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12 inhabitants of this region is due to their rapid disappearance as a result of disease, missionization, and the sudden overrunning of their country by American miners and settlers during the gold rush years. . .The scraps of information recorded in the historical documents can in some instances be augmented by the slim and deficient archaeological record. is Wallace (1978:462-470) states that the principal area occupied by the Yokuts was situated west of the confluence of the Merced and San Joaquin Rivers. The lower reaches of the Merced were within the territory of the Coconoon group of the Northern Valley Yokuts. Wallace avers that the Yokuts spread from the Sierra Nevada foothills into the Central Valley about five hundred years ago. While it is generally acknowledged that very little direct, reliable ethnographic information is available pertaining to the Yokuts, Kroeber (1925:474-543) presents a good discussion of the information that he collected. His description of Yokuts ethnography is based mostly on what was known prior to 1925 regarding the southern valley Yokuts, the "northerners" having been virtually wiped out by epidemics in the 18301x. Kroeber's study is supplemented by locally detailed information obtained by Latta (1949, 1977) . } The Yokuts are one of the few California tribes that were divided into true tribes, of which there were fifty. Each was named and the location of 40 of these tribes was recorded by Kroeber. Within this part of the Central Valley the Yokuts maintained large sedentary villages situated along main watercourses. At times several hundred persons occupied some of these permanent villages. Kroeber (1925) remarks that "California Indians are perhaps �. the most omnivorous group of tribes on the continent, " since as he points out, a wide variety of food resources was available in the Yokuts territory and they utilized almost all types of seasonally procurable food. ' Kroeber (1925) notes that an important subsistence staple, the acorn, is scarce in many parts of the Yokuts territory, but considers that "the manifold distribution of available foods in California" ensured that the Yokuts did not starve due to failure of the acorn crap--they simply made use of other sources of food (Kroeber 1925: 527) . Acorns and seeds were processed in bedrock mortars or portable mortars made from available stone, as well as in mortars made of white oak. River cobbles or other stones of suitable size were used to pulverize vegetal material. A I �.a