Ventureño

The traditional Ventureño language area is along the Pacific coast from Carpenteria to Malibu. A poorly attested language, Alliklik Chumash, which was spoken on the upper Santa Clara River, may be a variety of Ventureñ, as well as Castac Chumash. During the mission period, Ventureño was spoken at Mission San Buenaventura. 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
Map of the Chumashan languages (Robert F. Heizer, ed. 1978. *California.* (Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 8.) Washington: Smithsonian Institute.)

Ventureño (also called Mitsqanaqan̓) is a member of the Chumashan language family; the others are Barbareño, Samala (Ineseño), Interior Chumash, Cruzeño, Obispeño, and Purisimeño.

Selected archival materials at Berkeley

Selected materials in other archives

Further reading

  • Applegate, Richard. 1973. A sketch of Ventureño Chumash. Ms. Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, Applegate.001. [PDF]
  • Beeler, Madison S. 1967. The Ventureño confesionario of José Sen´n, O.F.M. 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]
  • Henry, Timothy Paul. 2012. A Pedagogical Grammar of Ventureno Chumash: Implementing Grammatical Theory in Grammar Writing. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.
  • Henry-Rodriguez, Timothy Paul. 2019. A Mitsqanaqan̓ Ventureño-English, English- Mitsqanaqan̓ Ventureño Dictionary. Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, 2019-35.001.001. [PDF]
  • Klar, Kathryn A. 1977. Topics in historical Chumash grammar. Ph.D. 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]