Some of their descendants prefer to refer to themselves by their respective tribal names; they reject the term Yokuts,' saying that it is an exonym invented by English-speaking settlers and historians.

The duck did as he was asked, and this mud became the land of the Yokuts, more specifically the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Mountains.

[12] Men usually did the hunting, fishing, and building, while the women gathered, maintained the home, and cared for the children.

[12] Shamans were important to the Yokuts as they were believed to have supernatural powers, helped conduct ceremonies, and were able to treat the sick.

[10][12] In the 19th century, missions were introduced by the Spaniards and as they expanded they forced the Yokuts to work the land for farming.

[10] In 1833, malaria was brought by British fur traders, spreading through the native population through their use of the sweat houses.

[10] This decrease in population left the Yokuts weak in numbers when gold was discovered, bringing with it more foreigners.

[10] The reservation briefly flourished, until a combination of mismanagement, droughts, and flooding caused its eventual failure and abandonment in 1864.

[10] Disease, violence, and relocation severely diminished the Yokuts; today, they number only a fraction of their pre-contact population.

[2] The federal government, which had recently acquired California after defeating Mexico in the Mexican–American War, signed a treaty (one of 18 such treaties signed state-wide, setting aside seven and a half percent of California's land area) defining a proposed reservation and 200 head of cattle per year.

The Yokuts were reduced by around 93% between 1850 and 1900, with many of the survivors being forced into indentured servitude sanctioned by the so-called "California State Act for the Government and Protection of Indians".

"..In 1858 or 1859, settlers began ethnically cleansing Tulare Lake, by killing or forcibly relocating the majority of the Yokuts population.

Severe floods in 1861 and 1867 killed thousands of cattle and caused settlers to request further dams on the inflows to Tulare Lake.

From 1875 to 1877, large numbers of hogs and cattle were carried to Skull Island from the mainland on the Mose Andross.

[22] In the northern half of the Yokuts region, some tribes inhabited the foothills of the Coast Range to the west.

[2] Yokuts used spears, basket traps, and assorted other tools to hunt a variety of local animals, such as game birds, waterfowl, rabbits, turtles, various fish, mussels, and wasp grubs.

Their staple food was derived from acorn mash, though they also gathered tule roots and iris bulbs to make flour.

[13] They used marine shells as a form of money showing they had a functional monetary system in place.