| Also Known As: Ohlone
Description:
The Rumsen (also known as the Rumsien) are one of eight divisions of the Ohlone (Coastanoan) Native American people of Northern California. The Rumsen people resided from the Pajaro River to Point Sur, and the lower courses of the Pajaro, as well as on the Salinas and Carmel Rivers, and the present-day cities of Salinas, Monterey and Carmel.
Rumsen (also known as San Carlos Costanoan and Carmeleno) is also the name of their spoken language on the Carmel, Sur and lower Salinas Rivers. It was listed as one of the Coastanoan dialects in the Utian family. It became the primary native language spoken at the Mission San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo founded in 1770. The last fluent native speaker of Rumsen, Isabelle Meadows, died in 1938. However, the language is extensively documented in the unpublished fieldnotes of Bureau of American Ethnology linguist John Peabody Harrington.
Their Monterey Bay territory was bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Awaswas to the north, the Mutsun to the east, the Chalon in the south east, and the Esselen to the south.
The Rumsen were the first Costanoan people to be seen and documented by the Spanish explorers of Northern California, when..... full article at Wikipedia |