Pomo

The Pomo are a Native American people of Northern California whose lands stretched from the Pacific coast inland to Clear Lake and the Russian River valley. They were hundreds of independent village communities speaking seven related but mutually unintelligible Pomoan languages, living by hunting, fishing and gathering with acorns as the staple.

Pomo women wove watertight cooking baskets and gift pieces decorated with woodpecker feathers, shell beads and abalone pendants. Pomo ceremonial life centred on the Kuksu religion with its masked dances and healing rites.

The Russian American Company built Fort Ross on their coast in 1812, where the Kashaya Pomo traded and worked, while between 1821 and 1828 Spanish missionaries removed many southern Pomo to Mission San Rafael. A smallpox epidemic spreading from Fort Ross in 1837, on top of earlier cholera and smallpox outbreaks, cut their numbers drastically.