Yokuts

Related Category: North American indigenous peoples

(yō´kts), Native North Americans of S California. Their culture was essentially that of the California cultural area, and their basketry and pictographs are notable. In the late 18th cent. the Yokuts population was about 18,000; in 1990 it was under 3,000. The Yokuts, or Mariposan, languages are a branch of the Penutian linguistic family (see Native American Languages).

See H. F. Hughes, The Valley of the Yokuts (1940).