< Salinas, Latham in Trans. Philolog. Soc. Lond., 85, 1856 (includes
Gioloco, Ruslen, Soledad of Mofras, Eslen, Carmel, San Antonio, San
Miguel). Latham, Opuscula, 350, 1860.
> San Antonio, Powell in Cont. N.A. Eth., III, 568, 1877 (vocabulary
of; not given as a family, but kept by itself).
< Santa Barbara, Gatschet in Mag. Am. Hist., 157, 1877 (cited here as
containing San Antonio). Gatschet in U.S. Geog. Surv. W. 100th M.,
VII, 419, 1879 (contains San Antonio, San Miguel).
X Runsiens, Keane, App. Stanford’s Comp. (Cent. and So. Am.), 476,
1878 (San Miguel of his group belongs here).
Derivation: From river of same name.
The language formerly spoken at the Missions of San Antonio and San
Miguel in Monterey County, California, have long occupied a doubtful
position. By some they have been considered distinct, not only from each
other, but from all other languages. Others have held that they
represent distinct dialects of the Chumashan (Santa Barbara) group of
languages. Vocabularies collected in 1884 by Mr. Henshaw show clearly
that the two are closely connected dialects and that they are in no wise
related to any other family.
The group established by Latham under the name Salinas is a
heterogeneous one, containing representatives of no fewer than four
distinct families. Gioloco, which he states “may possibly belong to this
group, notwithstanding its reference to the Mission of San Francisco,”
really is congeneric with the vocabularies assigned by Latham to the
Mendocinan family. The “Soledad of Mofras” belongs to the Costanoan
family mentioned on page 348 of the same essay, as also do the Ruslen
and Carmel. Of the three remaining forms of speech, Eslen, San Antonio,
and San Miguel, the two latter are related dialects, and belong within
the drainage of the Salinas River. The term Salinan is hence applied to
them, leaving the Eslen language to be provided with a name.
_Population._--Though the San Antonio and San Miguel were probably never
very populous tribes, the Missions of San Antonio and San Miguel, when
first established in the years 1771 and 1779, contained respectively
1,400 and 1,300 Indians. Doubtless the larger number of these converts
were gathered in the near vicinity of the two missions and so belonged
to this family. In 1884 when Mr. Henshaw visited the missions he was
able to learn of the existence of only about a dozen Indians of this
family, and not all of these could speak their own language.