The La-Jolla Complex
Pleiades or "They are Dancing" The paleo-indians who migrated to San Diego developed a culture called the La Jollans. They became astronomers: As humans were pattern seekers, the natives would follow the patterns of the stars and planets as they danced crossed the sky and used them to track the time of day, year, seasons, and festivals. They did this by collecting pumus and basalt rocks and placing them in certain positions that would line them up with events like solstices and the equinoxes. There was a third set of rocks that marked what is believed to be the agave season in mid March. the agave plant was the first to come into season during that time, so it may have marked a whole season worth of desert harvesting. The constellations that the ancient Greeks and Romans noticed and named were the same ones that the natives of San Diego noticed, but the names were different. The Orion Constellation was called “Stretched Out Beaver Skin” because it looks like Orion’s arm is stretched out and is holding what looks like skin. A group of stars called the Pleiades were named, “They Are Dancing”, and Venus, the morning and evening star, once believed to be two different stars that could be seen brightly before the sun rose and set, was called “It Brings The Day” and “It Brings The Night”.
Orion The Hunter or "Stretched Out Beaver Skin"
During the winters, they would live further inland in the desert where it was warmer and gather muskete beans, barrel cacti and guajava plants. The villages on the coast would have relatives living among the villages in the desert, which probably led to many winter festivals. Come spring, they would move back to the shore and collect mollusks. The ones that stayed in the desert during the summer would dig fish traps along the shore line of Lake Cahuilla that would capture fish coming to shallow waters to lay their eggs.
Barrel cauctus would have its pricks removed and used as fish hooks while carving the rest of the plant up like pineapple. Desert lilies were treated as onions are. The fruits of guajava plants could be ground up like acorns. They would also harvest buckwheat seeds to grind and turn into a type of flower. The red fruit that grows on holly leaf cherries in the fall can be eaten like normal cherries, but the seeds inside can also be ground up. The roots of cattails could taste like cucumber. Manzanita berries were also harvested for food and medicine. in the fall, pinyon nuts from pinyon pines would also be harvested.
Arrowheads, excavated from the former village of Meti. They were traders: Seeing as they hunted and gathered, surpluses were important. A great way to gain a surplus, or a variety of different things, was to trade with other bands and tribes. Villages from the coast would trade back and forth with villages from the mountains and deserts. They established routes for travel, trade and as a means of communication with each other, many of these routes would someday become roads or highways. One of their main trade routes went from the coast, up the Drying Out Place, towards the east, which later became part of Interstate 8 (also known as Kumeyaay highway). They would trade various goods, such as fish, abalone, seeds, acorns, tobacco, eagle feathers, and information.
What the natives may have looked like, from the museum at the Cabrillo National Monument. They were warriors: Their main tools were bows and arrows made from oak trees, Mohave yuccas and agave leaves. Their arrows were in two parts, the arrowhead was attached to the front part which would fit into a back part. The back part is where the feathers would be attached and the part that would be retrieved after being fired. Throughout the reign of the natives, it’s believed that long forsaken wars were fought by unremembered peoples. Many of their wars happened over people from one band, trespassing into the territory of another. There is no doubt there were battles and in their fury, the natives could be just as brave or ruthless, however one sees it, as any other human. There probably used to be great tales of epic Stone Aged battles between tribes and Homeric type warriors overcoming tremendous odds, earning the adulation of their peers and becoming immortalized in song and legend, retold over huge festivals: Stories that were important to those cultures and told to be remembered by future generations; stories that have since been lost in time. There are very little human remains from these times, for villages cremated their dead.
Ipai in San Pasqual Valley, can be found at the Battle of San Pasqual Museum. One of the ancient native stories is called, “How the Baron Long People came to be”. It indicates that all of these bands used to be one large tribe that was on the move, migrating from the east, and following the sunset. But at the foot of a mountain in the Borrego desert, the Chief’s daughter had a baby. That morning, the baby's father climbed the mountain and killed a deer to offer to the Chief. When he returned to offer the deer however, the Chief told the boy to cut it up and to give all the pieces away. They set up a large powwow or gathering that night where they all feasted on the deer and danced in celebration until the Chief announced that he was heartbroken by the birth of this baby and could go on no further. He instructed the rest of the tribe to move on without him, and then he then turned into stone. The tribe split up into bands, consisting of groups of families, and went their separate ways. One of the split factions continued to follow the sunset until they found their current home by the coast and settled there. Another story tells how all the bands once prepared for the coming of their god in the form of a serpent. They built a large round house, but it wasn’t big enough so when the serpent god came and entered, the house caught fire and he was cremated. Not knowing what to do next, they held a council and determined that they must each eat a portion of the remains. But once they did, their language changed and they could no longer communicate with each other, and thus they went their separate ways until one faction ended up finding their current home by the coast and settling there. Kind of reminds me of a version of the tower of Babel tale.
Mysterious carvings found on a valley wall in Mission Trails Park.
Approximate locations and names of ancient villages. These cycles were repeated for thousands and thousands of years. Their culture began to change at around 1000BCE, when Yuman speaking people, migrated into the area and assimilated with the natives. It could have been those who brought the "How the Baron Long people came to be" story to the region. It is unknown whether the assimilation was peaceful or not though. What is known is that pottery and ceramics begin to be created and used for food storage, festivals and as the natives became more stationary and territorial; walls were raised for defense and irrigation, but it couldn’t stop later generations from joining them. In 1000CE, Shoshonean speaking people also migrated into the area. By this time, the cultures had settled into two distinct tribes: The “Ipai”, which was a group of villages situated to the north of the Drying Out Place, and the “Tipai”, a group of villages to the south of it. These tribes were further broken up into bands, which live as families in villages. Some of the Tipai bands included the villages of Otay to the south east of the foot of the bay, and Cosoy, again located in modern day Old Town and Presidio Park. Other villages included Chiap in modern day Chula Vista, Meti in modern day Spring Valley, Choyas located in a small valley south of Cosoy, Janat, Jamacha, Jamio, Onap, and Coapan, though there were many more scattered around the county.
Kumeyaay is the name the Ipai and Tipai would later claim for themselves. - PBS.org
Guacamals
I’m sure the story talked of a large group of Guacamals coming from the south to a village somewhere beyond the mountains. The white men probably demanded the natives to supply them with food and other necessities, but then, for some reason, they began killing many of them. Once most of the village was slaughtered, the men simply gathered supplies and moved on. The survivors probably fled to the nearest villages for safety, telling their stories of horror and death, spreading fear into the hearts of villages all over the future United States.
"Caballos" or Horses evolved in the Americas, but managed to escape extinction by migrating to Asia, where they were used as transportation instead of meat. They most likely learned of different humans living in other parts of the world from other natives along their trade routes just a few short years before, either that or by the first wave of diseases that spread from the south. There was no telling how the Ipai and Tipai initially thought of these other people, but seeing as news of wide spread death and devastation usually followed in the wake of contact between them and other villages, there was a good chance that they may have feared these mysterious white men who they referred to as "Guacamal". One day, fresh new rumors began to air from the trade routes to the east, possibly from a survivor. They told stories of white skinned men, wearing shiny and stylish clothes and holding lances and swords, pulling wagons and riding on the backs of large beasts the Spanish called “caballos”. They are the descendants of the horses that managed to escape into Asia.
So when it was rumored, that two large floating houses, which moved through the water by wind, were spotted in the waters to the south, many natives began to fear the worst. As the next day came and went, the two homes drifted closer and closer and became visible, passing the bare islands to the south and towards the mouth of the bay. Some Tipai who had been burning brush in the hunt for meat, saw the floating houses, put out the fires and began looking out into the coast in fear. The Ipai and Tipai had heard through the trade routes that this was how the deaths to the south and east began, with many of these wooden houses and rafts floating to the shore, or white men with strange clothing looking for supplies. The Tipai, the natives south of the Drying Out Place, probably had some heated debates amongst each other over how to handle the Guacamals if they arrived on shore, but with very limited information of the actual situation or the resources to deter them from coming any further, they must have decided to wait and see if the men would come first.
Mural depicting the first landing of Spanish ships in San Diego Bay. Can be found at Cabrillo National Park Museum in Point Loma.
The houses finally reached the mouth of the large bay to the south and stopped. Some of the Tipai carefully hid all throughout the coastline and watched the men, some no doubt armed. Natives from the top of the point that stuck out into the bay below the Drying Out Place could have probably peeked directly down and would have seen the movement of little people on the boxy floating houses bundling up the large skins that caught the wind and pushed them across the waters. They then may have witnessed a group of Guacamals sit in a large canoe and lower themselves into the water before lightly paddling to the shore toward a group of Tipai standing on the marshy beach. The natives might have also recognized their elaborate clothing and weapons from the stories passed along by other villages.
By the time the small group of white men reached the shore however, the fears of many of the natives became so overwhelming that numbers of them ran off and hid, leaving only three of them to greet the strangers. The group of Guacamals reached the shore, exited the canoes, and carefully approached the remaining natives in an attempt to make first contact. I’m sure many thoughts ran through the minds of the future Kumeyaay who witnessed this event: I have a feeling that one of the things that went through their mind was: “It’s true. These people really do exist.”
Also “Why are they here?” “What were their intentions?”
“What’s going to happen next?”
“What’s going to happen next?”
Stay tuned for Background History, part 1, coming September 15, 2015.
Sources:
Kumeyaay History:
http://www.kumeyaay.info/history/
http://viejasbandofkumeyaay.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ViejasHistoryBooklet.pdf
http://www.kumeyaay.com/kumeyaay-history/1-timeline.html
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365254548/
http://www.kumeyaay.info/history/
http://viejasbandofkumeyaay.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ViejasHistoryBooklet.pdf
http://www.kumeyaay.com/kumeyaay-history/1-timeline.html
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365254548/
San Diego Timeline:
http://www.sandiegohistory.org/timeline/timeline.htm
http://www.sandiegohistory.org/timeline/timeline.htm
You can also visit:
Barona Cultural Center and Museum in the Barona Reservation
Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma
Battle of San Pasqual Museum at San Pasqual Valley
Mission Trails Regional Park in Mission Valley
Barona Cultural Center and Museum in the Barona Reservation
Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma
Battle of San Pasqual Museum at San Pasqual Valley
Mission Trails Regional Park in Mission Valley
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