Map 7. Presumed Nongatl villages in the Bridgeville region.
Map 8. Lassik villages in the Alder Point region.
NONGATL
The Nongatl are almost entirely confined to the drainages of the Van Duzen River and upper Mad River. Their culture is the least known of any group in northwestern California. Merriam evidently did not work in their area although he recorded a few of their words given him by George Burt's wife. George Burt was a Sinkyone, but his wife was born and raised near Bridgeville. Goddard recorded some villages for this group, whose names are given below. Nomland worked with someone from the Nongatl in 1928 (Nomland, 1938, p. 9), but her results have not been published.
The territory of the Nongatl lies, for the most part, east of the main redwood belt. It is therefore no doubt well supplied with oaks, and plant foods are thus readily available. Salmon are abundant in the Van Duzen River (pl. 10, c) and Yager Creek but not in the Mad River in eastern Nongatl territory. In much of their territory then, the subsistence patterns of the Nongatl must have differed from those of most of northwestern California, where fishing was of primary importance.
According to Merriam (1923) the word Nung-kahhl is "a general or blanket name used by themselves for all the southern Athapaskan tribes, from Iaqua and Yager Creek on the north to the northern border of Round Valley on the south, thus including the Athapaskan Wilakke." In anthropological literature, however, especially in the work of Kroeber and Goddard, this name has come to be used for the group living between Iaqua Buttes and Mad River on the north and Dobbyn Creek on the south. Merriam's name for this group is Kit-tel´. He does not seem to have obtained any information from them although one of his notes mentions the fact that the wife of George Burt, his Lolangkok Sinkyone informant, was a Kit-tel´ woman.