The Cupeño (or Kuupangaxwichem) are a Native American tribe of Southern

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. They traditionally lived about inland and north of the modern day

Mexico–United States border The Mexico–United States border ( es, frontera Estados Unidos–México) is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border trave ...

in the Peninsular Range of

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

. Today their descendants are members of the federally recognized tribes known as the Pala Band of Luiseno Mission Indians,

Morongo Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians The Morongo Band of Mission Indians is a federally recognized tribe in California, United States. The main tribal groups are Cahuilla and Serrano. Tribal members also include Cupeño, Luiseño, and Chemehuevi Indians. Although many tribes in C ...

, and

Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno Indians Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeño Indians of the Los Coyotes Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Cahuilla and Cupeño Indians, who were Mission Indians located in California.

History

Several different groups combined to form Cupeño culture around 1000 to 1200 AD. They were closely related to Cahuilla culture.Bean and Smith, 588 The Cupeño people traditionally lived in the mountains in the San Jose Valley at the headwaters of the

San Luis Rey River The San Luis Rey River is a river in northern San Diego County, California. The river's headwaters are in the Palomar Mountain Range and Cleveland National Forest, near Palomar Mountain and the Santa Rosa Mountains. The river mouth, on the Pacif ...

.Pritzker, 124 Their name in their own language is "Kuupangaxwichem" ("people who slept here")."California Indians and Their Reservations.
SDSU Library and Information Access. (retrieved 18 May 2010) They lived in two autonomous villages, Wilákalpa and Kúpa (or Cupa),Pritzker, 125 located north of present-day

Warner Springs, California Warner Springs is set of springs and a small unincorporated community in northern San Diego County, California. Warner Springs is on the Pacific Crest Trail. Geography Warner Springs has a post office and the ZIP code is 92086. It is located n ...

. Their homelands extended to Agua Caliente, located east of

Lake Henshaw Lake Henshaw is a reservoir in San Diego County, California at the southeast base of Palomar Mountain, approximately northeast of San Diego, California and southeast of Los Angeles. The lake covers approximately and holds of water when full ...

in an area now crossed by State Highway 79 near Warner Springs. The Cupeño Indian village site is now abandoned but evidence of its historical importance remains.

Spanish and Mexican occupation

Spaniards entered Cupeño lands in 1795 and took control of the lands by the 19th century. After Mexico achieved independence, its government granted Juan Jose Warner, a naturalized American-Mexican citizen, nearly of the land on November 28, 1844. Warner, like most other large landholders in California at the time, depended primarily on Indian labor. The villagers of Kúpa provided most of Warner's workforce on his cattle ranch. The Cupeño continued to reside at what the Spanish called Agua Caliente after the American occupation of California in 1847 to 1848, during the

Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...

. They built an adobe ranch house in 1849 and barn in 1857, that were still standing as of 1963. According to Julio Ortega, one of the oldest members of the Cupeño tribe, Warner set aside about of land surrounding the hot springs as the private domain of the Indians. Warner encouraged the Cupeño to construct a stone fence around their village and to keep their livestock separated from that of the ranch. Ortega felt that if the village had created its own boundaries, the Cupeño would still live there today.Morrison, 1962, p.21

American occupation

In observing the Cupeño's living conditions in 1846, W. H. Emory, brevet major with the

United States Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

, described the Indians as being held in a state of serfdom by Warner, and as being ill-treated. In 1849, Warner was arrested by the American forces for consorting with the Mexican government and was taken to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

. In 1851, because of several issues of conflict, Antonio Garra, a Yuma Indian living at Warner's Ranch, tried to organize a coalition of various southern California Indian tribes to drive out all of the

European Americans European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent E ...

.Bean and Smith, 589 His ' Garra Revolt' failed, and the settlers executed Garra. The Cupeño had attacked Warner and his ranch, burning some buildings. They lost structures at their settlement of Kúpa, too. Warner sent his family to Los Angeles, but continued to operate the ranch with the help of others.

Forced eviction

Following European contact but prior to the time of their eviction, the Cupeños sold milk, fodder, and craftwork to travelers on the Southern Immigrant Trail and passengers on the stagecoaches of the

Butterfield Overland Mail Butterfield Overland Mail (officially the Overland Mail Company)Waterman L. Ormsby, edited by Lyle H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, "The Butterfield Overland Mail", The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1991. was a stagecoach service i ...

, that stopped at Warner's Ranch and passed through the valley. The women made lace and took in laundry, which they washed in the hot springs. The men carved wood and manufactured saddle pads for horses. They also raised cattle and cultivated of land. In 1880, after numerous suits and countersuits, European-American John G. Downey acquired all titles to the main portion of Warner's Ranch. In 1892, Downey, the former governor of California and owner of the ranch since 1880, began proceedings to evict the Cupeño from the ranch property. Legal proceedings continued until 1903, when the court ruled in '' Barker v. Harvey'' against the Cupeño. The

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

government offered to buy new land for the Cupeño, but they refused. In 1903, Cecilio Blacktooth, Cupeño chief at Agua Caliente, said: "If you give us the best place in the world, it is not as good as this. This is our home. We cannot live anywhere else; we were born here, and our fathers are buried here."

Cupeño trail of tears

On May 13, 1903, the Cupa Indians were forced to move away, to

Pala, California Pala is a small, mostly Native Americans in the United States, Native American, community and census-designated place, CDP located in the Pala Indian Reservation, located within San Diego County, California, San Diego County, California. For cen ...

on the

It has been referred to by 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 U ...

'', academics, and the

Pala Band of Mission Indians The Pala Indian Reservation is located in the middle of San Luis Rey River Valley in northern San Diego County, California, east of the community of Fallbrook, and has been assigned feature ID 272502. Historic variant names used to describe the ...

as the Cupeño trail of tears given the traumatic nature of the event. The forced relocation to the Pala reservation also included "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 ...

villages at Puerta la Cruz and La Puerta, and the Kumeyaay villages at Mataguay, San José, and San Felipe." It was described by historian Phil Brigandi as "the last of Indian 'removals' in the United States, ending a federal policy of forced relocations that had begun 75 years earlier.

= Reactions

= On the morning of the removal Roscinda Nolasquez, who was eleven years old at the time, recalled the last morning at Cupa. Orders were shouted in English at the Cupeño: “We were so scared. We didn’t know what he was saying. We didn’t know what was going on. We saw old people running back and forth. We cried, too, because we were afraid.” She recalls that morning trying to ensure that her cats would not be left behind, which she managed to find. In 1903, an article for the '' Los Angeles Herald'' described it as such: “The springs proved the Indians’ undoing. White men wanted them, and now, after years of impatient waiting, they have possession. No matter the legal aspect of the case, the act is deplorable. It is one of the saddest sequels to the white man’s first notice to the ativeson the Atlantic coast to move on. They have been moving on ever since.” An article for the ''

Los Angeles Daily 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 ...

'' featured the headline: "Indians Bundled Away Like Cattle To Pala." Two weeks after the forced relocation, American journalist Grant Wallace wrote, “Many of the older people were still ‘muy triste....’ Every other tent or brush ramada was still a ‘house of tears,’ for their love of home is stronger than with us.” The houses provided by the U.S. government were Ducker Patent Portable Houses; described in a report to the Indian Office as "very unsatisfactory," some of which quickly fell into disrepair or collapsed. In 1922, the

Henshaw Dam Lake Henshaw is a reservoir in San Diego County, California at the southeast base of Palomar Mountain, approximately northeast of San Diego, California and southeast of Los Angeles. The lake covers approximately and holds of water when full ( ...

was built, which significantly worsened the flow of the

that ran through the relocation site.

Present-day

Indians at the present-day reservations of

Los Coyotes Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeño Indians of the Los Coyotes Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Cahuilla and Cupeño Indians, who were Mission Indians located in California.Santa Ysabel, and

Mesa Grande Mesa Grande Cultural Park, in Mesa, Arizona, preserves a group of Hohokam structures constructed during the Classic Period. The ruins were occupied between AD 1100 and 1400 ( Pueblo II – Pueblo IV Era) and were a product of the Hohokam civi ...

are among descendants of the Warner Springs Cupeño. Many Cupeño believe that their land at Kúpa will be returned to them. They are seeking legal relief to that end. The Cupa site serves as a rallying point for the land claims movement of contemporary Indian people, particularly their effort to regain cultural and religious areas.

Culture

The tribe is divided into two moieties, the Coyote and Wildcat, which are divided into several

patrilineal Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritan ...

clans. Clans are led by hereditary male clan leaders and assistant leaders. Marriages were traditionally arranged. Traditional foods included acorns, cactus fruit, seeds, berries, deer, quail, rabbits, and other small game. The Cupa Cultural Center was founded in 1974 in Pala and underwent a major expansion in 2005. The center exhibits artwork; hosts classes and activities such as basket making and beading; and offers Cupeño language classes. During the first weekend of every May, Cupa Days is celebrated at the cultural center.

Language

The

Cupeño language Cupeño is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language, formerly spoken by the Cupeño people of Southern California, United States. Roscinda Nolasquez (d. 1987) was the last native speaker of Cupeño. The Cupeño people now speak English. The native name Ku ...

belongs to the Cupan group, which includes 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.Luiseño language The Luiseño language is a Uto-Aztecan language of California spoken by the Luiseño, a Native American people who at the time of first contact with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging fr ...

s. This grouping is of the

Takic The Takic languages are a putative group of Uto-Aztecan languages historically spoken by a number of Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Takic is grouped with the Tubatulabal, Hopi, and Numic languages in the northern branch of the Uto-Azt ...

branch within the Uto-Aztecan family of languages.

Roscinda Nolasquez Roscinda Nolasquez (1892 – February 4, 1987) was a Cupeño, and the last speaker of the Cupeño language of Southern California. She grew up speaking Cupeño and Spanish. It was not until she was forcefully sent to Sherman Indian School, previous ...

(1892–1987), of Mexican Yaqui descent, is considered the last truly fluent Cupeño speaker. The language today is widely regarded as being extinct. In 1994, linguist

Leanne Hinton Leanne Hinton (born 28 September 1941) is an American linguist and emerita professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. Education and career Hinton received her PhD in 1977 from UC San Diego, with a dissertation entitle ...

estimated one to five people still spoke Cupeño, and nine people in the 1990 US census said they spoke the language. Educational materials for the language exist and young people still learn to sing in Cupeño, particularly Bird Songs.Hinton, 29, 42

Population

Alfred L. 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 ...

estimated the 1770 population of the Cupeño as 500. Lowell John Bean and Charles R. Smith put the total in 1795 between 500 and 750. By 1910, the Cupeño population had dropped to 150, according to Kroeber. Later estimates have suggested that there were fewer than 150 Cupeño in 1973, but about 200 in 2000.

Notes

References

* Bean, Lowell John, and Charles R. Smith. "Cupeño". Heizer, Robert F., volume ed. ''

Handbook of North American Indians The ''Handbook of North American Indians'' is a series of edited scholarly and reference volumes in Native American studies, published by the Smithsonian Institution beginning in 1978. Planning for the handbook series began in the late 1960s and ...

: California, Volume 8.'' pp. 91–98. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. . * Hinton, Leanne. ''Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages''. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1994. * Pritzker, Barry M. ''A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. .

External links

Pala Band of Mission Indians
official website

''Barker v. Harvey'' (1901) - US Supreme Court decision evicting the ''Cupeño''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cupeno Native American tribes in California California Mission Indians