The California Indians

Who were they?

There are many records of the natives living in California at the time of the arrival of the Spanish. But, it should be pointed out that their view was based upon prejudices of the 18^th Century and the fact that their contacts were limited to the coastal areas.

[Please forgive me but I do not know enough about graphics to make this map fit the page so it doesn't obscure what's to the right on the blog.]

The famous British explorer, Captain George Vancouver, of his visits to California ports in the 1790s indicated his observation that the natives, except some in the Santa Barbara Channel, (Chumash) seemed to be a race of the most miserable beings ever seen possessing the faculty of human reason, and little if any advantages had attended their conversion. Yet he testified to their affectionate attachment to their missionary benefactors, whose aims and methods, without attempting a discussion of the mission system, he approves, looking for gradual success in laying foundations for civil society. For the friars personally he had nothing but enthusiastic praise.

In 1813, at Mission San Juan Capistrano after a devastating outbreak of measles and an earthquake that destroyed many missions buildings. Fray Gerónimo Boscana, recently arriving from the Apostolic College of San Fernando, wrote that he felt the San Juan Capistrano's neophytes--as well as the surrounding non-Christian population--as being unmotivated, selfish, untrustworthy, and lazy. Yet, these same Acagchemem, or Juaneños as they were known locally, had toiled to build most impressive structures, creating industries that made the mission self-sufficient, and tended to huge herds of

livestock. They lived in scattered villages of anywhere from 30 to 300 inhabitants, politically isolated from others. They wore scant clothing and used stone age implements, living off the plenty of the land.

The Chumash

A traditional Chumash dwelling

At one time there were tens of thousands of Chumash Indians living along the California coasts. They had large fleets of boats they called tomols. The Chumash ingeniously used tar found washed up ashore to caulk the seams of the wood held together by plant fiber strings. [Thus the name Pismo Beach, as pismo is the Chumash word for tar.] They even had small settlements on the Channel Islands.

Like all California Indians, the Chumash were outstanding basket weavers. Some where so tightly woven they were used to hold water. To cook, heated rocks were dropped into them.

The Chumash welcomed the Spanish and readily gathered at the missions. Many were born, baptized, married, and died there, showing love to the padres who looked over them as children. They only violence from the Chumash came from a couple of families living hear Mission San Luis Obispo who raided the herds and set fire to the thatch roofs of the buildings. One of the friars put a stop to that by coming up with tiles to replace the thatch that spread to all the other missions. 

The Costanoan

 

Another Group were called the Costanoan peoples of the north-central coast. They spoke a language with widely different dialects stemming from the Utian or Shoshone people of the Rocky Mountains. They lived in more than 50 distinctive landholding groups – using the word “landholding” loosely as Native Americans did not believe one could “own” land.

Ohlone dancers at Mission San José

The Ohlone subsisted mainly as hunter-gatherers and in some ways harvesters. "A rough husbandry of the land was practiced, mainly by annually setting of fires to burn-off the old growth in order to get a better yield of seeds – or so the Ohlone told early explorers in San Mateo County." Their staple diet consisted of crushed acorns, nuts, grass seeds, and berries, although other vegetation, hunted and trapped game, fish and seafood (including mussels and abalone from the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean), were also important to their diet. These food sources were abundant in earlier times and maintained by careful work (and spiritual respect), and through some active management of all the natural resources at hand. Animals in their mild climate included the grizzly bear, elk (Cervus elaphus), pronghorn, and deer. The streams held salmon, perch, and stickleback. Birds included plentiful ducks, geese, quail, great horned owls, red-shafted flickers, downy woodpeckers, goldfinches, and yellow-billed magpies. Waterfowl were the most important birds in the people's diet, which were captured with nets and decoys. The Chochenyo traditional narratives refer to ducks as food, and Fray Juan Crespí observed in his journal that geese were stuffed and dried "to use as decoys in hunting others."

Again, they readily gathered at the missions and accepted the teachings of the friars and the better way of life they provided.

One comment. The friars lived in the 18^th Century without the benefits of modern medicine. They did not know that living in crowded conditions could bring about diseases. Measles and Smallpox were two brought by Europeans. But the natives already had many endemic to California, including respiratory and venereal diseases. The friars tried their best to treat them and that was the reason why Mission San Rafael was founded – to provide a place where the sick could convalesce.

 

The Tongva

The Tongva lived in what we now call the Los Angeles Basin, called The Valley of Smokes by them before the Spanish arrived. Only about 5,000 were estimated to be living there upon the arrival of the Spanish. At first, they were wary of the Spanish but soon became converted and toiled freely to erect a church and a variety of buildings. They became known as some of the most adept vaqueros of all the missions, looking over vast herds of livestock.

An example of Tongva rock art

There were at least ten other “tribes” or families of natives living in the area but I'll deal with them in the next post.

Hasta la próxima vez