Cruzeño
The traditional Cruzeño language area spans three of the Channel Islands: Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel Islands. It is documented in a number of 19th century vocabularies and in the fieldnotes of J. P. Harrington. Based on archaeological evidence and the testimony of early observers, it has been estimated that speakers of all Chumashan languages together numbered between 10,700 and 17,250 in pre-contact times (King 1969). In the 21st century, there are no first-language speakers of any Chumashan language.
Map of the Chumashan languages (Robert F. Heizer, ed. 1978. California. (Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 8.) Washington: Smithsonian Institute.)
Cruzeño (also called "Isleño", "Ysleño", or "Island Chumash") is a member of the Chumashan language family; the others are Barbareño, Samala (Ineseño), Interior Chumash, Obispeño, Purisimeño, Ventureño.
Selected archival materials at Berkeley
Selected materials in other archives
Further reading
- Heizer R. F., ed. 1952. California Indian linguistic records: The Mission Indian vocabularies of Alphonse Pinart. University of California Anthropological Records 15:1-84. [PDF]
- Heizer, R.F., ed. 1955. California Indian linguistic records: The Mission Indian vocabularies of H. W. Henshaw. University of California Anthropological Records 15:85-202. [PDF]
- Klar, Kathryn. 1977. Topics in Historical Chumash Grammar. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. [PDF]
- Kroeber, A.L. 1910. The Chumash and Costanoan languages. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 9,2:237-271. [PDF]