The Mono ( ) are a Native American people who traditionally live in the central Sierra Nevada, the Eastern Sierra (generally south of Bridgeport), the Mono Basin, and adjacent areas of the Great Basin. They are often grouped under the historical label "Paiute" together with the Northern Paiute and Southern Paiute – but these three groups, although related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, do not form a single, unique, unified group of Great Basin tribes.
Today, many of the tribal citizens and descendants of the Mono tribe inhabit the town of North Fork (thus the label "Northfork Mono") in Madera County. People of the Mono tribe are also spread across California in: the Owens River Valley; the San Joaquin Valley and foothills areas, especially Fresno County; and in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tribal groups
The "Mono" lived on both sides of the Sierra Nevada and are divided into two regional tribal/dialect groups, roughly based on the Sierra crest:
Eastern Mono Southernmost Northern Paiute live on the California-Nevada border on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in the Owens Valley (Mono: Payahǖǖnadǖ/Payahuunadu – "place/land of flowing water") along the Owens River (Wakopee) and south to Owens Lake (Pacheta). They are also known as the "Owens Valley Paiute" Western Mono on the west side in the south-central foothills of the Sierra Nevada, including the "Northfork Mono," as labeled by E.W. Gifford, an ethnographer studying people in the vicinity of the San Joaquin River in the 1910s.
Culture and geography
The current tribal name "Mono" is a Yokutsan loanword from the tribe's western neighbors, the Yokuts, who however hereby designated the Owens valley Paiutes as the southernmost Northern Paiute band living around "owens lake" / Mono Lake as monachie/monoache ("fly people") because fly larvae was their chief food staple and trading article and not the "Mono". This "Kucadikadi Northern Paiute Band", whose autonym Kutsavidökadö/Kutzadika'a means "eaters of the brine fly pupae", are also known as Mono Lake Paiute or Owens Valley Paiute, a holdover from early anthropological literature, and are often confused with the non-Northern Paiute ethnic group of the Western mono "Mono".
The "Eastern Mono" referred to themselves as Numa/Nuumu or Nüümü ("People") in their Mono language dialect and to their kin to the west as Panan witü / Pana witü ("western place" People); the "Western Mono" called themselves Nyyhmy/Nimi or Nim/Nium ("People"); a full blooded "Western Mono" person was called cawu h nyyhmy.
Eastern Mono (Owens Valley Paiute)
The Owens Valley Paiute or Eastern Mono live on the California-Nevada border, they formerly ranged on the eastern side of the southern Sierra Nevada across the Owens Valley along the Owens Rivers from Long Valley on the north to Owens Lake on the south, and from the crest of the Sierra Nevada on the west to the White and Inyo Mountains including the Fish Lake and Deep Springs Valleys on the east. They were predominantly sedentary and settled in fixed settlements along rivers or springs (or artificial canals). The more intensive arable farming by means of partly artificial irrigation enabled them to build up food reserves and thus, in contrast to the "Western Mono bands", to feed larger groups. The Sedentism is also reflected in their socio-political organization in different "districts" (each with communistic hunting and seed rights, political unity, and a number of villages), whose name mostly ended with "patü/witü", meaning "place" or "land"; each "district" was under the command of a headman or pohenaby.