a member of an American Indian people who formerly inhabited the southern California coast from San Luis Obispo to Santa Monica Bay, as well as the Santa Barbara Islands and the interior westward to the San Joaquin Valley: noted for their sophisticated seacraft and rock paintings.
any of the Hokan languages of the Chumash, at least six in number, all now extinct.
literally: a fifth (part of the Torah)
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The book initially focuses on the Chumash people, on Southern California’s Channel Islands, who once fished from small boats made of bundled reeds.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
But Hammel-Sawyer knew nearly nothing about Chumash customs when she was a child.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 8, 2026
Most Chumash baskets have some kind of pattern, although today people have to guess at the meaning of the symbols, Timbrook said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 8, 2026
Tongva, Chumash and Cahuilla workers in California formed the backbone of rancho agriculture.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 30, 2025
Chumash is the name of the Santa Rosa Islanders, who spoke a dialect of this stock, and is a term widely known among the Indians of this family.
From Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 1-142 by John Wesley Powell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
