The Karkin people have historically lived in the
Carquinez Strait region in the northeast portion of the
San Francisco Bay estuary. They spoke the
Karkin language, the only documentation of which is a single vocabulary obtained by linguist-missionary Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta at
Mission Dolores in 1821 from Karkin speaker Mariano Antonio Sagnegse. According to de la Cuesta,
karkin means 'to trade.' Although meager, the records of Karkin show that it constituted a distinct branch of
Costanoan/
Ohlone, strikingly different from the neighboring
Chochenyo and other Ohlone languages spoken farther south and across the bay. Starting in 1787, some Karkin people began moving to
Mission Dolores in present-day San Francisco. In 1804 and 1807, Karkins resisted attempts by Mission Indians to recapture fugitive Indians who had escaped the mission. The last Karkins moved to the mission between 1809 and 1810. At the end of 1817, 49 Karkins were living at Mission Dolores. By the end of 1823, 35 Karkin people lived at Mission Dolores, Mission San Francisco Solano, and Mission San Jose, seven of whom had been born in the missions. In 1925,
Alfred Kroeber, then director of the
Hearst Museum of Anthropology, declared the Ohlone extinct, which directly led to its losing federal recognition and land rights. The Confederated Villages of Lisjan is a tribe made up of Karkin and six other neighboring indigenous groups.
Corrina Gould is a Karkin and
Chochenyo activist who co-founded Indian People Organizing for Change and the
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, and is the spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan. == See also ==