The Cochimí are the aboriginal inhabitants of the central part of the Baja California peninsula

Baja California Peninsula

The Baja California peninsula , is a peninsula in northwestern Mexico. Its land mass separates the Pacific Ocean from the Gulf of California. The Peninsula extends from Mexicali, Baja California in the north to Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur in the south.The total area of the Baja California...

, from El Rosario

El Rosario, Baja California

El Rosario is a small town on the west coast of the state of Baja California on Highway 1, 61 kmsouth of San Quintín and 119 km north of Cataviña. The census of 2010 reported a population of 1,704 inhabitants...

 in the north to San Javier

San Javier, Baja California Sur

San Javier is a village in Loreto Municipality in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur. It is approximately 36 km southwest of Loreto on an unfinished road...

 in the south.

They spoke (and some still do speak) a set of dialects or closely related languages that have been classified in a variety of ways. The most prominent division, between Northern Cochimí and Southern Cochimí, has generally been put to the south of San Ignacio (Mixco 1978, 1979, 2006; Laylander 1997). At one time designated "Peninsular Yuman", Cochimí bears an evident relationship to the Yuman languages of northern Baja California, southern California, and western Arizona. Mauricio J. Mixco (1978, 2006) reassessed this relationship and judged it to be too distant for Cochimí to be included within the Yuman family proper. He placed Cochimí as a sister language to the Yuman family, thus forming the Yuman–Cochimí family.

The Cochimí were first encountered by Spanish seaborne explorers during the sixteenth century, including Ulloa, Cabrillo

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was a Portuguese explorer noted for his exploration of the west coast of North America on behalf of Spain. Cabrillo was the first European explorer to navigate the coast of present day California in the United States...

, Vizcaíno

Sebastián Vizcaíno

Sebastián Vizcaíno was a Spanish soldier, entrepreneur, explorer, and diplomat whose varied roles took him to New Spain, the Philippines, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Japan.-Early career:...

, and others. Sporadic encounters continued until the Jesuits established missions on the peninsula in the late seventeenth century. Eusebio Francisco Kino

Eusebio Kino

Eusebio Francisco Kino S.J. was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who became famous in what is now northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States in the region then known as the Pimaria Alta...

 made an abortive foundation at San Bruno, to the north of Loreto, in 1683-1685. Juan María de Salvatierra

Juan María de Salvatierra

Juan María de Salvatierra was a Catholic missionary to the Americas.His family was of Spanish origin, the name being written originally Salva-Tierra. Born in Milan, Italy, he studied in the Jesuit college of Parma. It was there that he accidentally came across a book upon the "Indian missions,"...

 began the first successful mission in 1697 at Loreto among the Monqui

Monqui

The Monquis were the Native American inhabitants of the vicinity of Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico, at the time of Spanish contact. Probably first encountered by explorers traveling up the Gulf of California during the sixteenth century, they were subjected to some of the peninsula's earliest...

, who were southern neighbors of the Cochimí. This was quickly followed by Francesco Maria Piccolo's Cochimí mission at San Javier in 1699. Over the next seven decades, the frontier of Jesuit control over the Cochimí gradually extended northward, with missions at Mulegé

Misión Santa Rosalía de Mulegé

Mission Santa Rosalía de Mulegé was founded in 1705 by the Jesuit missionary Juan Manuel de Basaldúa at a ranchería of the local Cochimí which was known as Mulegé, in Baja California Sur, Mexico. The site lies near the entrance of Bahía de Concepción, on the Gulf of California coast.A few odd...

 (1705, Comondú (1708), La Purísima (1720), Guadalupe (1720), San Ignacio

San Ignacio, Baja California Sur

San Ignacio is a palm oasis town in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, located between Guerrero Negro and Santa Rosalía. The town had a 2010 census population of 667 inhabitants and grew at the site of the Cochimí settlement of Kadakaamán and the Jesuit Mission San Ignacio founded in 1728 by...

 (1728), Santa Gertrudis

Misión Santa Gertrudis

Mission Santa Gertrudis, called Dolores del Norte by some historians, was founded by the Jesuit missionary Jorge Retz in 1751 among the Cochimí Indians of the Baja California Peninsula, about 80 kilometers north of San Ignacio...

 (1751), San Borja (1762), and Santa María

Misión Santa María de los Ángeles

Mission Santa María de los Ángeles was the last of the missions established by the Jesuits in Baja California, Mexico, in 1767. The site chosen was the Cochimí settlement of Cabujakaamung , west of Bahía San Luis Gonzaga near the Gulf of California coast, about 22 kilometers east of Rancho Santa...

 (1767). After the Spanish crown expelled the Jesuits from Baja California in 1768, the Franciscans under Junípero Serra

Junípero Serra

Blessed Junípero Serra, O.F.M., , known as Fra Juníper Serra in Catalan, his mother tongue was a Majorcan Franciscan friar who founded the mission chain in Alta California of the Las Californias Province in New Spain—present day California, United States. Fr...

 established an additional mission at San Fernando Velicatá

Misión San Fernando Rey de España de Velicatá

Located in Baja California, Mexico about 200 miles south of Ensenada, Misión San Fernando Rey de España de Velicatá was the only mission founded by Franciscans in Baja California....

 (1769) on their way north to Alta California. The Franciscans' successors in Baja California, the Dominicans

Dominican Order

The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

, created the final new mission among the Cochimí at El Rosario (1774). Decimated by epidemics of Old World diseases, the Cochimí population declined, until sometime in the nineteenth or possibly the early twentieth century their language and traditional culture became extinct.

The Cochimí were hunter-gatherers, without agriculture or metallurgy. Pottery-making may have reached the northern Cochimí before Spanish contact (Rogers 1945). Their material culture was generally simple, but it suited their arid environment and mobile lifestyle. The highest level of social organization was the autonomous local community, and inter-community conflicts appear to have been frequent. Among the unusual cultural traits noted for the Cochimí and some of their neighbors were the second harvest of the pitahaya, the maroma, wooden tablas, and human-hair capes:

• The fruit of pitahaya cactus provided a highly valued but short-lived seasonal food resource. Subsequent to the pitahaya harvest, Baja Californians winnowed undigested pitahaya seeds from their own dried excrement and then roasted and ate this "second harvest".

• Another unusual food trait was the maroma. A valued morsel of meat was tied with a string, swallowed, then pulled back up and passed to the next person in a circle of consumers, until the meat finally disintegrated.

• Tablas were wooden tablets with painted designs and/or drilled holes, used in religious ceremonies. Some of these artifacts have been found archaeologically (Massey 1972; Hedges 1973; Meigs 1974).

• Capes made from donated human hair were worn by shamans on ceremonial occasions (Meigs 1970).

Information on Cochimí customs and beliefs has been preserved in the brief observations by explorers but, above all, in the writings of the Jesuits (Aschmann 1959; Laylander 2000; Mathes 2006). Particularly important and detailed are the works of Miguel Venegas (1757, 1979) and Miguel del Barco (1973).

Language

The Cochimi language

Cochimí language

Cochimí was once the language of the greater part Baja California, as attested by Jesuit documents of the 18th century. It seems to have become extinct around the beginning of the 20th century...

 is part of the Yuman–Cochimí family.