TheChalon people are one of eight divisions of theOhlone (Costanoan) people ofNative Americans who lived inNorthern California.Chalon (also calledSoledad) is also the name of their spoken language, listed as one of the Ohlone (alias Costanoan) languages of theUtian family. Recent work suggests that Chalon may be transitional between the northern and southern groups of Ohlone languages.[1]
The original Chalon homeland area is the subject of some local controversy. Initial studies in the early twentieth century placed them in the portion of theSalinas Valley that surrounds the modern town of Soledad, as well as in the adjacent lower Arroyo Seco area to the west and Chalon Creek are to the east.[2] In contrast, a late twentieth century study gives the Spanish-contact period Chalon people the rugged Coast Range valleys centered farther to the east, including upper Chalon Creek, theSan Benito River east of theSalinas Valley, and the small creeks aroundSan Benito Mountain. The latter study assigns most of that Salinas Valley area to the Eslenajan local tribe ofEsselen speakers.[3]
Specific Chalon material culture was never documented, but beyond doubt it was ahunter-gatherer culture based upon deer and acorn harvest, typical of the ethnographic California culture area.[citation needed] Chalon territory was bordered by theMutsun (another Ohone division) to the east,Rumsen (another Ohlone division) to the north,Esselen in the Salinas Valley to the west,Salinan to the south, andYokuts in the San Joaquin Valley to the east.
During the era ofSpanish missions in California, the Chalon people's lives changed with the founding ofMission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad in 1791. Most Chalon speakers were forced into the mission between 1795 and 1814, where they were baptized, lived and educated to be Catholicneophytes, also known asMission Indians. Many Mission Indians would attempt to stay in touch with their original tribe and would maintain a dual identity.[4] At Mission Soledad many Chalon married local Esselen speakers, while others marriedYokuts who were brought into the mission between 1806 and 1834. The Soledad mission was discontinued by the Mexican Government in 1835 during the period ofsecularization, at which time the survivors scattered. Most went to work on the farms and ranches of west-central California, while many with Yokuts ancestry moved east into the San Joaquin Valley.[3]
The termChalon was documented by the Franciscan priests in their Mission Soledad ecclesiastical records. The term definitely applied to a region, since individuals were baptized from specific villages such as "Ponojo del Chalon" and "Zusotica del Chalon."[5] Anthropologist A.L. Kroeber, who first mapped the Chalon language area, presumed that it entirely surrounded Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad on the Salinas River; he mapped the specific village ofWacharo-n adjacent to the mission itself.[2] A recent alternative analysis places theEslenajan local tribe of Esselen language speakers as the inhabitants of the Soledad vicinity at the founding of the mission, places theGuachirron local tribe as Rumsen speakers farther north near Monterey Bay, and places the villages ofChalon to the east of the Salinas Valley.[3]