Indigenous people of California
The indigenous peoples of California (known as Native Californians) are the indigenous inhabitants who have lived or currently live in the geographic area within the current boundaries of California before and after the arrival of Europeans. ...
from the
Los Angeles Basin
The Los Angeles Basin is a sedimentary basin located in Southern California, in a region known as the Peninsular Ranges. The basin is also connected to an anomalous group of east-west trending chains of mountains collectively known as the Tr ...
and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer
Kizh
Kizh Kit’c () are the Mission Indians of San Gabriel, according to Andrew Salas, Smithsonian Institution, Congress, the Catholic Church, the San Gabriel Mission, and other Indigenous communities. Most California tribes were known by their com ...
as an
endonym
An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...
that, they argue, is more historically accurate. In the precolonial era, the people lived in as many as 100 villages and primarily identified by their village rather than by a pan-tribal name. During
colonization
Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
, the Spanish referred to these people as Gabrieleño and Fernandeño, names derived from the
Spanish missions
The Spanish missions in the Americas were Catholic missions established by the Spanish Empire during the 16th to 19th centuries in the period of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. These missions were scattered throughout the entirety of ...
built on their land:
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel ( es, Misión de San Gabriel Arcángel) is a Californian mission and historic landmark in San Gabriel, California. It was founded by Spaniards of the Franciscan order on "The Feast of the Birth of Mary," September ...
and
Mission San Fernando Rey de España
Mission San Fernando Rey de España is a Spanish mission in the Mission Hills community of Los Angeles, California. The mission was founded on 8 September 1797 at the site of Achooykomenga, and was the seventeenth of the twenty-one Spanish mis ...
. ''Tongva'' is the most widely circulated endonym among the people, used by Narcisa Higuera in 1905 to refer to inhabitants in the vicinity of Mission San Gabriel.
Along with the neighboring
Chumash Chumash may refer to:
*Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism
*Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California
*Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California
See also
* Chumash traditional ...
, the Tongva were the most influential people at the time of
European
European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to:
In general
* ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe
** Ethnic groups in Europe
** Demographics of Europe
** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...
encounter. They had developed an extensive
trade network
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...
through ''
te'aat
A ''tomol'' or ''tomolo'' (Chumash) or ''te'aat'' or ''ti'at'' (Tongva/Kizh) are plank-built boats, historically and currently in the Santa Barbara and Los Angeles area. They replaced or supplemented tule reed boats. The boats were between in le ...
s'' (plank-built boats). Their vibrant food and material culture was based on an Indigenous worldview that positioned humans as one strand in a
web of life
A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Another name for food web is consumer-resource system. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one ...
(as expressed in their
creation stories
A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop ...
). Over time, different communities came to speak distinct dialects of the
Tongva language
The Tongva language (also known as Gabrielino or Gabrieleño) is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language formerly spoken by the Tongva, a Native American people who live in and around Los Angeles, California. It has not been a language of everyday conve ...
, part of the
Takic
The Takic languages are a putative group of Uto-Aztecan languages historically spoken by a number of Indigenous peoples of California, Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Takic is grouped with the Tübatulabal language, Tubatulabal, Hopi la ...
subgroup of the
Uto-Aztecan language
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...
family. There may have been five or more such languages (three on the southernmost Channel Islands and at least two on the mainland).
European contact was first made in 1542 by Spanish explorer
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo
''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, t ...
, who was greeted at Santa Catalina by the people in a canoe. The following day, Cabrillo and his men entered a large bay on the mainland, which they named ''Baya de los Fumos'' ("Bay of Smokes") because of the many smoke fires they saw there. The indigenous people smoked their fish for preservation. This is commonly believed to be San Pedro Bay, near present-day San Pedro.
The
Gaspar de Portolá
Gaspar de Portolá y Rovira (January 1, 1716 – October 10, 1786) was a Spanish military officer, best known for leading the Portolá expedition into California and for serving as the first List of governors of California before 1850, Governor ...
land expedition in 1769 resulted in the founding of Mission San Gabriel by
Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
missionary Junipero Serra in 1771. Under the mission system, the Spanish initiated an era of
forced relocation
Forced displacement (also forced migration) is an involuntary or coerced movement of a person or people away from their home or home region. The UNHCR defines 'forced displacement' as follows: displaced "as a result of persecution, conflict, g ...
and virtual
enslavement
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
of the peoples to secure their labor. In addition, the Native Americans were exposed to the
Old World
The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by the ...
diseases endemic among the colonists. As they lacked any acquired immunity, the Native Americans suffered epidemics with high mortality, leading to the rapid collapse of Tongva society and
lifeway
Lifeway is a term used in the disciplines of anthropology, sociology and archeology, particularly in North America.
History Literature
From the mid 19th century, the word was used with the meaning 'way through life' or 'way of life'. It ap ...
s.
They retaliated by resistance and rebellions, including an unsuccessful rebellion in 1785 by Nicolás José and female chief
Toypurina
Toypurina (1760–1799) was a Kizhhttps://gabrielenoindians.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Toypurina_Raeganletter_220909_154647_page-0001-1_220909_155854.pdf medicine woman from the Jachivit village. She is notable for her opposition to the co ...
landless Landlessness is the quality or state of being without land, without access to land, or without having private ownership of land. Although overlapping considerably, landlessness is not a necessary condition of poverty. In modern capitalist societie ...
Mexican-American War
Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexicans, Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% ...
. The US government signed 18 treaties between 1851 and 1852 promising of land for reservations. However, these treaties were never ratified by the Senate. The US had negotiated with people who did not represent the Tongva and had no authority to cede their land. During the following occupation by Americans, many of the Tongva and other indigenous peoples were targeted with
arrest
An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be questi ...
. Unable to pay fines, they were used as convict laborers in a system of legalized slavery to expand the city of
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
for
Anglo-American
Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who spe ...
settlers, who became the new majority in the area by 1880.
In the early 20th century, an extinction myth was purported about the Gabrieleño, who largely identified publicly as
Mexican-American
Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexica ...
by this time. However, a close-knit community of the people remained in contact with one another between
Tejon Pass
The Tejon Pass , previously known as ''Portezuelo de Cortes'', ''Portezuela de Castac'', and Fort Tejon Pass is a mountain pass between the southwest end of the Tehachapi Mountains and northeastern San Emigdio Mountains, linking Southern Californ ...
and San Gabriel township into the 20th century. Since 2006, four organizations have claimed to represent the people:
*the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, known as the "hyphen" group from the hyphen in their name;
*the Gabrielino/Tongva Tribe, known as the "slash" group;
*the Kizh Nation (Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians); and
*the Gabrieleño/Tongva Tribal Council.
Two of the groups, the hyphen and the slash group, were founded after a hostile split over the question of building an
Indian casino
Native American gaming comprises casinos, bingo halls, and other gambling operations on Indian reservations or other tribal lands in the United States. Because these areas have tribal sovereignty, states have limited ability to forbid gambling t ...
. In 1994, the state of California recognized the Gabrielino "as the aboriginal tribe of the Los Angeles Basin." No organized group representing the Tongva has attained recognition as a tribe by the federal government. The lack of federal recognition has prevented the Tongva from having control over their ancestral remains, artifacts, and has left them without a land base in their traditional homelands.
In 2008, more than 1,700 people identified as Tongva or claimed partial ancestry. In 2013, it was reported that the four Tongva groups that have applied for federal recognition had more than 3,900 members in total.
Geography
Tongva territories border those of numerous other tribes in the region. The historical Tongva lands made up what is now called "the coastal region of
Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...
, the northwest portion of
Orange County
Orange County most commonly refers to:
*Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area
Orange County may also refer to:
U.S. counties
*Orange County, Florida, containing Orlando
*Orange County, Indiana
*Orange County, New ...
and off-lying islands.” In 1962 Curator Bernice Johnson, of
Southwest Museum
The Southwest Museum of the American Indian is a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, above the north-western bank of the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) canyon and stream. The muse ...
, asserted that the northern bound was somewhere between Topanga and Malibu (perhaps the vicinity of
Malibu Creek
Malibu Creek is a year-round stream in western Los Angeles County, California. It drains the southern Conejo Valley and Simi Hills, flowing south through the Santa Monica Mountains, and enters Santa Monica Bay in Malibu, California. The Malibu C ...
) and the southern bound was Orange County’s Aliso Creek.
Name
''Tongva''
The word ''Tongva'' was coined by
C. Hart Merriam
Clinton Hart Merriam (December 5, 1855 – March 19, 1942) was an American zoologist, mammalogist, ornithologist, entomologist, ecologist, ethnographer, geographer, naturalist and physician. He was commonly known as the 'father of mammalogy', a ...
in 1905 from numerous informants. These included Mrs. James Rosemyre (née Narcisa Higuera) (Gabrileño), who lived around
Fort Tejon
Fort Tejon in California is a former United States Army outpost which was intermittently active from June 24, 1854, until September 11, 1864. It is located in the Grapevine Canyon (''La Cañada de las Uvas'') between the San Emigdio Mountains and ...
, near Bakersfield. Merriam's orthography makes it clear that the endonym would be pronounced , .
An earlier and more historically accurate name for the indigenous population of the Los Angeles/Orange County basin is the
Kizh
Kizh Kit’c () are the Mission Indians of San Gabriel, according to Andrew Salas, Smithsonian Institution, Congress, the Catholic Church, the San Gabriel Mission, and other Indigenous communities. Most California tribes were known by their com ...
; this was well documented by records of the Smithsonian Institution, Congress, the Catholic Church, the San Gabriel Mission, and other historical scholars.
''Gabrieleño''
The Spanish referred to the indigenous peoples surrounding
Mission San Gabriel
Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to:
Organised activities Religion
*Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity
*Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...
as the ''Gabrieleño''. This was not their autonym, or their name for themselves. Because of historical uses, the term is part of every official tribe's name in this area, spelled either as "Gabrieleño" or "Gabrielino."
Because tribal groups have disagreed about appropriate use of the term ''Tongva'', they have adopted ''Gabrieleño'' as a mediating term. For example, when Debra Martin, a city council member from Pomona, led a project in 2017 to dedicate wooden statues in local Ganesha Park to the Indigenous people of the area, they disagreed over which name, ''Tongva'' or ''Kizh'', should be used on the dedication plaque. Tribal officials tentatively agreed to use the term ''Gabrieleño.''
The Act of September 21, 1968, introduced this concept of the affiliation of an applicant’s ancestors in order to exclude certain individuals from receiving a share of the award to the “Indians of California” who chose to receive a share of any awards to certain tribes in California that had splintered off from the generic group. The members or ancestors of the petitioning group were not affected by the exclusion in the Act. Individuals with lineal or collateral descent from an Indian tribe who resided in California in 1852, would, if not excluded by the provisions of the Act of 1968, remain on the list of the “Indians of California.” To comply with the Act, the Secretary of Interior would have to collect information about the group affiliation of an applicant’s Indian ancestors. That information would be used to identify applicants who could share in another award. The group affiliation of an applicant’s ancestors was thus a basis for exclusion from, but not a requirement for inclusion on, the judgment roll. The act of 1968 stated that the Secretary of the Interior would distribute an equal share of the award to the individuals on the judgment roll “regardless of group affiliation.”
History
Before the mission period
Many lines of evidence suggest that the Tongva are descended from
Uto-Aztecan
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...
-speaking peoples who originated in what is now
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
, and moved southwest into coastal Southern California 3,500 years ago. According to a model proposed by archaeologist Mark Q. Sutton, these migrants either absorbed or pushed out the earlier
Hokan
The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California.
Etymology
The name ''Hokan'' is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hokan ...
-speaking inhabitants. By 500 AD, one source estimates the Tongva may have come to occupy all the lands now associated with them, although this is unclear and contested among scholars.
In 1811, the priests of Mission San Gabriel recorded at least four languages; Kokomcar, Guiguitamcar, Corbonamga, and Sibanga. During the same time, three languages were recorded in Mission San Fernando.
Prior to
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
and
Spanish colonization
The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...
in what is now referred to California, the Tongva primarily identified by their associated villages (
Topanga
Topanga () (Tongva: ''Topaa'nga'') is a census-designated place (CDP) in western Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located in the Santa Monica Mountains, the community exists in Topanga Canyon and the surrounding hills. The narrow s ...
Cucamonga
Rancho Cucamonga ( ) is a city located just south of the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and Angeles National Forest in San Bernardino County, California, United States. About east of Downtown Los Angeles, Rancho Cucamonga is the 28th ...
, etc.) For example, individuals from
Yaanga
Yaanga was a large Tongva (or Kizh) village originally located near what is now downtown Los Angeles, just west of the Los Angeles River and beneath U.S. Route 101. People from the village were recorded as ''Yabit'' in missionary records althou ...
were known as ''Yaangavit'' among the people (in mission records, they were recorded as ''Yabit''). The Tongva lived in as many as one hundred villages. One or two clans would usually constitute a village, which was the center of Tongva life.
The Tongva spoke a language of the
Uto-Aztecan
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...
Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran Desert ( es, Desierto de Sonora) is a desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States (in Arizona ...
, between perhaps 3,000 and 5,000 years ago). The diversity within the
Takic
The Takic languages are a putative group of Uto-Aztecan languages historically spoken by a number of Indigenous peoples of California, Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Takic is grouped with the Tübatulabal language, Tubatulabal, Hopi la ...
group is "moderately deep"; rough estimates by comparative linguists place the breakup of common Takic into the Luiseño-Juaneño on one hand, and the Tongva- Serrano on the other, at about 2,000 years ago. (This is comparable to the differentiation of the
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
of Europe). The division of the Tongva/Serrano group into the separate Tongva and
Serrano people
The Serrano are an indigenous people of California. They use the autonyms of Taaqtam, meaning "people"; Maarrênga’yam, "people from Morongo"; and Yuhaaviatam, "people of the pines." Today the Maarrênga'yam are enrolled in the Morongo Band o ...
s is more recent, and may have been influenced by Spanish missionary activity.
The majority of Tongva territory was located in what has been referred to as the Sonoran life zone, with rich ecological resources of acorn, pine nut, small game, and deer. On the coast, shellfish, sea mammals, and fish were available. Prior to
Christianization
Christianization ( or Christianisation) is to make Christian; to imbue with Christian principles; to become Christian. It can apply to the conversion of an individual, a practice, a place or a whole society. It began in the Roman Empire, conti ...
, the prevailing Tongva worldview was that humans were not the apex of creation, but were rather one strand in the
web of life
A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Another name for food web is consumer-resource system. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one ...
. Humans, along with plants, animals, and the land were in a reciprocal relationship of mutual respect and care, which is evident in their creation stories. The Tongva understand time as
nonlinear
In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many other ...
and there is constant communication with ancestors.
On October 7, 1542, an exploratory expedition led by Spanish explorer
Juan Cabrillo
''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, t ...
reached Santa Catalina in the Channel Islands, where his ships were greeted by Tongva in a canoe. The following day, Cabrillo and his men, the first Europeans known to have interacted with the Gabrieleño people, entered a large bay on the mainland, which they named "Baya de los Fumos" ("Bay of Smokes") on account of the many smoke fires they saw there. This is commonly believed to be San Pedro Bay, near present-day San Pedro.
Colonization and the mission period (1769–1834)
The
Gaspar de Portola
Gaspar is a given and/or surname of French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish origin, cognate to Casper (given name) or Casper (surname).
It is a name of biblical origin, per Saint Gaspar, one of the wise men mentioned in the Bible.
Notable peo ...
expedition in 1769 was the first contact by land to reach Tongva territory, marking the beginning of Spanish colonization.
Franciscan
The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...
padre Junipero Serra accompanied Portola. Within two years of the expedition, Serra had founded four missions, including
Mission San Gabriel
Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to:
Organised activities Religion
*Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity
*Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...
, founded in 1771 and rebuilt in 1774, and Mission San Fernando, founded in 1797. The people enslaved at San Gabriel were referred to as ''Gabrieleños'', while those enslaved at San Fernando were referred to as ''Fernandeños''. Although their language idioms were distinguishable, they did not diverge greatly, and it is possible there were as many as half a dozen dialects rather than the two which the existence of the missions has lent the appearance of being standard. The demarcation of the Fernandeño and the Gabrieleño territories is mostly conjectural and there is no known point in which the two groups differed markedly in customs. The wider Gabrieleño group occupied what is now
Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...
south of the
Sierra Madre
Sierra Madre (Spanish, 'mother mountain range') may refer to:
Places and mountains Mexico
*Sierra Madre Occidental, a mountain range in northwestern Mexico and southern Arizona
*Sierra Madre Oriental, a mountain range in northeastern Mexico
*S ...
and half of
Orange County
Orange County most commonly refers to:
*Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area
Orange County may also refer to:
U.S. counties
*Orange County, Florida, containing Orlando
*Orange County, Indiana
*Orange County, New ...
San Clemente
San Clemente (; Spanish for " St. Clement") is a city in Orange County, California. Located in the Orange Coast region of the South Coast of California, San Clemente's population was 64,293 in at the 2020 census. Situated roughly midway betwee ...
.
The Spanish oversaw the construction of Mission San Gabriel in 1771. The Spanish colonizers used
slave labor
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
from local villages to construct the Missions. Following the destruction of the original mission, probably due to
El Nino
EL, El or el may refer to:
Religion
* El (deity), a Semitic word for "God"
People
* EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer
* El DeBarge, music artist
* El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...
flooding, the Spanish ordered the mission relocated five miles north in 1774 and began referring to the Tongva as "Gabrieleno." At the Gabrieleño settlement of Yaanga along the
Los Angeles River
, name_etymology =
, image = File:Los Angeles River from Fletcher Drive Bridge 2019.jpg
, image_caption = L.A. River from Fletcher Drive Bridge
, image_size = 300
, map = LARmap.jpg
, map_size ...
, missionaries and Indian neophytes, or baptized converts, built the first town of Los Angeles in 1781. It was called ''El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula'' (The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porziuncola). In 1784, a sister mission, the ''
Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles Asistencia
''Nuestra'' is the debut studio album of the Venezuelan rock band La Vida Bohème, released in August 2010. Recorded and produced by Rudy Pagliuca, it is a free download on the website of the record label All of the Above.
The album was nominate ...
'', was founded at Yaanga as well.
Entire villages were baptized and indoctrinated into the mission system with devastating results. For example, from 1788 to 1815, natives of the village of Guaspet were baptized at San Gabriel. Proximity to the missions created mass tension for Native Californians, which initiated "forced transformations in all aspects of daily life, including manners of speaking, eating, working, and connecting with the supernatural." As stated by scholars John Dietler, Heather Gibson, and Benjamin Vargas, "Catholic enterprises of
proselytization
Proselytism () is the policy of attempting to convert people's religious or political beliefs. Proselytism is illegal in some countries.
Some draw distinctions between '' evangelism'' or '' Da‘wah'' and proselytism regarding proselytism as invo ...
, acceptance into a mission as a convert, in theory, required abandoning most, if not all, traditional lifeways." Various strategies of control were implemented to retain control, such as use of violence, segregation by age and gender, and using new converts as instruments of control over others. For example, Mission San Gabriel's Father Zalvidea punished suspected shamans "with frequent flogging and by chaining traditional religious practitioners together in pairs and sentencing them to hard labor in the sawmill." A missionary during this period reported that three out of four children died at Mission San Gabriel before reaching the age of 2. Nearly 6,000 Tongva lie buried in the grounds of the San Gabriel Mission.Carey McWilliams characterized it as follows: "the Franciscan padres eliminated Indians with the effectiveness of Nazis operating concentration camps...."
There is much evidence of Tongva resistance to the mission system. Many individuals returned to their village at time of death. Many converts retained their traditional practices in both domestic and spiritual contexts, despite the attempts by the padres and missionaries to control them. Traditional foods were incorporated into the mission diet and lithic and shell bead production and use persisted. More overt strategies of resistance such as refusal to enter the system, work slowdowns, abortion and infanticide of children resulting from rape, and fugitivism were also prevalent. Five major uprisings were recorded at Mission San Gabriel alone. Two late-eighteenth century rebellions against the mission system were led by Nicolás José, who was an early convert who had two social identities: "publicly participating in Catholic sacraments at the mission but privately committed to traditional dances, celebrations, and rituals." He participated in a failed attempt to kill the mission's priests in 1779 and organized eight foothill villages in a revolt in October 1785 with
Toypurina
Toypurina (1760–1799) was a Kizhhttps://gabrielenoindians.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Toypurina_Raeganletter_220909_154647_page-0001-1_220909_155854.pdf medicine woman from the Jachivit village. She is notable for her opposition to the co ...
, who further organized the villages, which "demonstrated a previously undocumented level of regional political unification both within and well beyond the mission." However, divided loyalties among the natives contributed to the failure of the 1785 attempt as well as mission soldiers being alerted of the attempt by converts or neophytes.
Toypurina, José and two other leaders of the rebellion, Chief Tomasajaquichi of Juvit village and a man named Alijivit, from nearby village of Jajamovit, were put on trial for the 1785 rebellion. At his trial, José stated that he participated because the ban at the mission on dances and ceremony instituted by the missionaries, and enforced by the governor of California in 1782, was intolerable as they prevented their mourning ceremonies. When questioned about the attack, Toypurina is famously quoted in as saying that she participated in the instigation because “
he hated
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
the padres and all of you, for living here on my native soil, for trespassing upon the land of my forefathers and despoiling our tribal domains. … I came o the missionto inspire the dirty cowards to fight, and not to quail at the sight of Spanish sticks that spit fire and death, nor oretch at the evil smell of gunsmoke—and be done with you white invaders!’ This quote, from Thomas Workman Temple II's article “Toypurina the Witch and the Indian Uprising at San Gabriel” is arguably a mistranslation and embellishment of her actual testimony. According to the soldier who recorded her words, she stated simply that she ‘‘was angry with the Padres and the others of the Mission, because they had come to live and establish themselves in her land.’’ In June 1788, nearly three years later, their sentences arrived from
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
: Nicolás José was banned from San Gabriel and sentenced to six years of hard labor in irons at the most distant penitentiary in the region. Toypurina was banished from Mission San Gabriel and sent to the most distant Spanish mission.
Resistance to Spanish rule demonstrated how the Spanish Crown's claims to California were both insecure and contested. By the 1800s, San Gabriel was the richest in the entire colonial mission system, supplying cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, horses, mules, and other supplies for settlers and settlements throughout
Alta California
Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...
.
The mission functioned as a slave plantation. Latter-day ethnologist Hugo Reid reported, “Indian children were taken from their parents to be raised behind bars at the mission. They were allowed outside the locked dormitories only to attend to church business and their assigned chores. When they were old enough, boys and girls were put to work in the vast vineyards and orchards owned by the missions. Soldiers watched, ready to hunt down any who tried to escape.” Writing in 1852, Reid said he knew of Tongva who “had an ear lopped off or were branded on the lip for trying to get away.”
In 1810, the "Gabrieleño" labor population at the mission was recorded to be 1,201. It jumped to 1,636 in 1820 and then declined to 1,320 in 1830. Resistance to this system of forced labor continued into the early 19th century. In 1817, the San Gabriel Mission recorded that there were "473 Indian fugitives." In 1828, a German immigrant purchased the land on which the village of Yang-Na stood and evicted the entire community with the help of Mexican officials.
Mexican secularization and occupation (1834–1848)
The mission period ended in 1834 with secularization under Mexican rule. Some "Gabrieleño" absorbed into Mexican society as a result of secularization, which emancipated the neophytes. Tongva and other California Natives largely became workers while former Spanish elites were granted huge land grants. Land was systemically denied to California Natives by ''
Californio
Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there sinc ...
'' land owning men. In the Los Angeles basin area, only 20 former neophytes from San Gabriel Mission received any land from secularization. What they received were relatively small plots of land. A "Gabrieleño" by the name of Prospero Elias Dominguez was granted a 22-acre plot near the mission while Mexican authorities granted the remainder of the mission land, approximately 1.5 million acres, to a few colonist families. In 1846, it was noted by researcher Kelly Lytle Hernández that 140 Gabrieleños signed a petition demanding access to mission lands and that ''Californio'' authorities rejected their petition.
Emancipated from enslavement in the missions yet barred from their own land, most Tongva became
landless Landlessness is the quality or state of being without land, without access to land, or without having private ownership of land. Although overlapping considerably, landlessness is not a necessary condition of poverty. In modern capitalist societie ...
refugees during this period. Entire villages fled inland to escape the invaders and continued devastation. Others moved to Los Angeles, a city which saw an increase in the Native population from 200 in 1820 to 553 in 1836 (out of a total population of 1,088). As stated by scholar Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, "while they should have been owners, the Tongva became workers, performing strenuous, back-breaking labor just as they had done ever since settler colonialism emerged in Southern California." As described by researcher Heather Valdez Singleton, Los Angeles was heavily dependent on Native labor and "grew slowly on the back of the Gabrieleño laborers." Some of the people became ''
vaquero
The ''vaquero'' (; pt, vaqueiro, , ) is a horse-mounted livestock herder of a tradition that has its roots in the Iberian Peninsula and extensively developed in Mexico from a methodology brought to Latin America from Spain. The vaquero became t ...
s'' on the ranches, highly skilled horsemen or cowboys, herding and caring for the cattle. There was little land available to the Tongva to use for food outside of the ranches. Some crops such as corn and beans were planted on ranchos to sustain the workers.
Several Gabrieleño families stayed within the San Gabriel township, which became "the cultural and geographic center of the Gabrieleño community." Yaanga also diversified and increased in size, with peoples of various Native backgrounds coming to live together shortly following secularization. However, the government had instituted a system dependent on Native labor and servitude and increasingly eliminated any alternatives within the Los Angeles area. As explained by Kelly Lytle Hernández, "there was no place for Natives living but not working in Mexican Los Angeles. In turn, the ''ayuntamiunto'' (city council) passed new laws to compel Natives to work or be arrested." In January 1836, the council directed ''Californios'' to sweep across Los Angeles to arrest "all drunken Indians." As recorded by Hernández, "Tongva men and women, along with an increasingly diverse set of their Native neighbors, filled the jail and convict labor crews in Mexican Los Angeles." By 1844, most Natives in Los Angeles worked as servants in a perpetual system of servitude, tending to the land and serving settlers, invaders, and colonizers.
The ''ayuntamiunto'' forced the Native settlement of Yaanga to move farther away from town. By the mid-1840s, the settlement was forcibly moved eastward across the
Los Angeles River
, name_etymology =
, image = File:Los Angeles River from Fletcher Drive Bridge 2019.jpg
, image_caption = L.A. River from Fletcher Drive Bridge
, image_size = 300
, map = LARmap.jpg
, map_size ...
, placing a divide between Mexican Los Angeles and the nearest Native community. However, "Native men, women, and children continued to live (not just work) in the city. On Saturday Nights, they even held parties, danced, and gambled at the removed Yaanga village and also at the plaza at the center of town." In response, the ''Californios'' continued to attempt to control Native lives, issuing Alta California governor
Pio Pico
Pio may refer to:
Places
* Pio Lake, Italy
* Pio Island, Solomon Islands
* Pio Point, Bird Island, south Atlantic Ocean
People
* Pio (given name)
* Pio (surname)
* Pio (footballer, born 1986), Brazilian footballer
* Pio (footballer, born 1988), B ...
a petition in 1846 stating: "We ask that the Indians be placed under strict police surveillance or the persons for whom the Indians work give
he Indians
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
quarter at the employer's rancho." In 1847, a law was passed that prohibited Gabrielenos from entering the city without proof of employment. A part of the proclamation read:
Indians who have no masters but are self-sustaining, shall be lodged outside of the City limits in localities widely separated... All vagrant Indians of either sex who have not tried to secure a situation within four days and are found unemployed, shall be put to work on public works or sent to the house of correction.
In 1848, Los Angeles formally became a town of the United States following the
Mexican-American War
Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexicans, Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% ...
.
American occupation and continued subjugation (1848–)
Landless and unrecognized, the people faced continued violence, subjugation, and enslavement (through convict labor) under American occupation. Some of the people were displaced to small Mexican and Native communities in the
Eagle Rock Eagle Rock may refer to:
Entertainment
* "Eagle Rock" (song), a hit single in 1971 by Australian band Daddy Cool
* "Eagle Rock", a song by Motörhead
* Eagle Rock Entertainment, a record label
Places
* Eagle Rock (formation), in California
* Eag ...
Pala Pala may refer to:
Places
Chad
*Pala, Chad, the capital of the region of Mayo-Kebbi Ouest
Estonia
* Pala, Kose Parish, village in Kose Parish, Harju County
* Pala, Kuusalu Parish, village in Kuusalu Parish, Harju County
*Pala, Järva County, vi ...
,
Temecula
Temecula (; es, Temécula, ; Luiseño: ''Temeekunga'') is a city in southwestern Riverside County, California, United States. The city had a population of 110,003 as of the 2020 census and was incorporated on December 1, 1989. The city is a t ...
, Pechanga, and San Jacinto. Imprisonment of Natives in Los Angeles was a symbol of establishing the new "rule of law." The city's vigilante community would routinely "invade" the jail and hang the accused in the streets. Once congress granted statehood to California in 1850, many of the first laws passed targeted Natives for arrest, imprisonment, and convict labor. The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians "targeted Native peoples for easy arrest by stipulating that they could be arrested on vagrancy charges based 'on the complaint of any reasonable citizen'" and Gabrieleños faced the brunt of this policy. Section 14 of the act stated:
When an Indian is convicted of any offence before a Justice of the Peace punishable by fine, any white person may, by consent of the Justice, give bond for said Indian, conditioned for the payment of said fine and costs, and in such case the Indian shall be compelled to work for the person so bailing, until he has discharged or cancelled the fine assessed against him.
Native men were disproportionately criminalized and swept into this legalized system of
indentured servitude
Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, ...
. As was recorded by Anglo-American settlers, "'White men, whom the Marshal is too discreet to arrest' ... spilled out of the town's many saloons, streets, and brothels, but the aggressive and targeted enforcement of state and local vagrancy and drunk codes filled the Los Angeles County Jail with Natives, most of whom were men." Most spent their days working on the county
chain gang
A chain gang or road gang is a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land. The system was no ...
, which was largely involved with keeping the city streets clean in the 1850s and 1860s but increasingly included road construction projects as well.
Although federal officials reported that there were an estimated 16,930 California Indians and 1,050 at Mission San Gabriel, "the federal agents ignored them and those living in Los Angeles" because they were viewed as "friendly to the whites," as revealed in the personal diaries of Commissioner Geroge W. Barbour. In 1852, superintendent of Indian affairs
Edward Fitzgerald Beale
Edward Fitzgerald "Ned" Beale (February 4, 1822 – April 22, 1893) was a national figure in the 19th-century United States. He was a naval officer, military general, explorer, frontiersman, Indian affairs superintendent, California rancher, ...
echoed this sentiment, reporting that "because these Indians were Christians, with many holding ranch jobs and having interacted with whites," that "they are not much to be dreaded." Although a California Senate Bill of 2008 asserted that the US government signed treaties with the Gabrieleño, promising of land for reservations, and that these treaties were never ratified, a paper published in 1972 by
Robert Heizer Robert Fleming Heizer (July 13, 1915 – July 18, 1979) was an archaeologist who conducted extensive fieldwork and reporting in California, the Southwestern United States, and the Great Basin.
Background
Robert Fleming Heizer was born July 13, 1 ...
of the
University of California at Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
, shows that the eighteen treaties made between April 29, 1851, and August 22, 1852, were negotiated with persons who did not represent the Tongva people and that none of these persons had authority to cede lands that belonged to the people.
An 1852 editorial in the ''
Los Angeles Star
''Los Angeles Star'' (''La Estrella de Los Angeles'') was the first newspaper in Los Angeles, California, U.S. The publication ran from 1851 to 1879.
History Early history and background
The first proposition to establish a newspaper in Los A ...
'' revealed the public's anger towards any possibility of the Gabrieleño receiving recognition and exercising sovereignty:
To place upon our most fertile soil the most degraded race of aborigines upon the North American Continent, to invest them with the rights of sovereignty, and to teach them that they are to be treated as powerful and independent nations, is planting the seeds of future disaster and ruin... We hope that the general government will let us alone—that it will neither undertake to feed, settle or remove the Indians amongst whome we in the South reside, and that they leave everything just as it now exists, except affording us the protection which two or three cavalry companies would give.
In 1852,
Hugo Reid
Hugo Reid (April 18, 1811 – December 12, 1852), a Scottish immigrant, was an early resident of Los Angeles County who became known for writing a series of newspaper articles, or "letters," that described the culture, language, and contemporary c ...
wrote a series of letters for the ''
Los Angeles Star
''Los Angeles Star'' (''La Estrella de Los Angeles'') was the first newspaper in Los Angeles, California, U.S. The publication ran from 1851 to 1879.
History Early history and background
The first proposition to establish a newspaper in Los A ...
'' from the center of the Gabrieleño community in San Gabriel township, describing Gabrieleño life and culture. Reid himself was married to a Gabrieleño woman by the name of Bartolomea Cumicrabit, who he renamed "Victoria." Reid wrote the following: "Their chiefs still exist. In San Gabriel remain only four, and those young... They have no jurisdiction more than to appoint times for holding of Feasts and regulating affairs connected with the church raditional structure made of brush" There is some speculation that Reid was campaigning for the position of Indian agent in Southern California, but died before he could be appointed. Instead, in 1852, Benjamin D. Wilson was appointed, who maintained the status quo. The letters of Hugo Reid revealed the names of 28 Gabrielino villages.
In 1855, the Gabrieleño were reported by the superintendent of Indian affairs Thomas J. Henley to be in "a miserable and degraded condition." However, Henley admitted that moving them to a reservation, potentially at Sebastian Reserve in
Tejon Pass
The Tejon Pass , previously known as ''Portezuelo de Cortes'', ''Portezuela de Castac'', and Fort Tejon Pass is a mountain pass between the southwest end of the Tehachapi Mountains and northeastern San Emigdio Mountains, linking Southern Californ ...
, would be opposed by the citizens because "in the vineyards, especially during the grape season, their labor is made useful and is obtained at a cheap rate." A few Gabrieleño were in fact at Sebastian Reserve and maintained contact with the people living in San Gabriel during this time.
In 1859, amidst increasing
criminalization
Criminalization or criminalisation, in criminology, is "the process by which behaviors and individuals are transformed into crime and criminals". Previously legal acts may be transformed into crimes by legislation or judicial decision. However, ...
and absorption into the city's burgeoning convict labor system, the county grand jury declared "stringent vagrant laws should be enacted and enforced compelling such persons Indians'to obtain an honest livelihood or seek their old homes in the mountains." This declaration ignored Reid's research, which stated that most Tongva villages, including
Yaanga
Yaanga was a large Tongva (or Kizh) village originally located near what is now downtown Los Angeles, just west of the Los Angeles River and beneath U.S. Route 101. People from the village were recorded as ''Yabit'' in missionary records althou ...
, "were located in the basin, along its rivers and on its shoreline, stretching from the deserts and to the sea." Only a few villages led by ''tomyaars'' (chiefs) were "in the mountains, where Chengiichngech's avengers, serpents, and bears lived," as described by historian Kelly Lytle Hernández. However, "the grand jury dismissed the depths of Indigenous claims to life, land, and sovereignty in the region and, instead, chose to frame Indigenous peoples as drunks and vagrants
loitering
Loitering is the act of remaining in a particular public place for a prolonged amount of time without any apparent purpose.
While the laws regarding loitering have been challenged and changed over time, loitering is still illegal in various j ...
in Los Angeles... disavowing a long history of Indigenous belonging in the basin."
While in 1848, Los Angeles had been a small town largely of Mexicans and Natives, by 1880 it was home to an Anglo-American majority following waves of white migration in the 1870s from the completion of the
transcontinental railroad
A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single ...
. As stated by research Heather Valdez Singleton, newcomers "took advantage of the fact that many Gabrieleño families, who had cultivated and lived on the same land for generations, did not hold legal title to the land, and used the law to
evict
Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee (often, the prior owners who defaulted on a mortgage ...
Indian families." The Gabrieleño became vocal about this and notified former Indian agent J. Q. Stanley, who referred to them as "half-civilized" yet lobbied to protect the Gabrieleño "against the lawless whites living amongst them," arguing that they would become "
vagabonds
Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporar ...
" otherwise. However, active Indian agent Augustus P. Greene's recommendation took precedent, arguing that "Mission Indians in southern California were slowing the settlement of this portion of the country for non-Indians and suggested that the Indians be completely assimilated," as summarized by Singleton.
In 1882,
Helen Hunt Jackson
Helen Hunt Jackson (pen name, H.H.; born Helen Maria Fiske; October 15, 1830 – August 12, 1885) was an American poet and writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native Americans by t ...
was sent by the federal government to document the condition of the Mission Indians in southern California. She reported that there were a considerable number of people "in the colonies in the San Gabriel Valley, where they live like gypsies in brush huts, here today, gone tomorrow, eking out a miserable existence by days' work." However, even though Jackson's report would become the impetus for the Mission Indian Relief Act of 1891, the Gabrieleño were "overlooked by the commission charged with setting aside lands for Mission Indians." It is speculated that this may have been attributed to what was perceived as their compliance with the government, which caused them to be neglected, as noted earlier by Indian agent J. Q. Stanley.
Extinction myth
By the early twentieth century, Gabrieleño identity had suffered greatly under American occupation. Most Gabrieleño publicly identified as Mexican, learned Spanish, and adopted Catholicism while keeping their identity a secret. In schools, students were punished for mentioning that they were "Indian" and many of the people assimilated into
Mexican-American
Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexica ...
or
Chicano
Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label ''Chicano'' is sometimes used interchangeably with ''Mexican American'', although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican-American ident ...
culture. Further attempts to establish a reservation for the Gabrieleño in 1907 failed. Soon it began to be perpetuated in the local press that the Gabrieleño were extinct. In February 1921, the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' declared that the death of Jose de los Santos Juncos, an Indigenous man who lived at Mission San Gabriel and was 106 years old at his time of passing, "marked the passing of a vanished race." In 1925,
Alfred Kroeber
Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...
declared that the Gabrieleño culture was extinct, stating "they have melted away so completely that we know more of the finer facts of the culture of ruder tribes." Scholars have noted that this extinction myth has proven to be "remarkably resilient," yet is untrue.
Despite being declared extinct, Gabrieleño children were still being assimilated by federal agents who encouraged enrollment at
Sherman Indian School
Sherman Indian High School (SIHS) is an off-reservation boarding high school for Native Americans. Originally opened in 1892 as the Perris Indian School, in Perris, California, the school was relocated to Riverside, California in 1903, under the n ...
in
Riverside, California
Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire an ...
. Between 1890 and 1920, at least 50 Gabrieleño children were recorded at the school. Between 1910 and 1920, the establishment of the Mission Indian Federation, of which the Gabrieleño joined, led to the 1928 California Indians Jurisdictional Act, which created official enrollment records for those who could prove ancestry from a California Indian living in the state in 1852. Over 150 people self-identified as Gabrieleño on this roll. A Gabrieleño woman at Tejon Reservation provided the names and addresses of several Gabrieleño living in San Gabriel, showing that contact between the group at Tejon Reservation and the group at San Gabriel township, which are more than 70 miles apart, was being maintained into the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1971, Bernice Johnston, former curator of the
Southwest Museum
The Southwest Museum of the American Indian is a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, above the north-western bank of the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) canyon and stream. The muse ...
and author of ''California’s Gabrieleno Indians'' (1962), spoke to the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'': “After spending much of her life trying to trace the Indians, she believes she almost came in contact with some Gabrielenos a few years ago…She relates that on a Sunday, while giving a tour of the museum, ‘I saw these shy, dark people looking around. They were asking questions about the Gabrieleno Indians. I asked why they wanted to know, and nearly fell over when they told me they were Gabrielenos and wanted to know something about themselves. I was busy with the tour, we were crowded. I rushed back to them as soon as I could but they were gone. I didn’t even get their names.”Vasquez, Richard. "Gabrieleno Indians--This Land Was Their Land: Land Conflicts." ''Los Angeles Times'', June 14, 1971, pp. 2-b1''.''
Lacking federal recognition
The continued denigration and denial of Gabrieleño identity perpetuated by Anglo-American institutions such as schools and museums has presented numerous obstacles for the people throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Contemporary members have cited being denied the legitimacy of their identity. Tribal identity is also heavily hindered by a lack of
federal recognition
This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States of America. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes were legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the United ...
and having no land base.
Being denied federal recognition has prevented the Tongva from protecting their sacred sites, ancestral remains, and artifacts which have faced continued destruction in the 21st century. In 2001, a 9,000-year-old Bolsa Chica village site was heavily damaged in favor of commercial development. Over ten years later, the company which performed the initial archaeological survey was fined $600,000 for its poor assessment in favor of commercial development.
Human remains near the village of Genga, a shared village site of the Tongva and
Acjachemen
The Acjachemen (, alternate spelling: Acagchemem) are an Indigenous people of California. They historically lived south of what is known as Aliso Creek and north of the Las Pulgas Canyon in what are now the southern areas of Orange County and t ...
, were unearthed and moved in the 2010s, despite opposition from the tribes, in favor of commercial development. In 2019,
California State University, Long Beach
California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) is a public research university in Long Beach, California. The 322-acre campus is the second largest of the 23-school California State University system (CSU) and one of the largest universities i ...
dumped trash and dirt on top of the village site of
Puvunga
Puvunga (alternate spellings: Puvungna or Povuu'nga) is an ancient village and sacred site of the Tongva nation, the Indigenous people of the Los Angeles Basin, and the Acjachemen, the Indigenous people of Orange County now located at California S ...
in its construction of new student housing. In 2022, part of the village area of Genga may be transformed into a green space. Leaders of the project have claimed that "tribal descendants of the area’s earliest residents will also have a voice" in how the park is developed.
Culture
The Tongva lived in the main part of the most fertile lowland of southern California, including a stretch of sheltered coast with a pleasant climate and abundant food resources, and the most habitable of the Santa Barbara Islands. They have been referred to as the most culturally 'advanced' group south of the Tehachapi, and the wealthiest of the
Uto-Aztecan
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...
speakers in California, dominating other native groups culturally wherever contacts occurred. Many of the cultural developments of the surrounding southern peoples had their origin with the Gabrieleño. The Tongva territory was the center of a flourishing trade network that extended from the
Channel Islands
The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...
in the west to the
Colorado River
The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid drainage basin, watershed that encompasses parts of ...
in the east, allowing the people to maintain trade relations with the
Cahuilla
The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California.Serrano,
Luiseño
The Luiseño or Payómkawichum are an indigenous people of California who, at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging from the present-day southern part of L ...
,
Chumash Chumash may refer to:
*Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism
*Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California
*Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California
See also
* Chumash traditional ...
, and Mohave.
Like all Indigenous peoples, they utilized and existed in an interconnected relationship with the
flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''.
E ...
and
fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoo ...
of their familial territory. Villages were located throughout four major ecological zones, as noted by biologist Matthew Teutimez: interior mountains and foothills, grassland/oak woodland, sheltered coastal canyons, and the exposed coast. Therefore, resources such as plants, animals, and earth minerals were diverse and used for various purposes, including for food and materials. Prominent flora included oak (''
Quercus agrifolia
''Quercus agrifolia'', the California live oak, or coast live oak, is a highly variable, often evergreen oak tree, a type of live oak, native to the California Floristic Province. It may be shrubby, depending on age and growing location, but is g ...
Salvia columbariae
''Salvia columbariae'' is an annual plant that is commonly called chia, chia sage, golden chia, or desert chia, because its seeds are used in the same way as those of ''Salvia hispanica'' (Chia seed, chia). It grows in California, Nevada, Utah, ...
''), cattail ('' Typha spp.''), datura or jimsonweed (''
Datura innoxia
''Datura innoxia'' (often spelled ''inoxia''), known as pricklyburr, recurved thorn-apple, downy thorn-apple, Indian-apple, lovache, moonflower, nacazcul, toloatzin, toloaxihuitl, tolguache or toloache, is a species of flowering plant in the fami ...
''), white sage (''
Salvia apiana
''Salvia apiana'', the white sage, bee sage, or sacred sage is an evergreen perennial shrub that is native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, found mainly in the coastal sage scrub habitat of Southern California and Baja C ...
Sambucus
''Sambucus'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Adoxaceae. The various species are commonly called elder or elderberry. The genus was formerly placed in the honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae, but was reclassified as Adoxaceae due to ge ...
Hesperoyucca whipplei
''Hesperoyucca whipplei'' ( syn. ''Yucca whipplei''), the chaparral yucca, our Lord's candle, Spanish bayonet, Quixote yucca or foothill yucca, is a species of flowering plant closely related to, and formerly usually included in, the genus ''Yucc ...
''). Prominent fauna included
mule deer
The mule deer (''Odocoileus hemionus'') is a deer indigenous to western North America; it is named for its ears, which are large like those of the mule. Two subspecies of mule deer are grouped into the black-tailed deer.
Unlike the related whit ...
,
pronghorn
The pronghorn (, ) (''Antilocapra americana'') is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America. Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American a ...
,
black bear
Black bear or Blackbear may refer to:
Animals
* American black bear (''Ursus americanus''), a North American bear species
* Asian black bear (''Ursus thibetanus''), an Asian bear species
Music
* Black Bear (band), a Canadian First Nations group ...
,
grizzly bear
The grizzly bear (''Ursus arctos horribilis''), also known as the North American brown bear or simply grizzly, is a population or subspecies of the brown bear inhabiting North America.
In addition to the mainland grizzly (''Ursus arctos horri ...
,
black-tailed jackrabbit
The black-tailed jackrabbit (''Lepus californicus''), also known as the American desert hare, is a common hare of the western United States and Mexico, where it is found at elevations from sea level up to . Reaching a length around , and a ...
,
cottontail
Cottontail rabbits are the leporid species in the genus ''Sylvilagus'', found in the Americas. Most ''Sylvilagus'' species have stub tails with white undersides that show when they retreat, giving them their characteristic name. However, this ...
,
bald eagle
The bald eagle (''Haliaeetus leucocephalus'') is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (''Haliaeetus albicilla''), which occupies the same niche as ...
,
red-tailed hawk
The red-tailed hawk (''Buteo jamaicensis'') is a bird of prey that breeds throughout most of North America, from the interior of Alaska and northern Canada to as far south as Panama and the West Indies. It is one of the most common members with ...
,
dolphin
A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...
, and
gray whale
The gray whale (''Eschrichtius robustus''), also known as the grey whale,Britannica Micro.: v. IV, p. 693. gray back whale, Pacific gray whale, Korean gray whale, or California gray whale, is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and bree ...
.
''Te'aat'' and the ocean
The Tongva had a concentrated population along the coast. They fished and hunted in the estuary of the Los Angeles River, and like the
Chumash Chumash may refer to:
*Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism
*Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California
*Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California
See also
* Chumash traditional ...
, their neighbors to the north and west along the Pacific coast, the Gabrieleño built seaworthy plank
canoe
A canoe is a lightweight narrow water vessel, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel and using a single-bladed paddle.
In British English, the term ...
s, called ''te'aat'', from driftwood. To build them, they used planks of driftwood pine that were sewn together with vegetable fiber cord, edge to edge, and then glued with the tar that was available either from the
La Brea Tar Pits
La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gro ...
, or as
asphalt
Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...
that had washed up on shore from offshore oil seeps. The finished vessel was caulked with plant fibers and tar, stained with red
ochre
Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...
, and sealed with pine pitch. The ''te'aat'', as noted by the
Sebastián Vizcaíno
Sebastián Vizcaíno (1548–1624) was a Spanish soldier, entrepreneur, explorer, and diplomat whose varied roles took him to New Spain, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Asia.
Early career
Vizcaíno was born in 154 ...
expedition, could hold up to 20 people as well as their gear and trade goods. These canoes allowed the development of trade between the mainland villages and the offshore islands, and were important to the region's economy and social organization, with trade in food and manufactured goods being carried on between the people on the mainland coast and people in the interior as well. The Gabrieleño regularly paddled their canoes to Catalina Island, where they gathered
abalone
Abalone ( or ; via Spanish , from Rumsen ''aulón'') is a common name for any of a group of small to very large marine gastropod molluscs in the family (biology), family Haliotidae. Other common name
In biology, a common name of a taxon o ...
, which they pried off the rocks with implements made of fragments of whale ribs or other strong bones.
Food culture
In the Tongva economic system, food resources were managed by the village chief, who was given a portion of the yield of each day's hunting, fishing, or gathering to add to the communal food reserves. Individual families stored some food to be used in times of scarcity. Villages were located in places with accessible drinking water, protection from the elements, and productive areas where different
ecological niche
In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition.
Three variants of ecological niche are described by
It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for ...
s on the land intersected. Situating their villages at these resource islands enabled the Tongva to gather the plant products of two or more zones in close proximity.
Households consisted of a main house (''kiiy'') and temporary camp shelters used during food gathering excursions. In the summer, families who lived near grasslands collected roots, seeds, flowers, fruit, and leafy greens, and in the winter families who lived near chaparral shrubland collected nuts and acorns, yucca, and hunted deer. The group used “wooden tongs” to collect prickly pear fruits.Getze, George. "Layers of Time Reveal Legends of Southland Missions and Indians: Time Layers Tell Legends of Southland." ''Los Angeles Times'', Jan 12, 1964, pp. 2''.''
Some prairie communities moved to the coast in the winter to fish, hunt whales and
elephant seal
Elephant seals are very large, oceangoing earless seals in the genus ''Mirounga''. Both species, the northern elephant seal (''M. angustirostris'') and the southern elephant seal (''M. leonina''), were hunted to the brink of extinction for oil ...
s, and harvest shellfish. Those villages located on the coast during the summer went on food collecting trips inland during the winter rainy season to gather roots, tubers,
corm
A corm, bulbo-tuber, or bulbotuber is a short, vertical, swollen underground plant stem that serves as a storage organ that some plants use to survive winter or other adverse conditions such as summer drought and heat (perennation).
The word ' ...
s, and bulbs of plants including cattails, lilies, and wild onions.
The Tongva did not practice horticulture or agriculture, as their well-developed hunter-gatherer and trade economy provided adequate food resources. Bread was made from the yellow pollen of cattail heads, and the underground
rhizomes
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...
were dried and ground into a starchy meal. The young shoots were eaten raw. The seeds of chia, a herbaceous plant of the sage family, were gathered in large quantities when they were ripe. The flower heads were beaten with a paddle over a tightly woven basket to collect the seeds. These were dried or roasted and ground into a flour called "pinole," which was often mixed with the flour of other ground seeds or grains. Water was added to make a cooling drink; mixing with less water yielded a kind of porridge that could be baked into cakes.
Acorn mush Wiiwish, also known as acorn mush, was one of the main staple food, food staples of California Native Americans in the United States. Acorns were gathered in the fall before the rain came. To harvest the acorns, Californian Native Americans would ...
granaries
A granary is a storehouse or room in a barn for threshed grain or animal feed. Ancient or primitive granaries are most often made of pottery. Granaries are often built above the ground to keep the stored food away from mice and other animals ...
supported by wooden stakes well above the ground. Preparing them for food took about a week. Acorns were placed, one at a time, on end in the slight hollow of a rock and their shells broken by a light blow from a small hammerstone; then the membrane, or skin, covering the acorn meat was removed. Following this process the acorn meats were dried for days, after which the kernels were pounded into meal with a pestle. This was done in a stone mortar or in a mortar hole in a boulder. Large bedrock outcroppings near oak stands often display evidence of the community mills where the women labored.
The pounded acorn meal was put into baskets and the bitter
tannic acid
Tannic acid is a specific form of tannin, a type of polyphenol. Its weak acidity ( pKa around 6) is due to the numerous phenol groups in the structure. The chemical formula for commercial tannic acid is often given as C76H52O46, which correspon ...
it contained was leached out to make the meal more palatable and digestible. The prepared meal was cooked by boiling in water in a watertight grass-woven basket or in a soapstone bowl into which heated stones were dropped. Soapstone casseroles were used directly over the fire. Various foods of meat, seeds, or roots were cooked by the same method. The mush thus prepared was eaten cold or nearly so, as was all their food. Another favored Tongva food was the seed kernel of a species of plum (''
prunus ilicifolia
''Prunus ilicifolia'' (Common names: hollyleaf cherry, evergreen cherry;Fire Effects Information Service, USDA Forest Service/ref> ''islay'' - Salinan Native American) is native to the chaparral areas of coastal California (from Mendocino County ...
'', aka holly-leaf cherry) they called ''islay'', which was ground into meal and made into gruel.
Men performed most of the heavy, short-duration labor; they hunted, fished, helped with some food-gathering, and carried on trade with other cultural groups. Large game animals were hunted with bow and arrows, and small game was taken with deadfall traps, snares, and bows made of buckeye wood. John P. Harrington recorded that rattlesnake venom was used as an arrow poison. Burrowing animals were driven from their burrows with smoke and clubbed; communal rabbit drives were made during the seasonal controlled burning of
chaparral
Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant community and geographical feature found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean c ...
on the prairie, the rabbits being killed with nets, bow and arrows, and
throwing stick
The throwing stick or throwing club is a wooden rod with either a pointed tip or a spearhead attached to one end, intended for use as a weapon. A throwing stick can be either straight or roughly boomerang-shaped, and is much shorter than the ja ...
s.
Harpoons, spear-throwers, and clubs were used to hunt marine mammals and ''te'aat'' used to access them. Fishing was done from shorelines or along rivers, streams, and creeks with hook and line, nets, basketry traps, spears, bow and arrows, and poisons made from plants. Reciprocity and sharing of resources were important values in Tongva culture. Hugo Reid reported that the hoarding of food supplies was so stigmatized by the Tongva moral code that hunters would give away large portions of coveted foods such as fresh meat, and under some circumstances, were prohibited from eating their own kill or fishermen from eating their own catch.
Women collected and prepared plant and some animal food resources and made baskets, pots, and clothing. In their old age, they and the old men cared for the young and taught them Tongva lifeways.
Material culture
Tongva
material culture
Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects creat ...
and technology reflected a sophisticated knowledge of the working properties of natural materials and a highly developed artisanship, shown in many articles of everyday utility decorated with shell inlay, carving, and painting. Most of these items, including baskets, shell tools, and wooden weapons, were extremely perishable.
Soapstone
Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a talc-schist, which is a type of metamorphic rock. It is composed largely of the magnesium rich mineral talc. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occur in the zo ...
from quarries on Catalina Island was used to make cooking implements, animal carvings, pipes, ritual objects, and ornaments.
Using the stems of rushes (''
Juncus
''Juncus'' is a genus of monocotyledonous flowering plants, commonly known as rushes. It is the largest genus in the family Juncaceae, containing around 300 species.
Description
Rushes of the genus ''Juncus'' are herbaceous plants that superfici ...
'' sp .), grass (''
Muhlenbergia rigens
''Muhlenbergia rigens'', commonly known as deergrass, is a warm season perennial bunchgrass. It is found in sandy or well-drained soils below in elevation in the Southwestern United States and parts of Mexico.
Description
Deergrass is character ...
''), and squawbush (''
Rhus trilobata
''Rhus trilobata'' is a shrub in the sumac genus ('' Rhus'') with the common names skunkbush sumac, sourberry, skunkbush, and three-leaf sumac. It is native to the western half of Canada and the Western United States, from the Great Plains to ...
''), women fabricated coiled and twined basketry in a three-color pattern for household use, seed collecting, and ceremonial containers to hold grave offerings. They sealed some baskets, such as water bottles, with asphalt to make watertight containers for holding liquids.
The Tongva used the leaves of
tule
''Schoenoplectus acutus'' ( syn. ''Scirpus acutus, Schoenoplectus lacustris, Scirpus lacustris'' subsp. ''acutus''), called tule , common tule, hardstem tule, tule rush, hardstem bulrush, or viscid bulrush, is a giant species of sedge in the pl ...
reeds as well as those of
cattails
''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrush or reedmace, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks, in ...
to weave mats and thatch their shelters.
Living in the mild climate of southern California, the men and children usually went nude, and women wore only a two-piece skirt, the back part being made from the flexible inner bark of cottonwood or willow, or occasionally deerskin. The front apron was made of cords of twisted dog bane or milkweed. People went barefoot except in rough areas where they wore crude sandals made of yucca fiber. In cold weather, they wore robes or capes made from twisted strips of rabbit fur, deer skins, or bird skins with the feathers still attached. Also used as blankets at night, these were made of sea otter skins along the coast and on the islands. “Women were tattooed from cheek to shoulder blade, from elbow to shoulder,” with cactus thorns used as needles and charcoal dust rubbed into the wounds as “ink,” leaving a blue-gray mark under the skin after the wounds healed.
Social culture
There were three capital crimes in the community: murder, incest and disrespect for elders.Getze, George. "Southland Indians Used Strange Rites." ''Los Angeles Times'', Jan 14, 1964, pp. 1''.''
According to Father
Gerónimo Boscana
Gerónimo Boscana (Jerónimo Boscana) was an early 19th-century Franciscan missionary in Spanish Las Californias and Mexican Alta California. He is noted for producing the most detailed ethnographic picture of a Native Californian culture to com ...
, relations between the
Chumash Chumash may refer to:
*Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism
*Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California
*Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California
See also
* Chumash traditional ...
, Gabrieleños, Luiseños, and Diegueños, as he called them, were generally peaceful but “when there was a war it was ferocious…no quarter was given, and no prisoners were taken except the wounded.”
Contemporary tribe
The earliest ethnological surveys of the Christianized population of the San Gabriel area, who were then known by the Spanish as ''Gabrielino'', were conducted in the mid-19th century. By this time, their pre-Christian religious beliefs and mythology were already fading. The Gabrieleño language was on the brink of extinction by 1900, so only fragmentary records of the indigenous language and culture of the Gabrieleño have been preserved. Gabrieleño was one of the Cupan languages in the Takic language group, which is part of the
Uto-Aztecan
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...
family of languages. It may be considered a dialect with Fernandeño, but it has not been a language of everyday conversation since the 1940s. The Gabrieleño people now speak English but a few are attempting to revive their language by using it in everyday conversation and ceremonial contexts. Presently, Gabrieleño is also being used in language revitalization classes and in some public discussion regarding religious and environmental issues.
The library of
Loyola Marymount University
Loyola Marymount University (LMU) is a private Jesuit and Marymount research university in Los Angeles, California. It is located on the west side of the city near Playa Vista. LMU is the parent school to Loyola Law School, which is located ...
, located in Los Angeles (Westchester), has an extensive collection of archival materials related to the Tongva and their history.
In the 21st century, an estimated 1,700 people self-identify as members of the Tongva or Gabrieleño tribe. In 1994, the state of California recognized the ''Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe'' ( es, Tribu de Gabrieleño-Tongva) and the ''Fernandino-Tongva Tribe'' ( es, Tribu de Fernandeño-Tongva), but neither has gained federal recognition. In 2013, it was reported that the four Tongva groups that have applied for federal recognition had over 3,900 members collectively.
The Gabrieleño/Tongva people do not accept one organization or government as representing them. They have had strong internal disagreements about governance and their future, largely related to plans supported by some members to open a gaming casino on land that would be considered part of the Gabrieleño/Tongva's homeland. Gaming casinos have generated great revenues for many Native American tribes, but not all Tongva people believe the benefits outweigh negative aspects. The Gabrielino/Tongva Tribe (sometimes called the "slash" group) and Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe (sometimes called the "hyphen" group) are the two primary factions advocating a casino for the Tongva nation, with sharing of revenues by all the people. The Gabrielino Tribal Council of San Gabriel, now known as the Kizh Nation (Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians), claims that it does not support gaming. The Gabrieleno Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians also does not support gambling and has been operating and meeting in the city of San Gabriel for over a hundred years. None of these organizations is recognized as a tribe by the federal government.
History of organizations and casino dispute
In 1990, the Gabrielino/Tongva of San Gabriel filed for federal recognition. Other Gabrieleño groups have done the same. The Gabrielino/Tongva of California Tribal Council and the Coastal Gabrielino-Diegueno Band of Mission Indians filed federal petitions in 1997. These applications for federal recognition remain pending.
The San Gabriel group gained acknowledgement of its nonprofit status by the state of California in 1994. In 2001, the San Gabriel council divided over concessions given to the developers of
Playa Vista
Playa Vista is a neighborhood in the Westside area of Los Angeles, California. The area was the headquarters of Hughes Aircraft Company from 1941 to 1985 and the site of the construction of the Hughes H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose" aircraft. The are ...
and a proposal to build an Indian casino in
Compton, California
Compton is a city in southern Los Angeles County, California, United States, situated south of downtown Los Angeles. Compton is one of the oldest cities in the county and, on May 11, 1888, was the eighth city in Los Angeles County to incorporat ...
. A Santa Monica faction formed that advocated gaming for the tribe, which the San Gabriel faction opposed.
The San Gabriel council and Santa Monica faction sued each other over allegations that the San Gabriel faction expelled some members in order to increase gaming shares for other members. There were allegations that the Santa Monica faction stole tribal records in order to support its case for federal recognition.
In September 2006, the Santa Monica faction divided into the "slash" and "hyphen" groups: the Gabrielino/Tongva Tribe and Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe. Tribal secretary Sam Dunlap and tribal attorney Jonathan Stein confronted each other over various alleged fiscal improprieties and derogatory comments made to each other. Since that time, the slash group has hired former state senator
Richard Polanco
Richard G. Polanco (born March 4, 1951) is a former California State Senate Majority leader and member of the California State Assembly. He is known for his significant efforts in increasing Latino representation in the California Legislature. ...
as its chief executive officer. The hyphen group has allied with Stein and issued warrants for the arrest of Polanco and members of the slash group.
Stein's group (hyphen), the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, is based in Santa Monica. It has proposed a casino to be built in
Garden Grove, California
Garden Grove is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States, located just southwest of Disneyland (located in Anaheim, CA). The population was 171,949 at the 2020 census. State Route 22, also known as the Garden Grove Freeway, ...
, approximately two miles south of
Disneyland
Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney in ...
. In September 2007, the
city council
A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counc ...
of Garden Grove unanimously rejected the casino proposal, instead choosing to build a water park on the land.
Land use issues
Controversies have arisen in contemporary California related to land-use issues and Native American rights, including those of the Tongva. Since the late twentieth century, both the state and the United States governments have improved respect of indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty. The Tongva have challenged local development plans in the courts in order to protect and preserve some of their sacred grounds. Given the long indigenous history in the area, not all archeological sites have been identified.
Sometimes land developers have inadvertently disturbed Tongva burial grounds. The tribe denounced
archeologists
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...
breaking bones of ancestral remains found during an excavation of a site at Playa Vista. An important resolution was finally honored at the
Playa Vista
Playa Vista is a neighborhood in the Westside area of Los Angeles, California. The area was the headquarters of Hughes Aircraft Company from 1941 to 1985 and the site of the construction of the Hughes H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose" aircraft. The are ...
project site against the 'Westchester Bluffs' near the Ballona Wetlands
estuary
An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...
and by the historic natural course of
Ballona Creek
Ballona Creek (pronunciation: “Bah-yo-nuh” or “Buy-yo-nah”
) is an channelized stream in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States, that was once a “year-round river lined with sycamores and willows.” Ballona Creek ...
.
In the 1990s, the Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation revived use of the Kuruvungna Springs for sacred ceremonies. The natural springs are located on the site of a former Tongva village, now developed as the campus of University High School in
West Los Angeles
West Los Angeles is an area within the city of Los Angeles, California. The residential and commercial neighborhood is divided by the Interstate 405 freeway, and each side is sometimes treated as a distinct neighborhood, mapped differently by di ...
. The Tongva consider the springs, which flow at 22,000 gallons per day, to be one of their last remaining sacred sites and they regularly make them the centerpiece of ceremonial events.
The Tongva have another sacred area known as ''
Puvungna
Puvunga (alternate spellings: Puvungna or Povuu'nga) is an ancient village and sacred site of the Tongva nation, the Indigenous people of the Los Angeles Basin, and the Acjachemen, the Indigenous people of Orange County now located at California S ...
.'' They have believed it is the birthplace of the Tongva prophet
Chingishnish
Chingichngish (also spelled ''Chengiichngech'', ''Chinigchinix, Chinigchinich, Changitchnish'', etc.), also known as Quaoar (also ''Qua-o-ar'', ''Kwawar'', etc.) and by other names including ''Ouiamot'', ''Tobet'' and ''Saor'', is an important m ...
, and many believe it to be the place of creation. The site contains an active spring and the area was formerly inhabited by a Tongva village. It has been developed as part of the grounds of
California State University, Long Beach
California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) is a public research university in Long Beach, California. The 322-acre campus is the second largest of the 23-school California State University system (CSU) and one of the largest universities i ...
. A portion of Puvungna, a Tongva burial ground on the western edge of the campus, is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
. In October 2019, following the dumping of soil, along with concrete, rebar and other debris, on "land that holds archeological artifacts actively used by local Tribal groups for ceremonies" from a nearby construction site, the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians,
Acjachemen
The Acjachemen (, alternate spelling: Acagchemem) are an Indigenous people of California. They historically lived south of what is known as Aliso Creek and north of the Las Pulgas Canyon in what are now the southern areas of Orange County and t ...
Nation–Belardes, and the California Cultural Resource Preservation Alliance (CCRPA) filed a lawsuit against the university. In November 2019, the university agreed to stop dumping materials onto the site, and as of 2020 the lawsuit between these parties is still ongoing.
Traditional narratives
Tongva/Gabrieleño/Fernandeño oral literature is relatively little known, due to their early Christianization in the 1770s by
Spanish missions in California
The Spanish missions in California ( es, Misiones españolas en California) comprise a
series of 21 religious outposts or missions established between 1769 and 1833 in what is now the U.S. state of California. Founded by Catholic priests o ...
. The available evidence suggests strong cultural links with the group's linguistic kin and neighbors to the south and east, the
Luiseño
The Luiseño or Payómkawichum are an indigenous people of California who, at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging from the present-day southern part of L ...
and the
Cahuilla
The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California.Chinigchinix
Chingichngish (also spelled ''Chengiichngech'', ''Chinigchinix, Chinigchinich, Changitchnish'', etc.), also known as Quaoar (also ''Qua-o-ar'', ''Kwawar'', etc.) and by other names including ''Ouiamot'', ''Tobet'' and ''Saor'', is an important m ...
, also known as
Quaoar
Quaoar (50000 Quaoar), provisional designation , is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a region of icy planetesimals beyond Neptune. A non-resonant object (cubewano), it measures approximately in diameter, about half the diameter of Pluto. T ...
. Another important figure is Weywot, the god of the sky, who was created by Quaoar.Lakdawalla, Emily "Two new names in the solar system: Herse and Weywot" , ''The Planetary Society.'' 12 Nov 2009. Retrieved 18 March 2012. Weywot ruled over the Tongva, but he was very cruel, and he was finally killed by his own sons. When the Tongva assembled to decide what to do next, they had a vision of a ghostly being who called himself Quaoar, who said he had come to restore order and to give laws to the people. After he had given instructions as to which groups would have political and spiritual leadership, he began to dance and slowly ascended into heaven.
After consulting with the Tongva, astronomers
Michael E. Brown
Michael E. Brown (born June 5, 1965) is an American astronomer, who has been professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2003. His team has discovered many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), including ...
and
Chad Trujillo
Chadwick A. Trujillo (born November 22, 1973) is an American astronomer, discoverer of minor planets and the co-discoverer of Eris, the most massive dwarf planet known in the Solar System.
Trujillo works with computer software and has examined ...
used the name of Quaoar to name a large object in the
Kuiper belt
The Kuiper belt () is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times ...
that they had discovered, 50000 Quaoar (2002). When Brown later found a satellite of Quaoar, he left the choice of name up to the Tongva, who selected Weywot (2009).
Toponymy
From the Spanish colonial period, Tongva place names have been absorbed into general use in Southern California. Examples include
Pacoima
Pacoima (Tongva: ''Pacoinga'') is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. Pacoima is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley region of LA.
Geography
Location
Pacoima is bordered by the Los Angeles districts of Mission Hill ...
Topanga
Topanga () (Tongva: ''Topaa'nga'') is a census-designated place (CDP) in western Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located in the Santa Monica Mountains, the community exists in Topanga Canyon and the surrounding hills. The narrow s ...
,
Rancho Cucamonga
Rancho Cucamonga was a Mexican land grant in present-day San Bernardino County, California, given in 1839 to the dedicated soldier, smuggler and politician Tiburcio Tapia by Mexican governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. The grant formed parts of pr ...
,
Azusa Azusa may refer to:
Relating to California
From a Native American language, likely Tongva language, Tongva ''Asuksagna:''
*Azusa, California, a city in the United States
*Azusa Pacific University, a Christian-based institution in Azusa, California
...
Cahuenga Pass
The Cahuenga Pass (, ; Tongva: ''Kawé’nga'') is a low mountain pass through the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Hollywood Hills district of the City of Los Angeles, California. It has an elevation of . The Cahuenga Pass connec ...
.
Sacred sites that have not been totally demolished, destroyed, or built over include
Puvunga
Puvunga (alternate spellings: Puvungna or Povuu'nga) is an ancient village and sacred site of the Tongva nation, the Indigenous people of the Los Angeles Basin, and the Acjachemen, the Indigenous people of Orange County now located at California S ...
Eagle Rock Eagle Rock may refer to:
Entertainment
* "Eagle Rock" (song), a hit single in 1971 by Australian band Daddy Cool
* "Eagle Rock", a song by Motörhead
* Eagle Rock Entertainment, a record label
Places
* Eagle Rock (formation), in California
* Eag ...
.
In other cases, toponyms or places have been recently named to honor the indigenous peoples. The
Gabrielino Trail
The Gabrielino Trail is a United States National Recreation Trail that runs through the Angeles National Forest with trailheads at Windsor Avenue in Altadena, California on the west end and Chantry Flat, just north of Arcadia, California, on the e ...
is a 28-mile path through the
Angeles National Forest
The Angeles National Forest (ANF) of the United States Forest Service, U.S. Forest Service is located in the San Gabriel Mountains and Sierra Pelona Mountains, primarily within Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County in southern Calif ...
, created and named in 1970.
A 2,656-foot summit in the
Verdugo Mountains
The Verdugo Mountains, also known as the Verdugo Hills or simply The Verdugos, are a small, rugged mountain range of the Transverse Ranges system in Los Angeles County, California. Located just south of the western San Gabriel Mountains, the Ver ...
, in
Glendale Glendale is the anglicised version of the Gaelic Gleann Dail, which means ''valley of fertile, low-lying arable land''.
It may refer to:
Places Australia
* Glendale, New South Wales
** Stockland Glendale, a shopping centre
*Glendale, Queensland, ...
, was named Tongva Peak in 2002, following a proposal by Richard Toyon.
Tongva Park
Tongva Park is a park in Santa Monica, California. The park is named after the indigenous Tongva people, who have lived in the Los Angeles area for thousands of years. The park is located just south of Colorado Avenue, between Ocean Avenue and Ma ...
is a 6.2-acre park in
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...
. The park is located just south of Colorado Avenue, between Ocean Avenue and Main Street. The park includes an amphitheater, playground, garden, fountains, picnic areas, and restrooms. The park was dedicated on October 13, 2013.
Notable Tongva
*Chief Red Blood Anthony Morales, chairman and tribal leader of the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation. In 2008, he received the "
Heritage Award
The PRS for Music Heritage Award is a ceremonial plaque installed in a public place to commemorate a link between a famous musician or music band and the location they performed their first live gig. The UK-wide plaque is awarded and funded by ...
" from the
Aquarium of the Pacific
The Aquarium of the Pacific (formerly the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific) is a public aquarium on a site on Rainbow Harbor in Long Beach, California, United States. It is situated across the water from the Long Beach Convention Center, Shore ...
in
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California.
Incorporate ...
* Jimi Castillo, Gabrielino/Tongva Elder, Pipe Carrier, and member of the State-Wide Bear Clan. In 2016, Jimi received the Heritage Award from the Aquarium of the Pacific, and the Volunteer Lifetime Achievement Award from the Obama White House for his work in the Native Community. He is also known for his work in prisons.
*
Tonantzin Carmelo
Tonantzin Carmelo is an American actress. She is known for her acting roles in film, TV and stage productions including in the Steven Spielberg miniseries, '' Into the West'', for which she received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstand ...
, actress
*
L. Frank
L. Frank (born 1952) is the ''nom d'arte'' of L. Frank Manriquez, a Tongva- Ajachmem artist, writer, tribal scholar, cartoonist, and indigenous language activist. She lives and works in Santa Rosa, California.
Art
In 1990, L. Frank was Artist in ...
, artist, author, indigenous language activist.
* Nicolás José, led two late-eighteenth century revolts against the Spanish colonizers in 1779 and 1785 in collaboration with Toypurina.
* Reginald "Reggie" Rodriguez, (1948–1969) a Vietnam War hero. Reggie Rodriguez Park in
Montebello, California
Montebello (Italian for "Beautiful Mountain") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, located just east of East Los Angeles and southwest of San Gabriel Valley. It is an independent city. east of downtown Los Angeles. It is ...
, is named in his honor and is an 11-acre (4.5 ha) area on which the Reggie Rodriguez Community Center is located, noted for its unique architecture and providing a central location for activities for the at-risk youth population in the city. Reginald was a direct descendant of the San Gabriel Mission Indians (Tongva) with family buried on mission grounds.
*
Toypurina
Toypurina (1760–1799) was a Kizhhttps://gabrielenoindians.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Toypurina_Raeganletter_220909_154647_page-0001-1_220909_155854.pdf medicine woman from the Jachivit village. She is notable for her opposition to the co ...
(1760–1799) was a Gabrieliño medicine woman who opposed the rule of colonization by Spanish missionaries in California, and led an unsuccessful rebellion against them in 1785.
* Charles Sepulveda – professor and author
*
Julia Bogany
Julia Louise Bogany (July 16, 1948 – March 28, 2021) was an American community leader. She was a Tongva elder, educator, and cultural consultant.
Early life
Bogany was born in Santa Monica, California.
Career
Bogany taught preschool for ...
(1948–2021), educator, cultural consultant
* Cindy Alvitre, former tribal leader, educator, cultural consultant
* Weshoyot Alvitre, comic book artist and illustrator
* Emilio Reyes, researcher and genealogist
See also
*
Chinigchinix
Chingichngish (also spelled ''Chengiichngech'', ''Chinigchinix, Chinigchinich, Changitchnish'', etc.), also known as Quaoar (also ''Qua-o-ar'', ''Kwawar'', etc.) and by other names including ''Ouiamot'', ''Tobet'' and ''Saor'', is an important m ...
*
Mission Indians
Mission Indians are the indigenous peoples of California who lived in Southern California and were forcibly relocated from their traditional dwellings, villages, and homelands to live and work at 15 Franciscan missions in Southern California and ...
*
Tongva populated places
The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...
References
;Notes
;Citations
;Works cited
*
;Further reading
* Bean, Lowell John and Charles R. Smith. 1978. "Gabrielino" in ''Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 8 (California)'', pp. 538–549. William C. Sturtevant, and Robert F. Heizer, eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. .
* Heizer, Robert F., ed. 1968. ''The Indians of Los Angeles County: Hugo Reid's Letters of 1852.'' Southwest Museum Papers Number 21. Highland Park, Los Angeles.
* Reid, Hugo. (1852), ''The Indians of Los Angeles County'' , full text available online at Library of Congress
* Johnson, J. R ''Ethnohistory of West S.F. Valley'' CA State Parks, 2006
* Johnston, Bernice Eastman. 1962 ''California's Gabrielino Indians'' . Southwest Museum, Los Angeles.
*
* McCawley, William. 1996. ''The First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles.'' Malki Museum Press, Banning, California.
* Williams, Jack S., ''The Tongva of California'', Library of Native Americans of California, The Rosen Publishing Group, 2003, .
Santa Fe Springs, California
Santa Fe Springs (''Santa Fe'', Spanish for "Holy Faith") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is one of the Gateway Cities of southeast Los Angeles County. The population was 16,223 at the 2010 census, down from 17,43 ...