Chalon

The traditional Chalon language area is along Chalone Creek to the east of the Salinas River. During the mission period, Chalon was spoken at Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad. Other dialects were potentially spoken along the upper San Benito River as well. The language is only attested in wordlists from the nineteenth century and a fragment of a catechism. In pre-contact times, there were approximately 900 speakers of Chalon (Levy 1978).

Map of the Ohlone languages
Map of the Ohlone languages (Richard L. Levy. 1976. Costanoan internal relationships. Berkeley: Archaeological Research Facility, University of California.)

Chalon is an Ohlone (or “Costanoan”) language, along with Awaswas, Chochenyo, Karkin, Mutsun, Ramaytush, Rumsen, and Tamyen. The Ohlone languages comprise one branch of the hypothesized Penutian language family, within which they form a subgroup with the Miwokan languages (Central Sierra Miwok, Coast Miwok, Lake Miwok, Northern Sierra Miwok, Plains Miwok, Saclan, and Southern Sierra Miwok). Penutian also includes Klamath-Modoc, the Maiduan languages (Konkow, Maidu, and Nisenan), the Wintuan languages (Nomlaki, Patwin, and Wintu), and the Yokuts languages.

Selected archival materials at Berkeley

Further reading

  • Golla, Victor. 2011. California Indian languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • 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]
  • Hinton, Leanne. 2001. The Ohlone Languages. In Leanne Hinton & Kenneth Hale (eds.) The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. San Diego: Academic Press
  • Milliken, Randall, Shoup, Laurence H. & Ortiz, Beverly R. Ohlone/Coastanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today. Oakland: Archaeological and Historical Consultants. [PDF]
  • Shaul, David L. 2012. Chalon and Rumsen (Ohlone/Costanoan) catechism. Journal of Californian and Great Basin Anthropology, 32:161-186.