Yurok, Indians of the Northwest Coast of North America North American Indians who lived in what is now California along the lower Klamath River and the Pacific coast. They spoke a Macro-Algonquian language and were culturally and linguistically related to the Wiyot (q.v.). . As their traditional territory lay on the border between divergent cultural and ecological areas, the Yurok combined the typical subsistence practices of Northwest Coast Indians with many religious and organizational features common to California Indians.

Traditional Yurok villages were small ; a village was a collection collections of independent houses owned by individual families rather than a unified community with . Avoiding unified communities and an overall political authority. Village , village residents sometimes shared rights to general subsistence areas and to the performance of certain rituals, but other . Other rights, such as rights to the right to use specific areas for fishing, hunting, and gathering, generally belonged to particular houses. These rights were acquired by inheritance , or dowry, as part of blood money settlements, or by sale. In addition to dwellings, villages also had sweathouses that served as dormitories for men of the basic social unit (consisting of relatives reckoned on the paternal side, headed by the senior member)had sweat houses, each of which served as a gathering places for the men of an extended patrilineal family. There were also small separate women’s menstrual hutsseparate shelters to which women retired during menstruation.

The traditional Yurok , whose economy focused on salmon and the acorn, acorns. The people also produced excellent basketry and made canoes from redwood trees, selling them to inland tribes. Wealth was counted in strings of dentalium shells, obsidian blades, woodpecker scalps, and albino deerskins. Acquiring wealth was a major Yurok idealan important goal in Yurok culture. Feuds were common, with and payments of blood money worked out on a precise scale depending on were precisely defined according to the seriousness of the offense. The ; the value of a man’s life depended on his social status.

Religion Traditional Yurok religion was concerned with the individual an individual’s effort to elicit supernatural aid, especially through ritual cleanliness, and with rituals for the public welfare. The tribe did not practice the potlatch, masked dances, representative carving, and other features typical of their Northwest Coast neighbours. The major ceremonies were those of the World Renewal cycle, which assured ensured an abundance of food, riches, and general well-being. These This cycle included the recitation of magical formulas, repeating the words of an ancient spirit race, and other acts. The spiritual power to cure disease was restricted granted only to women, giving them these shamans prestige and a source of wealth .The Yurok lacked the potlatch masked dances, representative art, and other features typical of most Northwest Coast cultures(see alsoshamanism).

Early 21st-century population estimates indicated some 6,000 individuals of Yurok descent.