Timbisha

The Timbisha ("rock paint", Timbisha language: Nümü Tümpisattsi) are a Native American tribe federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. They are known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and are located in south central California, near the Nevada border. As of the 2010 Census the population of the Village was 124. The older members still speak the ancestral language, also called Timbisha.

==History== thumb|Furnace Creek, Death Valley, Californiathumb|Timbisha Shoshone History The Timbisha have lived in the Death Valley region of North America for over a thousand years. They were originally known as Panamints, as was their Uto-Aztecan language. The band traditionally was very small in size, and linguists estimate that fewer than 200 individuals ever spoke Panamint Shoshone. Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most Native groups in present day California have varied substantially. (See Population of Native California.) Alfred L. Kroeber put the combined 1770 population of the Timbisha (Koso) and Chemehuevi at 1,500. He estimated the population of the Timbisha and Chemehuevi in 1910 as 500. Julian Steward's figures for Eastern California are about 65 persons in Saline Valley, 150-160 persons in Little Lake (springs) and the Coso Range, about 100 in northern Panamint Valley, 42 in northern Death Valley, 29 at Beatty, and 42 in the Belted Range.