Kashaya, also known as Southwestern Pomo, is a member of the Pomoan family of languages. There are seven members of the family, most of which are now extinct, while the rest are in danger of extinction. Kashaya has the largest number of speakers, cited recently as "several dozen" (Golla 2011). All the Pomoan languages were originally spoken in northern California, primarily in Sonoma and Mendocino counties. This map shows the original tribal boundaries overlaid on a modern Google map (click map for larger version).
The next map shows the Kashaya tribal territory as defined by Oswalt (1961), based especially on the linguistic origins of local placenames. Some sources place the upper boundary further north at Gualala (rather than Black Point, as on this map), and the lower boundary also further north at the Russian River (rather than Salmon Creek).
See an overview of Kashaya grammar at Wikipedia. Click for a bibliography of work on Kashaya and the other Pomoan cultures.
Prepared by Gene Buckley.
I wrote my dissertation at UC Berkeley on Theoretical Aspects of Kashaya Phonology and Morphology. A slightly revised version was published in 1994 by the Center for the Study of Language and Information, at Stanford University. I have also done much subsequent work on related topics in Kashaya, which can be seen on my curriculum vitae. I am currently working to convert Oswalt's unpublished dictionary materials into a lexical database for publication.