YUROK

Indians of the Northwest Coast of North America who lived in California along the lower Klamath River and the Pacific coast. They spoke a Macro-Algonquian language related to Wiyot (q.v.). Yurok villages were small; a village was a collection of independent houses owned by individual families rather than a unified community with an overall political authority. Village residents sometimes shared rights to subsistence areas and to the performance of certain rituals, but other rights, such as rights to fishing, hunting, and gathering, generally belonged to particular houses. These rights were acquired by inheritance, dowry, blood money, or sale. In addition to dwellings, villages also had sweathouses that served as dormitories for men of the basic social unit (consisting of relatives reckoned on the paternal side, headed by the senior member). There were also small separate women's menstrual huts. The Yurok, whose economy focused on salmon and the acorn, 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 a major Yurok ideal. Feuds were common, with payments of blood money worked out on a precise scale depending on the seriousness of the offense. The value of a man's life depended on his social status. Religion was concerned with the individual effort to elicit supernatural aid, especially through ritual cleanliness, and with rituals for the public welfare. The major ceremonies were those of the World Renewal cycle, which assured an abundance of food, riches, and general well-being. These included the recitation of magical formulas repeating the words of an ancient spirit race and other acts. The spiritual power to cure disease was restricted to women, giving them prestige and a source of wealth. The Yurok lacked the potlatch masked dances, representative art, and other features typical of most Northwest Coast cultures.