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Organization: Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society
Date: June 15, 2008
Expert on Local Native Americans to Speak on the First Inhabitants of the SCV
Dr. John Johnson will discuss the history of the Tataviam and neighboring native Americans of Southern California
They came sweeping across the Great Plains to the Santa Clarita Valley sometime around 450 A.D., a band of Shoshone Indians called the Tataviam. On Saturday, July 26, 2008 the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society and College of the Canyons will jointly host a talk by one of the leading experts on the Native Americans of Southern California. Dr. John Johnson, Curator of Anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, will deliver the talk on the history of the Native Americans of the SCV beginning at 2:00 p.m. at Mentry Hall, room 318 on the College of the Canyons campus in Valencia.
It is theorized that some 16,000 to 20,000 years ago, the first humans migrated while tracking big game animal herds from Siberia into Alaska and the Americas across a land bridge on the Bering Strait formed during the last Ice Age. From there they spread southward across the North American continent. Evidence of the first inhabitants of the Santa Clarita Valley dates back about 13000 years, but little is known about them. Just over 1,500 years ago, the previous inhabitants of the Valley were displaced by a people who migrated westward from the Great Plains. For many years modern historians called them the "Alliklik," but this turned out to be a derogatory name given to them by their neighbors to the west, the Chumash. "Alliklik" roughly translates to "grunters" or "stammerers", a reference to the sound of their Uto-Aztecan dialect. More recently they have been known as the Tataviam or "people of the sunny slopes", so named by the Kitanemuk Indians of the Antelope Valley, due to their habit of building villages on southern facing slopes of mountains to maximize sun exposure.
The Tataviam were a hunting and gathering society who lived in approximately 25 villages dotting the region consisting of cone shaped huts of willow poles covered with grass. The main and largest village called Chaguayabit was thought to be located at Castaic Junction. There were also smaller villages at present day Piru, Camulos, and Newhall. Their territory ranged from Piru to the West, Newhall to the South, and the Lebec area to the North. They subsisted on small game such as deer, rabbits, squirrels and snakes, and also ate plants like acorns, yucca, sage, agave, juniper berries, and buckwheat. Artifacts found in the Valley suggest that trade existed between the Tataviam and people in Agua Dulce and farther to the East. They practiced a form of shamanism, communicating with the supernatural world through hallucinations brought on by the use of jimsonweed and other hallucinogenic plants gathered along local streams.
For many centuries, the Tataviam coexisted with nature and continued the same customs and practices; very little changed in the Valley. But in August of 1769, the world of the Tataviam was to change forever. That month, a group of Spanish soldiers and missionaries led by Gaspar de Portola crossed over the San Gabriel Mountains into the Santa Clarita Valley. They were on a land expedition out of Baja California with the purpose to find and colonize Monterey Bay before it could be settled by Russian fur traders coming down from Alaska. On the way, the first California mission was established in San Diego by Father Junipero Serra. These "strange looking" people were warmly greeted by the Tataviam. The Spanish felt that these peoples should be taught modern agriculture and converted to Christianity. A mission was established in 1797 in San Fernando. An outpost of the mission, The Estancia de San Francisco Xavier, was built on a bluff overlooking present day Magic Mountain in 1804. The Tataviam, along with other Native American peoples of the region, were brought to the Mission by the Spanish to live and learn European ways. Within a few years, most of the Tataviam people were working for the mission. The last full blooded Tataviam in existence was thought to be Juan José Fustero, who died near Camulos in 1921.
According to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Dr. John Johnson's "career has been devoted to understanding the culture and history of the Chumash Indians and their neighbors in south central California through the study of archaeology, archival records, and interviews with contemporary Native Americans. Johnson has published more than 40 studies about Southern California Indians, particularly the Chumash. His work to preserve important archaeological sites and collections has been recognized formally by the Society for California Archaeology, which awarded him their Mark Harrington Award for Conservation Archaeology in 2002." The Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society and College of the Canyons are proud to present this distinguished expert of local Native American history. College of the Canyons is located in Valencia off the Valencia Blvd. exit of Interstate 5. Visitors to the lecture should park in the South Parking lot along Rockwell Canyon Road, then proceed to Mentry Hall. For a map of the campus, go to http://www.canyons.edu/offices/PIO/keyinfo/CampusMap.asp. The general public is welcome. Admission will be free.
For more information on this and other upcoming programs from the SCVHS, please call Pat Saletore or Alan Pollack at 661-254-1275. Website: www.scvhs.org.
