Takelma

The Takelma, whose name means those along the river, are a people of the Rogue Valley in interior southwestern Oregon, most of their villages along the Rogue River and its salmon-rich tributaries. Their language is usually counted an isolate, although earlier scholarship assigned it to the Penutian family.

They lived in small kin bands, foraging to store food for winter: men took salmon with nets and spears while women cleaned and dried them, and the catch was supplemented by game, acorns and camas roots. Their only cultivated crop was a native tobacco.

In winter they occupied semi-subterranean houses walled with sugar-pine planks around a central fire pit, moving to brush shelters in summer. Ringed by mountains, the Rogue Valley was settled late: when 1337 opened, and still as late as 1837, no outside settler had yet crossed into Takelma country.