Who Are the Yurok Indians?
Yurok (pronounced YOOR-ock) is a tribe of Native American Indians that has long lived on the Pacific Coast of Northern California in America. Yurok, which means “downriver people,” is from the Karok language; Karok means “upriver.” The Yurok Indians’ culture went uninterrupted by non-natives for far longer than that of most other Native American tribes. Trappers in the early 19th century and the Gold Rush of the 1850s changed the way the Yurok lived. The Yurok tribe spoke its own Macro-Algonquin language called “Yurok,” which is closely related to the language of neighboring tribes. They built box-like, individual homes with chimneys and pitched roofs out of redwood trees; they used only trees that had already fallen, however, as the tribe considers redwoods sacred. While many men and women wore little to no clothing, the deerskin clothing they made was heavily ornamented with shells from the Pacific Coast.
