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Indigenous People’s Day 2020, pt. 2

Posted on by juliaexplores
Illustration by Arthur Scott, Sorony & Co. 1857

Happy Thursday! Today I will share with you the Cupeño and the Kumeyaay. Before I begin, I want to take note of something I did not write about last week. That is the term used to refer to all of these people, “Mission Indians”. I know I touched on the Spanish Missions, but I think it deserves more attention. In the 18th and early 19th century, the Spanish established a string of catholic missions up the Alta California coast along the El Camino Real, or Royal Road. The 21 missions, four presidios (forts), Asistencias (sub-missions), and several pueblos (communities of Spanish settlers) were connected by this road, and acted as a tangible symbol of Spanish dominance in the area. Despite Spain initially showing little interest in Alta California, preferring to focus on the wealth of the more southern colonies, Spain did not want other developing empires to become a threat. The British had sent explorers into what is now the Pacific Northwest, reaching down into the very north of Alta California. Russians had been slowly pushing south from Alaska. By establishing the chain of presidios and missions, the Spanish were able to subdue and conquer the indigenous peoples and discourage other Europeans from getting too close to their lucrative empire. These missions, which have come to be a strong part of California’s cultural identity and the way many Americans identify and categorize the indigenous people’s of the region, became the infrastructure to support incredible horrors inflicted upon these indigenous people’s. They became centers for European diseases to fester and spread, wiping out thousands of native people.

And now, let me introduce you to my neighbors.

The Cupeño are closely related to the Cahuilla that I ended with last week. The name “ Cupeño” was the Spanish name for these people, based upon the native name for their home, “Kupa” with the Spanish ending -eño to mean, “a person from Kupa”. They called themselves Kuupangaxwichem, which means “people who slept here.” Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Cupeño lived in the valleys around what is now Warner Springs, just west of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and just south of where the Cahuilla traditional land is. According to the Cupa Cultural Center, the Cupeño tribe was founded by members of the Mountain Cahuilla. Their culture and language are closely related, and evidence shows that this event occurred somewhere between 800 and 1,000 years ago. From this point, Cupeño intermarried and gathered practices and beliefs from all of the other people surrounding them. They were able to sustain themselves from the resources on the land and built wide social networks.

After California became a state in 1850, they state issued a massive tax on native tribes, despite refusing to grant Native Americans citizenship. In a move remarkably similar to the American Revolution in 1776, a Cupeño named Antonio Garra attempted to unify all of the Southern California Indians to fight unfair taxes and push the white settlers out of native homes. However. Garra’s movement was stopped and he was arrested and executed, and the village at Cupa was destroyed.

Most Cupeño lived on the ranch owned by Juan Jose Warner who had received a Mexican Land Grant in 1844. Warner relied upon Cupeño labor to operate his ranch, and provided space for them to live and build a village. In 1849, Warner was removed after accusations that he had been consorting with the Mexican government. In 1880, the ranch came under the ownership of John G. Downey. By the 1890s, the owners began legal proceedings to evict the Cupeño who still lived there. In 1901, the United States Supreme Court handed down their decision in the case Barker v. Harvey, which ruled that the Cupeño were required to leave Cupa. In 1903, the Cupeño were forcibly removed from their homes. Some moved to the Pala reservation on the San Luis Rey River, a three day forced march from Cupa. Decendents of these evicted Cupeño can be founnd living on a variety of reservations in Southern California, forcibly intermixed with neighboring tribes. The land at Cupa still does not belong to the Cupeño.

Cupeño people are actively fighting to regain land rights, as well as maintain their cultural identity. On August 8, 2019, an article was written by Acee Agoyo on indianz.com about a recent fight for Cupeño people. According to the article, Cupeño people living on the Pala reservation are facing disenrollement from the band that they share with the Pala Luiseño. The Cupeño have responded by asking the Bureau of Indian Affairs to add the Cupeño to the list of federally recognized tribes, but they refused. This drops Cupeño people from the system. If disenrolled, they lose the supports and services offered by the tribe, have no way of getting the same supports from the Federal government because they are not recognized, and face losing their identity as Cupeño. Like much information about the Cupeño, this is a messy story with complex, nuanced sources and complex perspectives. But it is incredibly clear from the story of the Cupeño that it is vital for indigenous stories to be told, indigenous cultures and languages to be preserved, and restorative justice to take place.

The Kumeyaay were the first group of Southern California natives that I learned about as a child. In fact, these are the only indigenous peoples from this region that I remember learning about. The Kumeyaay speak a Yuman language, and have lived here for at least 10,000 years. Kumeyaay teritory once stretched from the Warner Springs valley of the Cupeño, east to the Colorado river,west to the Pacific Ocean, and south to Ensenada in what is now Baja California. Like the other tribal groups we have looked at, the Kumeyaay are called by a variety of names, including one given to them by the Spansh. This has incidently caused me some confusion. At one point I had looked and seen a list of five groups originally from this area, including the Kumeyaay and the Northern Digueño. However, these are the same people. Like the Luiseño, the Spanish referred to these people by the mission that they lived near. The Kumeyaay resided in the area around the Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Obviously, this was not the name they referred to themselves by. These were the first people encountered by the Spanish when they arrived in San Diego in 1769. The name Kumeyaay is actually a recent naming from the 1970s to include all of the Yuman-speaking people in Imperial and San Diego counties. These people were originally divided into smaller bands spread throughout their territory along geographical and linguistic divides. The Ipai lived in the north, the Tipai in the south, and the Kamia in the east. Before Spanish contact, the Kumeyaay were hunter-gatherers and incredibly proficient land and water managers. The Viejas Band of Kumeyaay cites anthropologist Florence Shipek, who described the sophisticated system of controlled burns and irrigation to mitigate erosion and maintain a steady supply of fresh water in a fairly arid climate. The Kumeyaay were not only hunter-gatherers, but they farmed the very landscape to ensure a steady supply of food sources including some kind of native grain. Unfortunately this grain has been lost because the Spanish did not recognize it as a domesticated grain crop, and instead thought it was excellent pasture for their animals, destroying centuries of cultivation.

Upon Spanish arrival, the Kumeyaay faced a dramatic change in lifestyle, even more than just the loss of their crops. Immediately, a presidio and mission were established near the bay, right in the center of Kumeyaay land. The relationships between the Kumeyaay and Spanish were strained from the very beginning, and it was the Kumeyaay that the Spanish documented rising up against them on several occasions. Violent resistance to colonization resulted in deaths on both sides, and in 1775, a group of Kumeyaah surrounded the Mission San Diego de Alcalá and attacked the Spaniards there, burning the wooden structures. Father Jayme and another Spaniard were killed, marking the first missionary to be killed by natives in California. Smallox and Malaria epidemics swept through the area killing thousands. By the time the missions were secularized after Mexican Independence in 1821, the once prosperous Kumeyaay population had shrunk to 3,000 people due to diseases, malnutrition, trauma, and abuse. No longer bound to the missions, many Kumeyaay fled to the mountains to avoid being forced labor for Mexican settlers. Over the next two decades, Kumeyaay lands were given out to Mexican citizens as land grants. In 1847 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Mexican American War came to an end and California became a United States teritory. The U.S. promised ro recognize native land rights, but they did not follow through with this statement. By 1860, indigenous property had mostly been given to American settlers and native children were prohibited from going to California public schools. In 1870, gold was discovered in Ramona in the mountain territory of the Kumeyaay, and gold miners forced the Kumeyaay off their land.

In 1875, the Indian Rights Association and the Sequoia League forced the Bureau of Indian Affairs to set aside reservations for the Kumeyaay. This series of reservations today are 12 separate bands of Kumeyaay: Barona, Campo, Ewiiaapaayp, Inaja-Cosmit, Jamul, La Posta, Manzanita, Mesa Grande, San Pasqual, Santa Ysabel, Sycuan, and Viejas. However, this was not final solution. As the population of Southern California has exploded, water has become a more pressing issue. Water has been continually funnelled away from reservatons, causing Kumeyaay crops to suffer and inhibit the ability of Kumeyaay to support themselves, let alone thrive. Water and land rights continued to be a battle into the 20th century, with the final band of Kumeyaay being established 1934 when the Viejas band had to relocate due to the loss of a resevoir. The Kumeyaay have maintained their active role in fighting for their rights since the moment the Spaniards set foot on their land right up until today. In 1969, the La Jolla band sued the cities of Escondio and Vista over water diversions in 1895 and 1924. In 1994, the Native American Environmental Protection Coalition was founded in Southern California to fight for protection, preservation, and restoration of the environment, as the native peoples of the area had been doing for thousands of years before Spanish arrival. In 1997, the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee was formed to work with museums and universities in the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. In 1998, a Kumeyaay Border Task Force secured the rights of Kumeyaay in Baja and the U.S. to freely visit and interact with each other. Towards the end of the 20th century, the bands of Kumeyaay began opening casinos and gaming buildings. After many legal battles, they secured the ability to maintain casinos on reservation land, and have been able to gain greater economic prosperity in the last few decades. This year, the La Posta Band of Digueno Mission Indians filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration asking to halt construction of the border wall, which is set to go right through sacred burial grounds. Pre-construction blasts had unearthed human remains, and protestors have stated that no one was on site to be sure no artifacts were destroyed. The Department of Homeland Security issued waivers for several laws that protect indigenous ancestral sites to expedite construction, and there was no consultation with the Kumeyaay. Protests and lawsuits will continue until all construction has come to a halt.

Something I want to make clear as I wrap up, is that it is easy to write this narrative in a way that places the white American as a savior. The evil Spanish came through and conquered and tortured the indigenous peoples. When Mexico achieved independence, they failed to do enough to help the natives, but the United States swept in and established reservations to provide protected land and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to ensure that the Native Americans received everything they need. As a white American, that is a very easy narrative to tell. But that is not a true narrative, and it does not take into account the trauma injustice and cultural genocide that has occurred and continues to occur against indigenous people in the United States. So I hope the narrative you hear from me is the narrative of resilience that many of these tribes are telling themselves. I hope that we can boldly look injustice in the eye, acknowledge it, and in the words of Glennon Doyle, build a truer and more beautiful world. This is hard work, and this is collective work. No individual can accomplish this mountain of a task in a thousand lifetimes, but we as a community can make beautiful justice, reconciliation, and beauty happen in this lifetime.

I highly recommend that you explore the links below. I have only covered a brief history of each of these groups of people, but in several of the following resources you can find more about their culture, including songs, legends, art, and languages.

To Learn More:

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