We Are the Land

A History of Native California

Damon B. Akins, William J. Bauer Jr.

• Éditeur: University of California Press
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780520976887
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Histoire
• Sous-sujet: Histoire de l'Amérique du Nord

"A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White 's California Exposures. "— KirkusReviews Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous. Before there was such a thing as "California, " there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today's casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.

1

A People of the Land, a Land for the People

Nocuma, the Tongva Creator, held the world in his hands. He fixed the earth in place by anchoring it to Toshaawt, a large rock. A stream, overcrowded with fish, encircled this world. The fish wondered how to make more room for themselves. One fish broke open Toshaawt, and a bilious liquid, like the contents of one’s stomach, spilled into the water. The water turned salty and fed the ocean. Nocuma then made first man and first woman. This couple had children, one of which they named Wewyoot. Eventually, Wewyoot lived at Povuu’nga, now located on the California State University, Long Beach, campus, where he matured into an ambitious and ruthless leader who attempted to conquer others. Wewyoot’s followers grew restless with his leadership. They killed Wewyoot by grinding a piece of Toshaawt and applying the paste to Wewyoot’s chest. The People burned his body at Povuu’nga. The People held a council to figure out how to feed themselves. Attajen, whose name means “man,” appeared at this meeting and recognized the people’s precarious situation. He taught ceremonies to religious leaders so they could produce rain, acorns, and bountiful animal populations. Then, Chinigchinich, the prophet, came to Povuu’nga. He taught Tongvas ceremonies and laws, as well as how to build the yovaar (sweathouse). The Tongva People were now prepared to live with the land.

Indigenous People begin their history with creation stories like the Tongva’s narrative of Nocuma, Wewyoot, and Chinigchinich. These stories define a people and a land. Yet historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have questioned the historical validity of oral histories and oral traditions. Scholars have called these stories “myths” or “legends.” They have privileged written sources, often produced by non-Indians, and material objects, such as stone tools and mortars, to tell the deep and long history of Indigenous People in California. This chapter uses creation stories to understand this history.

As the Tongva creation story illustrates, Indigenous People’s creation stories described the relationship between Indigenous People and the land. First, Creators made Indigenous People with the land. Second, Indigenous People developed ways of working with the land. Although Indigenous People practice different economies, this chapter emphasizes the work and labor associated with harvesting acorns to illustrate this history. Finally, Indigenous People lived with the land in complex political and economic networks. They built towns, cooperated or fought with their neighbors, and extended trade routes to reach those farther away. Through their attachment to the land, and their engagement with each other, Indigenous People wove the region together. These histories and practices were not limited to the time before the arrival of Europeans. Rather, Indigenous People in California continue to tell these histories, harvest acorns, and perform the ceremonies necessary to relate to the land.

The history of Indigenous People in California began when Creators made the land and the People. According to the Tachi Yokuts, whose homelands sit in the southern San Joaquin Valley and who now occupy a rancheria outside of Lemoore, Ancient People, portrayed as animals, formed the land from the bottom of the ocean. Eagle and Coyote sat on a spit of land on a vast ocean. Turtle swam over to them. Eagle asked Turtle to dive to the bottom of the sea and bring back dirt. Turtle gulped as much air as he could and dove. He struggled to reach the ocean’s floor and managed to grab only a handful of dirt. Turtle breached the water and flopped on the island with Coyote and Eagle. Much of the dirt washed out of Turtle’s hand. Coyote inspected Turtle and nearly gave up hope of finding any when he spied a bit of mud underneath Turtle’s fingernail. Eagle and Coyote mixed the dirt with chiyu seeds to make the earth. Then, Eagle and Coyote sent People throughout the world. They told one group, “You go to that place with your people. You go to that spring.”

The People named the landscape and its features as they spread across the land. Nahachish, a Luiseño figure from Temecula, was poor and hungry. He sang a song about leaving his home, but he did not know where he would end up. Nahachish traveled until he met a group of people having a gathering, what California Indians call a “Big Time.” These people gave Nahachish a light gray mush. Nahachish replied, “My stomach is picha [whitish].” Thus, Nahachish named the place Picha Awanga, now shortened to Pechanga. Next, Nahachish walked to where some of his relatives lived on Palomar Mountain. His relatives gave Nahachish some food. The food made his stomach burn, like from a nettle. Nahachish called this place Sukishva, which means nettle. Finally, Nahachish went to a small canyon to drink some water. He named this place Pala, from páala (water).

Creation stories situate Indigenous People in specific places, such as Picha Awanga or Pala. As such, Indigenous People understood themselves as People of a place. In the 1830s, Luiseño Pablo Tac called his People the Quechnåjuichom, which means “inhabitants of Quechla,” a town of five hundred Luiseños that sat near the San Luis Rey River. In the northern Paiute language, the term witü means “place.” The Paiutes who lived near modern-day Bishop referred to themselves as Pitana Witü, People of the “south place.”

Place and land structured how Indigenous People discussed their past. Oral traditions often began and ended at specific places. A Karuk story opens with a woman walking toward Ipputtatc, uphill from the Klamath River, to harvest wood. The story ended with the woman returning to Xavnamnihitc, her town located near modern-day Orleans. Where an oral history occurred mattered more than when the event occurred. Place names also structured songs. Chemehuevis, in southeastern California, used songs to describe and claim ownership of the land. The Salt Song Trail is a one-thousand-mile trail from the Bill Williams River to Las Vegas, Nevada. From there, one trail extends north toward Reno, Nevada, and another cuts south toward Twenty-Nine Palms and Blythe. Chemehuevi leader Matthew Leivas explains that the songs “tell about the different sacred sites on the thousand-mile journey . . . [and] the whole history of our people.”

California has always been a densely populated and diverse place. Within the current boundaries of California, Indigenous People speak more than one hundred different languages, making it the most linguistically diverse area in North America. Scholars conservatively estimate at least 310,000 people lived in California’s current boundaries when Spain began to establish missions in 1769, but some scholars have challenged these numbers. California’s land and resources could have sustained far more than 310,000 people. Anthropologist Martin Baumhoff estimated an average annual acorn crop could have supported nearly two million people in California, although, as he and other anthropologists have noted, the enormous amount of work necessary to leach out acorns’ tannic acids meant that they were a low-ranked resource. Still, there were land and resources available in California for an excess of 310,000 people. Additionally, epidemic diseases likely arrived in California before the onset of Spanish colonization in the late eighteenth century. Scholars have often used mission baptism records to extrapolate premission Indigenous populations. If, however, epidemic diseases arrived in California before the missions, those estimates could be low. California’s resources and the possibility of epidemic disease convinced some scholars to estimate between seven hundred thousand and one million Indigenous People lived within the current state boundaries.

Archaeologists have identified Indigenous People’s living sites throughout the current state boundaries. Quite often, Indigenous People chose to live on or near bodies of water. Between fourteen thousand and twelve thousand years ago, People fished and harvested shellfish on the Channel Islands, off the coast of Los Angeles. At roughly the same time, People hunted animals on the shore of Tulare Lake. They waited until animals, such as the enormous bison antiquus, bogged down in the swampy areas around the lake. The People used atlatls, hooked spear-throwers, to hurl spears equipped with Clovis points. Eight thousand years ago, as the climate warmed, People hunted dolphins in the channels off San Clemente Island. Meanwhile, People harvested grass seeds and hunted and fished on the shores of Borax Lake.

Indigenous People spread across California in densely populated settlements. At their peak, eighteen thousand to twenty thousand Chumash occupied a swath of territory from present-day Point Conception to Malibu and from the Pacific Ocean inland for about thirty miles, to modern-day Paso Robles. Chumash located their largest towns in the Goleta Slough, near present-day Santa Barbara. Chumash also lived on the Channel Islands. Approximately eight hundred Chumash lived at Helo’ on Mescalitan Island. In the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, Patwins clustered along the rivers that fed the valley. Patwin towns boasted populations of between twelve hundred and fourteen hundred people. The Southern California bight, a segment of the coast that stretches from Point Conception to the present-day California-Mexico border, was another densely populated area. Tongvas clustered their towns around coastal estuaries in the Los Angeles Basin, located at the center of the bight. Each community had a neck of land on the coast and a head of land in the interior. One Tongva town, of perhaps 150 people, had a village on the coast and satellite camps inland up the Palos Verdes peninsula. Tolowas occupied the town of Ta’giatun, located at modern-day Point St. George, a windswept plain near Crescent City. The town consisted of a living area, with homes and a sweathouse; a cemetery; and a workspace, where Tolowas knapped flint and made tools, butchered large mammals, such as sea lions, and cleaned fish.

As towns grew, Indigenous People established satellite communities in outlying areas. Along the rocky beach at Ta’giatun, Tolowas gathered mussels and seaweed from the rocks. In the early summer, they caught smelt in A-frame nets in the surf as the fish came toward the shore to spawn in the gravel. The smelt were dried at the beach on raised sand beds to take advantage of the sun and the salt air. When the smelt were dried, Tolowas left the coast to harvest acorns in the mountains. They stayed in the mountains, harvesting acorns and fishing for salmon until about November, at which time they returned to Ta’giatun.

Indigenous People worked with the land as they populated it. Coyote sent his five children out into the world. These children spoke five different languages and founded five rancherias, along the Salinas and Carmel Rivers. The People named their villages Ensen, Rumsen, Ekkheya, Kakonta, and Wacharon. Coyote provided the People with rabbit nets and bows and arrows to hunt rabbits. Coyote then told the People to go to the ocean to gather seaweed, abalone, and mussels to eat with acorn mush and acorn bread. In addition to acorns, Coyote instructed his children to gather grass seeds and carry them back to the rancherias in baskets. “I have shown you how to gather food,” Coyote said, “and even though it rains a long time, people will not die of hunger.”

As the Ensen story illustrated, Indigenous People considered acorns a vital part of their worldview. Many oral histories mention how and when Creators made oak trees and acorns. After the Maidu Earth Maker formed the world, asked the sun and moon to rise, and named the stars, he declared, “I am going to do more yet.” Earth Maker created a tree on which twelve different kinds of acorns grew and planted it near the modern-day city of Durham, about eighty miles north of Sacramento. Exhausted by the enormous energy it took to create the world, Earth Maker sat down under the world’s first oak tree and rested against its gray, craggy bark for two days. Cahtos, who live on Mendocino County’s coast, tell that after a flood destroyed the first world, Earth Dragon came from the north and waded through the water. Tired, Earth Dragon lay in the water. Nagaicho, the Creator, traveled from Earth Dragon’s head and made land on Earth Dragon’s body. He turned the head into mountains, on which brush grew. People and animals appeared. Nagaicho caused seaweed, abalone, and mussels to grow in the ocean. He then planted redwoods on Earth Dragon’s tail. Finally, Nagaicho made oak trees to provide the people with plenty of acorns to eat.

Acorns sustained Indigenous life. Fifteen species of oak trees, with varying productivity, grow within the current state boundaries. Acorns lack as much protein as wheat and corn, but they possess a high content of fat and vitamin B6. The high fat content enabled people to survive the lean winter months. Indigenous People stored acorns in caches made from wood and grass and placed on wooden platforms off the ground. The ability to store acorns was a boon. Indigenous People possessed a year-round food source, which allowed them to offset winter famine and balance fluctuating tree yields since acorn crops are notoriously volatile. Rain and frosts, especially in the spring, can decimate an annual crop. Tan and black oaks produce a good crop only every other year. Valley, Oregon, and blue oaks produce one good crop out of three.

Although acorns are plentiful, nutritious, and relatively nonperishable, they require a lot of work to be made edible. Work commenced in late summer. Yukis, who live in modern-day Mendocino County, called the month of August lanl simimol (acorn to ripe) and September lanl hak’olimol (acorn to wash). Indigenous communities owned specific oak groves and returned to them every year. Karuk families possessed special and defined places where they harvested acorns. To collect the seasonal bounty of acorns, men deftly climbed the trees and knocked the nuts off the limbs with sticks. Women and children spread out mats and blankets underneath the trees, picked up the acorns, and placed them in baskets. Men, women, and children carried the baskets to milling stations or bedrock mortars, large granite platforms located close to the oak trees. An experienced acorn grinder quickly took the gray cap off the acorn and cracked the brown shell with a rock pestle, revealing the nutritious mea...