Káruk

The Karuk, whose name means upriver people in their own language, are the people of the middle Klamath River in northwestern California. They traditionally called themselves the middle of the world people. Downstream lived the Yurok, the downriver people. The Karuk language is a language isolate, sometimes assigned to the proposed Hokan family.

Their economy turned on the Klamath salmon runs, acorn harvests and deer, supplemented by tobacco they sowed themselves, while basketmaking and the several-day Brush Dance, Jump Dance and Pikyavish ceremonies, held to heal the sick and renew the world, anchored village life. Alfred Kroeber estimated their population in 1770 at about fifteen hundred.

The Spanish missions halted far to the south at San Francisco Bay, and although Hudson's Bay Company trappers entered the lower Klamath in 1827, the upriver Karuk were little disturbed before 1837.