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Northern and Central California [underlined]
Plateau Branch [underlined]
MONACHI. [underlined]

Monachi or Mono are the names applied generally to the Shoshonean Indians of the higher Sierra on both sides of the range. The origin of the name is unknown.  Its identity with the Spanish mono, monkey, and its similarity to the Yokuts word, at least in certain dialects, for fly, monai, etc., are probably only coincidences.

Some of the Indians comprised under this term have tribal names for their smaller divisions, at any rate among their neighbors; others have not. Certain Indians, such as those about Owens Lake, are sometimes called Monachi and sometimes Paiute. The exact extent of the applicability of the term is therefore doubtful. However, all the Shoshonean tribes living in the Sierra Nevada north of Kern river, together with those of Mono county and parts or all of Inyo county, California, speak a dialect which is related to that of the so-called Paiute or Paviotso of northwestern Nevada and of the Snakes of eastern Oregon and probably western Nevada; and to this general group, many of the members of which are entirely unaware of the existence of others, the term Mono-Paviotso has been here applied as the name of a linguistic division.

Under the Monachi are to be included the five "Piaute tribes" men-