Pomo people

Pomo

Pomo woman in 2015
Total population
(1770: 8,000 1851: 3,500-5,000 1910: 777-1,200 1990: 4,900 2010: 10,308)
Regions with significant populations
United States ( California: Mendocino County, Sonoma Valley, Napa Valley, Lake County, Colusa County)
Languages
Pomoan languages, English
Religion
Kuksu, Messiah Cult, traditional Pomo religion

The Pomo are an indigenous people of California. The historic Pomo territory in northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small group, the Northeastern Pomo of the Stonyford vicinity of Colusa County, was separated from the core Pomo area by lands inhabited by Yuki and Wintuan speakers.

The name Pomo derives from a conflation of the Pomo words [pʰoːmoː] and [pʰoʔmaʔ]. It originally meant "those who live at red earth hole" and was once the name of a village in southern Potter Valley near the present-day community of Pomo. It may have referred to local deposits of the red mineral magnesite, used for red beads, or to the reddish earth and clay, such as hematite, mined in the area. In the Northern Pomo dialect, -pomo or -poma was used as a suffix after the names of places, to mean a subgroup of people of the place. By the year 1877 (possibly beginning with Powers), the use of Pomo had been extended in English to mean the entire people known today as the Pomo. The Pomo had 20 chiefs at the same time.

The people called Pomo were originally linked by location, language, and cultural expression. They were not socially or politically linked as one large unified group. Instead, they lived in small groups or bands, linked by geography, lineage and marriage. Traditionally they relied upon fishing, hunting and gathering for their food.