named "Chumash".

modern state boundaries don't correspond to former tribal areas - which varied over time. Just looking at California, for example- where are the Miwok and the Pomo and the Shoshone and all the rest?

California had the highest population density in North America before European contact, and was home to around 500 different and distinct tribes speaking 300 dialects of 100 different languages (it's still home to more than 100 federally recognized tribes today). Almost a fifth of modern tribes exist in this one state today, and according to some estimates up to one third of pre-Columbian North American tribes may have existed only in the area now covered by California and Oregon.

To name the entire state after the Chumash, simply because they lived in the spot where a bunch of white people decided to build a big city, seems a bit insulting.

....there are other towns in our county and those adjacent that are named for other tribes, like Nipomo.

Last edited Sun Aug 16, 2015, 10:46 PM - Edit history (1)

I don't know what to tell you.

What I am seeing upon looking it up is that Alaska is the way the Russian explorers pronounced Alakshak, the Alutiiq word for "the Great Land."

Native place names are very common up here, and the five major cultures are very much alive.

I'm part Monacan and because I live close to the reservation.

it seems to be a victim of climate change or I'm going blind now

there are loads of places called Harbor something or other, or something or other Shores twenty miles from any body of water that's not a man-made retention pond. Places like Shady Pines, too, where there's no pines AND no shade!

was the French derivative of an Indian word that refererred to the Quapaw Indians, the "downstream people".

but I can see where other people would have problems.

Materially, I'm Chiricahua Apache (N'de)! Though Miwok, Yakut, Tashi, would have worked for Cali as well.

AKA Northern California, and I'm from the Wabanaki region (L'nuk is only one group of the Wabanakis)