Puhú (''Payómkawichum'': “its arrow place”) was a major residential village in the

Santa Ana Mountains The Santa Ana Mountains are a short peninsular mountain range along the coast of Southern California in the United States. They extend for approximately southeast of the Los Angeles Basin largely along the border between Orange and Riverside c ...

shared by the

Tongva 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 ...

, Acjachemen, Payómkawichum, and Serrano near

Santiago Peak Santiago Peak is the southern mountain of the Saddleback landform in Orange County, California. It is the highest and most prominent peak of both the Santa Ana Mountains and Orange County; it also marks a border point with Riverside County. ...

. The village resided approximately 600m above sea level in the upper areas of the Black Star Canyon. The village was at its height from the years 1220-1770. The village retained its multi-seasonal occupancy and economic and political systems up until its destruction and a communal massacre in 1832. The Puhú site is listed as a

California Historical Landmark A California Historical Landmark (CHL) is a building, structure, site, or place in California that has been determined to have statewide historical landmark significance. Criteria Historical significance is determined by meeting at least one of ...

as the ''Black Star Canyon Indian Village Site'', registered in 1935 and named after the Black Star Coal Mining Company that operated in the area in the late nineteenth century. The village site is north of the town of Silverado.

Village life

Several archaeological excavations of Puhú were conducted from the 1930s onward and found that it featured "17 bedrock milling/ rock art features surrounding a single mounded habitation midden." The nearby

village of Pamajam was located near Puhú in a meadow in a small valley with a body of water and marsh, or ''cinega'', with a view of 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, ...

. San Gabriel Mission records referred to Christian converts of this village as Pamaibit, which was derived from the word ''pa'ajvar'', meaning "above." This village was located near what is now referred to as Corona, California. For meat supply, the village primarily subsisted on

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 whi ...

. Other animals, such as bears, ravens, and mountain lions were not consumed, likely because of their position as "animal ancestors/deities within Chinigchinich religion." Shell ornaments were likely an important crafting resource for the village. The village had trade connections with the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...

, Great Basin, and

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 watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. s ...

regions.

Destruction

By 1810, the village was becoming closer to private ranch allotments, such as Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, given out by Spanish colonial authorities. After a claim that the village residents had stolen horses and other livestock (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs) for a period of several months to subsist on due to alleged food shortages in 1832, the village was massacred by American and Mexican fur trappers, led by

William Wolfskill William Wolfskill (1798–1866) was an American-Mexican pioneer, cowboy, and agronomist in Los Angeles, California beginning in the 1830s. He had earned money for land in a decade as a fur trapper near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had become a ...

. In a recount of the event, it was claimed that "the Indians were very fond of horseflesh" and that they were "feasting on juicy horseflesh" at the time of the raid on the village. According to the account, only a few villagers survived the raid by escape.

Memorialization

After a publication of the story in 1931, the story of the massacre became part of Orange County folklore and textual history.Acebo Nathan Patrick Barbara L Voss Ian Hodder Li Liu Lee M Panich Michael V Wilcox and Stanford University. 2020. �
Re-Assembling Radical Indigenous Autonomy in the Alta California Hinterlands : Survivance at Puhú.
�� Dissertation Stanford University. Stanford University. As a result, this memorialization urged interest in excavation of the area. From 1936-1937, the village site was poorly excavated by the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

(WPA), which took 200kg of artifacts from the site without cataloguing or analyzing them. The artifacts were spread throughout various museums, while others were cast off as too fragmented to preserve or study. The WPA mischaracterized the village as a small hunting and acorn-processing camp, rather than a large village.Acebo, Nathan P. 2021. “Survivance Storytelling in Archaeology.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas, edited by Lee M. Panich and Sara L. Gonzalez, 468–85. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429274251. The narrative of the villagers memorialized has since been critiqued based on in-depth research, both in relation to the size of the village and the activities of the villagers. The claim that villagers were consuming horse flesh has been identified as a common trope promoted by Spanish colonial authorities, particularly in the Alta California region. Scientific analysis of the village's midden in 2021 found that no horse or European livestock remains were present.

References

{{Indigenous peoples of California Santa Ana Mountains California Historical Landmarks Former Native American populated places in California History of Orange County, California Tongva populated places Serrano populated places

Village life

Destruction

Memorialization

See also

References