Finding CV’s First Inhabitants is Difficult

Writing about the native people of our valley, the Tongva, has been among the most frustrating research work I’ve done. The sources of info are scattered, and some of what exists can be suspect in accuracy. There are really no contemporary historical accounts of what the Tongva were like before European contact.

European diseases had already swept across the land in unrecorded epidemics long before explorers had physical contact. Here in Southern California, explorers had been touching on the land and dropping off viruses, for which the native people had no resistance, for hundreds of years, before the Missions were established. The natives of California had robust trade networks so deadly diseases like influenza, smallpox and venereal disease would have been transmitted quickly from village to village. One Lusenio man at Mission San Juan Capistrano said that nearly half of his people had died before the Missions and the Americans arrived to finish off the rest of them. Imagine trying to accurately describe a culture when half its population had died horribly, and the remainder was in a state of subjugation.

The nature of our land doesn’t preserve artifacts well either. Our fire and flood cycles tear up the land and scatter ancient village sites, while urbanization with heavy grading has ensured that anything remaining is long gone. Describing who they were, what their lives were like, even where they lived is like trying to describe what a house looked like long after it had been bulldozed. You have no idea what color or architectural style it was, how the rooms were laid out, or who lived there. It takes a lot of conjecture to come up with an image, made up largely from guesswork.

And yet I feel a great burden of responsibility to describe their civilization. They were here in one form or another for at least 10,000 years, maybe more. When I write about our local history of the last couple of centuries, I feel like I’m scraping the surface, ignoring the larger history. I will in the next few weeks try to put together what I can find so that we have a clearer picture of what our valley was like before Dr. Briggs or Jose Verdugo ever walked our land.

But enough of my whining.

I’ll use as my main source a 1996 book by William McCawly called “The First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles,” which seems to be the most respected source lately. I’ll use a lot of vague terms like “It seems that…” or “We’re told that…”. I’ll use the term “natives” or “Native Americans” even though McCawley uses the term “Indians.” (My favorite term is “First Nations People” like they use in Canada, but that doesn’t seem to be catching on here.) For the tribe, I will use the term “Tongva” that seems to be the most popular name lately, although “Kihz” seems to be gaining in popularity. Gabrielino has been the term used in the past, a generic term given by the Spanish for all the natives who were gathered into the San Gabriel Mission, which were actually from several different tribes. It’s been hard for scholars to pin down what the Tongva called themselves, so mixed are the historical records.

In the next few weeks I’ll talk about a remarkable lost civilization. The Tongva who walked through our valley were probably the most wealthy and culturally advanced native tribe in Southern California. The Tongva lived in an environment that provided a wealth of food and raw materials. As well, they controlled important trade centers and routes. They were healthy and strong. The religion that was popular among most of the natives of Southern California had originated with the Tongva, so they enjoyed a sort of “Vatican City” status spiritually.

I’ll try to bring their ghosts to life for they lived, played and worked right where you live. When you walk along Honolulu Avenue, you walk a road used for thousands of years. I feel sometimes like the Tongva are still with us, whispering into our ears, “We are here, we are here.”

  mike lawler