Chochenyo (also called Chocheño and East Bay Costanoan) is also the name of their spoken language,[1] one of the Costanoan dialects in the Utian family. Linguistically, Chochenyo, Tamyen (also Tamien) and Ramaytush are thought to be close dialects of a single language.
Chochenyo territory was bordered by the Karkin to the north (at Mount Diablo), the Tamyen to the south and southwest, the San Francisco Bay to the west, and overlapped a bit with the Bay Miwok and Yokuts to the east.
During the California Mission Era, the Chochenyos moved en masse to the Mission San Francisco de Asís (founded in 1776) in San Francisco, and Mission San José of Fremont (founded in 1797). Most moved into one of these missions and were baptized, lived and educated to be Catholic neophytes, also known as Mission Indians, until the missions were discontinued by the Mexican Government in 1834. Then the people found themselves landless. A large majority of the Chochenyo died from disease in the missions and shortly thereafter, only a fragment remaining by 1900. The speech of the last two native speakers of Chochenyo was documented in the 1920s in the unpublished fieldnotes of the Bureau of American Ethnology linguist John Peabody Harrington.
Today, Chochenyo descendants have joined with the other San Francisco Bay Area Ohlone descendants under the name of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. As of 2007, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe were petitioning for U.S. federal recognition.[5]
In 2017 the tribe opened Cafe Ohlone in Berkeley focused on traditional Chochenyo foods and cultural restoration.[6]
Chochenyo tribes and villages
The East Bay and eastward mountain valleys were populated with dozens of Chochenyo tribes and villages. See:
^"Our Story". Cafe Ohlone. Retrieved 25 August 2024.
Kroeber, Alfred L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Washington, D.C: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. (map of villages, page 465)
Milliken, Randall. A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769-1910 Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication, 1995. ISBN0-87919-132-5 (alk. paper)
Milliken, Randall. Native Americans at Mission San Jose Banning, CA: Malki-Ballena Press Publication, 2008. ISBN978-0-87919-147-4 (alk. paper)
Teixeira, Lauren. The Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area, A Research Guide. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press Publication, 1997. ISBN0-87919-141-4.