User talk:KizhHistory

= The First Indian Tribe of the Greater Los Angeles Area: The KIZH =

Although most Americans, even in the Los Angeles area, do not know the true name of the tribe that inhabited the greater Los Angeles area, they were – and are – called the Kizh. They have been more commonly referred to by the public and scholars as Gabrielenos (“Gabrielinos” sic). The living Kizh do not want to be called “Gabrielinos” or “Gabrielenos” because that is a name given to them by their Spanish conquerors in the 18th Century; whereas Kizh is the ethnic name they want to be called today (for a discussion of the true name of the tribe and the documentation by scholars verifying the validity of the name Kizh; see Stickel 2016). The following presentation of the tribe was excerpted from the tribe's first published book (Teutimes, et al 2013):

Our ancestors created a remarkable and beautiful culture in an outstanding environment (Figure 1). Our homeland was life-sustaining and beautiful to us from the diving dolphins and breaching great whales who circled Pimu'na (Catalina Island), to the deer and grizzly bears who roamed our hills and mountains. It was a marvelous world filled with wonders. We strive today to preserve what precious little of it remains within the vast urban sprawl of the greater Los Angeles area.

Our tribal territory extended over what is now five counties with most of it within Los Angeles and Orange counties (Figure 1). Our people lived in villages comprised of a number of thatched-roofed domiciles, each called a kizh (McCawley 1996, 10). A chief led the village residents in their daily activities. Because we had a hunting-gathering culture, the tasks were divided as follows: the men hunted deer, rabbits, sea mammals, etc. They also fished our Sea of Kizh in the Pacific Ocean. Women collected plant foods such as chia and acorns in special ways that provided a sustained subsistence system (McCawley 1996, 118-123, 128-131; Teutimez 2013). Because Southern California has a Mediterranean climate that is counted among the best in the world, the apparel of our people was appropriate and adapted to the warm climate. Men were essentially nude with some wearing loin cloths made of deerskin. Women wore woven skirts of native fibers and adorned themselves with shell bead necklaces and jewelry of mother-of-pearl and steatite. Children went basically nude as was considered appropriate. Our people ranged far and wide throughout our occupied lands, from the mountains to the valleys, and we traveled to and from our Channel Islands in planked boats unique in the Americas. We traded between the islands and mainland and our trade network extended far to the east. For example, our shell pieces were utilized as jewelry by other cultures such as the Hopi and other Pueblo Indians (Keoke and Porterfield 2005, 50).

Our Yovaar religion was a belief system that provided us with a bond between ourselves and our Spirit world, a bond between us and our natural world, a bond between our different communities (villages) and a bond between our peoples and other peoples. The bonds were sustaining and long-lasting. We communicated our bonds in a language that linguists classify as part of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic stock of languages (Bean and Smith 1978, 538). There are remnants of our language preserved today as place names (e.g. Topanga Canyon, Little Tujunga Canyon, the City of Tujunga, Cahuenga Boulevard, the Puvuunga site at California State University at Long Beach, the City of Azusa [from the ancient village of Asuksanga], and far to the east the city of Rancho Cucamonga, as well as many others).

Our villages (or rancherias, as the Spanish called them) were politically independent (Bean and Smith 1978). Like California Indians in general, we did not have a general concept of a "tribe" or "tribal territory." It may be difficult for non-Indians to comprehend this concept. An analogy that might help here is that of ancient Greece where the Greeks did not have a national concept of "Greece" and "Greeks" prior to Alexander the Great who unified the country. Instead, people were identified by the City State of their affiliation such as Athenians from Athens, Spartans from Sparta, etc. Those people were fiercely loyal to their City States- much as our ancestors were loyal to their own villages. Each village had a "Chief who was of an elite class which included the well-off. There was also a middle class and a third class of everyone else. The Chief had limited power. A Chief's duties were to maintain Gabrieleño ideology symbolized by a "sacred bundle," and administer the bonds between his people, oversee welfare, arbitrate disputes, etc. Successive Chiefs were selected through their male kinship ties (patrilineal descent). The legitimacy of the Chief was recognized by the community's elders. If a Chief failed in his duties, he could be replaced by the elders usually from the same lineage or kinship group. The Chief presided over different lineages. Each lineage had its own leader as well. Other important persons of our society were the priests/Shamans of which Toypurina was one. Their importance to our society has been noted:


 * But it is with the shamans that perhaps the greatest power existed, sometimes even greater than the chiefs. For... even chiefs had no jurisdiction over shamans because they 'conversed with the Great Spirit' and could be punished only by other shamans (Bean and Smith 1978, 544).

When our ancestors married, the couples came from nearly equal social rank but from different lineages (lineage exogamy). The wife resided at her husband's home (patrilocal residence). When married couples had children, they were treated in an exceptional way:


 * Children were treated with such love, devotion and fondness by their parents that the Spanish missionaries were astonished and commented that the children were treated like 'little idols' (Johnston 1962; Bean and Smith 1978, 545).

Our culture (human system) had a techno-economic subsystem (all the technology and economic aspects of the culture) that provided all our needs for millennia. We had a broad-based economy and subsistence system that allowed us to harvest shellfish, fish and animals from our sea and a wide variety of animals and plants from our land (Teutimez 2013). Some hallmarks of our culture are as follows. We developed the technology to detoxify acorns when other cultures were not able to do so; the acorn crop became "the staff of life" for us. We invented, along with our Chumash neighbors to the north, the only true plank boat of all the cultures and high civilizations of the New World. This boat we called a Ti'at; the Chumash called theirs the Tomol (Hudson, Timbrook and Remper 1978). The Ti'at was very seaworthy and allowed us steady communication with Pimu'na (Santa Catalina Island) and our other islands (San Nicholas, Santa Barbara and San Clemente).

The hallmarks of our ancestors’ culture have been noted by anthropologists. The renowned anthropologist A.L. Kroeber said of us:


 * The Gabrielino... seem to have been the most advanced group south of Tehachapi, except perhaps the Chumash. They certainly were the wealthiest and most thoughtful of all the Shoshoneans of the State, and dominated these civilizationally wherever contacts occurred (Kroeber 1925, 621).

A similar opinion was expressed by authors Lowell Bean and Charles Smith in their important article on us in the volume "California" published as part of the landmark twenty volume series on the American Indian by our national museum, the Smithsonian Institution. They have said of us:


 * The Gabrielino (Gabrieleno) are, in many ways, one of the most interesting - yet least known of Native California peoples. At the time of Spanish contact in 1769, they occupied the most richly endowed coastal section in southern California... With the possible exception of the Chumash, the Gabrielino were the wealthiest, most populous, and most powerful ethnic nationality in aboriginal southern California (Bean and Smith 1978, 538).

And more recently William McCawley, in his most comprehensive book on us to date entitled The First Angelinas: the Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles (1996), has said of us:


 * ...the Gabrielino are revealed by the ethnographic and the ethnohistorical records as a people of material wealth and cultural sophistication... They maintained a maritime trade network... The prestige and political strength of the Gabrielino were enhanced by impressive achievements in pre-industrial technology and economics as well as religion and oral literature (McCawley 1996, 3).

These anthropologists' comments attest to the culture and the vibrant world we had – a world the Spanish government invaded in 1769 and a world they subsequently wreaked havoc upon thus drastically changing it forever. A hero rose up among the Kizh in reaction to the devastation caused by the Spanish onslaught. She was the daughter of a chief and a shaman. Her name was Toypurina. She came to realize that the only way to free her people from annihilation was to engage in a revolution against the Spanish Empire’s conquest of her tribal territory. The Kizh Tribe has written the first book which truthfully presents her compelling story. The book is entitled, Toypurina, the Joan of Arc of California (Teutimes et al 2013). She is referred to as “the Joan of Arc of California” because their stories are very similar. In doing research for the book, we discovered that Toypurina is the only Native American woman who ever led a revolt in American history, and thus she is unique in the history of the United States. The Kizh Tribe is currently engaged in an effort to erect a beautiful bronze statue of her at the City of San Gabriel, where she led the revolt in 1785. The sculpture was created by the artist Rick Hill. Toypurina can be considered to be a hero to all Americans, as she was a righteous fighter for human dignity and freedom. Those are the inalienable rights of all Americans. The Tribe hopes that everyone will read her book and learn about how outstanding she was and about our people, who have lived in the greater Los Angeles area for at least 9,000 years.

References Cited
Bean, Lowell John and Charles R. Smith
 * 1978. Gabrielino. In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 8, California, pp. 538-549.

Hudson, T., J. Timbrook and M. Rernper 1978. 	Tomol: Chumash Watercraft as Described in the Ethnographic Notes of John P. Harrington. In The Journal of California Anthropology, vol 5, no. 1. Huntington library database of Mission San Gabriel records, http://catalog.huntington.org

Johnston, Bernice 1962. 	California's Gabrielino Indians. Southwest Museum Publications, Los Angeles.

Keoke, Emory Dean and Kay Marie Porterfield 2005. 	American Indian Contributions to the World. New York; Chelsea House.

Kroeber, A.L. 1925	The Indians of California. The Smithsonian Institution Press. Washington, D.C.

McCawley, William 1996. 	The First Angelenos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles. Malki Museum Press and Ballena Press, Banning.

Stickel, E. Gary 1982. 	A General Human Systems Model for Archaeological Analysis. In New Uses of Systems Theory in Archaeology. Edited by E. Gary Stickel. Ballena Press Anthropological Papers no. 24, pp. 9-42, Los Altos, California.

2016	Why the Original Indian Tribe of the Greater Los Angeles is Called Kizh Not Tongva. Kizh Tribal Press, San Gabriel.

Teutimes, Ernest P. Salas, Andrew Salas, Christina Swindall Martinez and Gary Stickel 2013	Toypurina, the Joan of Arc of California. Kizh Tribal Press, San Gabriel.

Teutimez, Matt 2011. 	A Compendium of Gabrieleno Indian Utilization of Flora and Fauna. http://www.gabrielenoindians.org