We have more ethnographic information about the Sinkyone than about most of the Athabascan groups. Merriam's material and Goddard's data combined provide a virtually complete village list for the northern, or Lolangkok, Sinkyone and a few villages for the southern, or Shelter Cove, Sinkyone. Kroeber's Handbook (1925a, pp. 145-150) gives a fair amount of general ethnography and this is well augmented by Nomland's paper (Nomland, 1935).
Sinkyone territory is in the redwood coastal zone and this location no doubt reduced somewhat the supply of vegetal food. The Sinkyone were, however, well supplied with fish products by the Eel River, which not only had an excellent salmon run but also provided quantities of lamprey eel.
On the basis of Merriam's linguistic evidence the Sinkyone have been divided into a northern group, called Lolangkok after the native name for Bull Creek, and a southern group, called Shelter Cove after a sheltered spot on the coast midway between the Mattole and Yuki boundaries. This division is rendered somewhat questionable by the unreliability of Sally Bell, Merriam's Shelter Cove Sinkyone informant. It is doubtful, however, whether Sally Bell's linguistic information could be falsified. In any case, the separation is partly verified by Goddard's data and I have therefore accepted it.
The Merriam notes contain a comparatively large amount of material on the Lolangkok Sinkyone. The following general statement on that group is taken verbatim from that source.
The Lo-lahn´-kōk. Information is from George Burt, a member of the tribe, who was raised on Bull Creek at the rancheria called Kahs-cho´-chin-net´-tah about seven miles upstream from Dyerville, at a place now known as Schoolhouse Flat, and who now lives near Fortuna (1922).
The territory of the Lo-lahn´-kōk began on the north at Shively and covered a narrow strip on the east side of the main Eel River to Dyerville, and a much broader area on the west side, and continued southerly on the west side of South Fork Eel River nearly to Garberville. On the west it not only covered the South Fork drainage, but continued over Elk Ridge to the head waters of Upper Mattole River.
The southern boundary ran a little north of Ettersburg, Briceland, and Garberville.
Informant states that on the east side of South Fork Eel River their territory included only the immediate river valley.
Merriam's informant from the Southern Sinkyone was Sally Bell. She had evidently lived at Briceland for more than thirty years when she was interviewed in 1923. Nomland (1935, p. 149) says of her that she was "born Needle Rock; reared from childhood by white settlers, married Coast Yuki, Tom Bell; blind, senile, sees spirits in rafters, etc." (See fig. 1, d.) This group Merriam describes only in a brief general statement, summarized as follows.
Fig. 1. Athabascan tattooing noted by C. Hart Merriam. a, b. Whilkut women, c. Bear River woman from a sketch made by Merriam in 1921. d. From a sketch made by Merriam of the Shelter Cove woman named Sally Bell.
To´-cho´-be ke´ah is their own name and the Lolahnkok name for the tribe (and village) in the Briceland region (between the South Fork of the Eel and the coast). It is used also in a larger sense for all bands speaking the same dialect from the west side of the South Fork of the Eel River (in the Garberville region) to the coast. The Set´tenbi´den [Lassik] call this group Yis-sing´-kun-ne. The name of the group is pronounced To-cho´-be ke´ah by the Lolahn´kōk and Taw-chaw´-be-ke´ah by themselves.