South Valley Yokuts

The South Valley Yokuts are the southern Yokuts tribelets of the lower San Joaquin basin, among them the Tachi on the shores of Tulare Lake, the Koyeti of the Tule River, and the Pitkachi of the San Joaquin above Mendota Pool; their dialects formed the Southern Valley Yokuts cluster within the Yokutsan languages. Tulare Lake, ringed with tules, was the densest Yokuts population centre, its islands and shores holding many independent villages.

Like the northern Yokuts they first encountered Spaniards in 1772, suffered mission abductions in the years that followed, and were cut down by the malaria epidemic of 1833, which spread through the shared sweat houses and carried off much of the lake population.