, he did not identify the Bay Miwok.[34][35]
History professors from California estimate the Miwok population was at least 25,000 people in 1769.[36]
The 1910 Census reported a total of 671 Miwok, while the 1930 Census noted 491. See history of each Miwok group for more information.[37] By the 2000 Census, the total number of Miwok had risen to approximately 3,500.[1]
TheStar Wars films feature a fictional species of forest-dwelling creatures known asEwoks, who are ostensibly named after the Miwok.[38][39]
The Miwok people are encountered inKim Stanley Robinson's bookThe Years of Rice and Salt. In an alternate history scenario depicted in the book, they are the first group of Native Americans encountered by the first Chinese to discover the continent.[40]
^Hilario, Kayla (2020-08-13)."Kayla Hilario: Let's not forget Tribal history as we complete the Census".Indianz. Archived fromthe original on 2020-09-20. Retrieved2025-07-02.For thousands of years, the Miwok people lived throughout Northern and Central California – spread over a hundred villages along the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers and north of the San Francisco Bay area, east into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
^Pauls, Elizabeth Prine (2006-09-28)."Miwok | people".Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived fromthe original on 2015-09-05. Retrieved2025-07-02.
^"Coast Miwok at Point Reyes".NPS.gov. Archived fromthe original on 2024-04-14. Retrieved2025-07-03.Legislation was signed in December 2000 granting the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, formerly known as the Federated Coast Miwok, full rights and privileges afforded federally recognized tribes.
^ab"Notice of Inventory Completion: California State University, Sacramento, Sacramento, CA"(PDF).Federal Registry.80 (25): 6752. 2015-02-06. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2020-10-30. Retrieved2025-07-04 – via www.govinfo.gov/.A detailed assessment of the human remains was made by California State University, Sacramento professional staff in consultation with representatives of Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians of California;... and Nashville-Eldorado Miwok, a non-Federally recognized Native American group." "... and the Miwok Tribe of the El Dorado Rancheria, a non-Federally recognized Native American group, were also contacted by California State University, Sacramento.
^Billiter, Bill (January 1, 1985)."3,000-Year-Old Connection Claimed: Siberia Tie to California Tribes Cited".Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles.Archived from the original on 2014-11-28. Retrieved2014-11-28.Some of the California Indian tribes that are descended from Russian Siberians,Von Sadovszky said, are the Wintuan, of the Sacramento Valley, the Miwokan, of the area north of San Francisco, and the Costanoan, of the area south of San Francisco.
^Cherry, Robert; Lemke-Santangelo, Gretchen; Griswold de Castillo, Richard.Competing Visions: A History of California. SMC Book Gallery. p. 24. In 1769, the Miwok population probably exceeded 25,000.
^Calkowski, Marcia S. (1991)."Is There Authoritative Voice in Ewok Talk?: On Postmodernism, Fieldwork, and the Recovery of Unintended Meanings"(PDF).Culture.11 (1–2): 58. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2023-04-22. Retrieved2025-07-06 – via erudit.org.In a 1989 téléphoné interview, the sound editor and credited creator of Ewokese for the film Return of the Jedi, Ben Burtt, noted that he himself had not invented the name "Ewok", but that it most probably derived from the name of the aboriginal inhabitants of Marin County, California, the Miwok.
Barrett, S.A. and Gifford, E.W.Miwok Material Culture: Indian Life of the Yosemite Region. Yosemite Association, Yosemite National Park, California, 1933.ISBN0-939666-12-X
Cook, Sherburne.The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1976.ISBN0-520-03143-1.
Kroeber, Alfred L. 1925.Handbook of the Indians of California. Washington, D.C.:Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. (Chapter 30, The Miwok); available atYosemite Online Library.
Silliman, Stephen.Lost Laborers in Colonial California, Native Americans and the Archaeology of Rancho Petaluma. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2004.ISBN0-8165-2381-9.
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