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116-681: Puvunga (alternatively spelled Puvungna or Povuu'nga ) is an ancient village and sacred site of the Tongva nation, the Indigenous people of the Los Angeles Basin , and the Acjachemen , the Indigenous people of Orange County . The site is now located within the California State University, Long Beach campus and surrounding areas. The Tongva know Puvunga as the "place of emergence" and it

232-484: A 320-acre tract of land (130 ha) inside their municipal boundaries. The land contained a large portion of the historical village of Puvunga, and was used to build the campus of California State University of Long Beach . On Christmas Eve of 1952, a burial site in Puvunga was discovered about a mile north of the California State University, Long Beach campus (then referred to as Long Beach State College) when workers of

348-604: A California Senate Bill of 2008 asserted that the US government signed treaties with the Gabrieleño, promising 8.5 million acres (3,400,000 ha) of land for reservations , and that these treaties were never ratified, a paper published in 1972 by Robert Heizer of the University of California at Berkeley , shows that the eighteen treaties made between April 29, 1851, and August 22, 1852, were negotiated with persons who did not represent

464-586: A Justice of the Peace punishable by fine, any white person may, by consent of the Justice, give bond for said Indian, conditioned for the payment of said fine and costs, and in such case the Indian shall be compelled to work for the person so bailing, until he has discharged or cancelled the fine assessed against him. Native men were disproportionately criminalized and swept into this legalized system of indentured servitude . As

580-503: A burial at site LAn-235 on the western edge of campus. Funding for the 1973 excavation was provided by the City of Long Beach, Long Beach Historical Society, Rancho Los Alamitos Associates, and private donors. Tongva remnants unearthed included arrowheads and pottery sherds in a style called Cerritos Brown ware. These remains were placed in CSULB's archaeology lab. Archaeologists in 1974 wrote that

696-590: A city which saw an increase in the Native population from 200 in 1820 to 553 in 1836 (out of a total population of 1,088). As stated by scholar Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, "while they should have been owners, the Tongva became workers, performing strenuous, back-breaking labor just as they had done ever since settler colonialism emerged in Southern California." As described by researcher Heather Valdez Singleton, Los Angeles

812-472: A divide between Mexican Los Angeles and the nearest Native community. However, "Native men, women, and children continued to live (not just work) in the city. On Saturday Nights, they even held parties, danced, and gambled at the removed Yaanga village and also at the plaza at the center of town." In response, the Californios continued to attempt to control Native lives, issuing Alta California governor Pio Pico

928-472: A dozen archaeological sites, spread over an area of about 500 acres (2.0 km) on and near the campus, have been identified as Puvungna village sites. A shopping center and apartments at 7th Street and Pacific Coast Highway , Long Beach Veterans Administration Hospital , Rancho Los Alamitos and the college now stand atop the historic settlement "near the present-day mouth of the San Gabriel River and

1044-491: A failed attempt to kill the mission's priests in 1779 and organized eight foothill villages in a revolt in October 1785 with Toypurina , who further organized the villages, which "demonstrated a previously undocumented level of regional political unification both within and well beyond the mission." However, divided loyalties among the natives contributed to the failure of the 1785 attempt as well as mission soldiers being alerted of

1160-406: A land base in the Tongva traditional homeland. In 2008, more than 1,700 people identified as Tongva or claimed partial ancestry. In 2013, it was reported that the four Tongva groups that have applied for federal recognition had more than 3,900 members in total. The Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy was established to campaign for the rematriation of Tongva homelands. In 2022, a 1-acre site

1276-441: A long history of Indigenous belonging in the basin." While in 1848, Los Angeles had been a small town largely of Mexicans and Natives, by 1880 it was home to an Anglo-American majority following waves of white migration in the 1870s from the completion of the transcontinental railroad . As stated by research Heather Valdez Singleton, newcomers "took advantage of the fact that many Gabrieleño families, who had cultivated and lived on

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1392-522: A miserable existence by days' work." However, even though Jackson's report would become the impetus for the Mission Indian Relief Act of 1891, the Gabrieleño were "overlooked by the commission charged with setting aside lands for Mission Indians." It is speculated that this may have been attributed to what was perceived as their compliance with the government, which caused them to be neglected, as noted earlier by Indian agent J. Q. Stanley. By

1508-437: A model proposed by archaeologist Mark Q. Sutton, these migrants either absorbed or pushed out the earlier Hokan -speaking inhabitants. By 500 AD, one source estimates the Tongva may have come to occupy all the lands now associated with them, although this is unclear and contested among scholars. In 1811, the priests of Mission San Gabriel recorded at least four languages; Kokomcar, Guiguitamcar, Corbonamga, and Sibanga. During

1624-513: A petition in 1846 stating: "We ask that the Indians be placed under strict police surveillance or the persons for whom the Indians work give [the Indians] quarter at the employer's rancho." In 1847, a law was passed that prohibited Gabrielenos from entering the city without proof of employment. A part of the proclamation read: Indians who have no masters but are self-sustaining, shall be lodged outside of

1740-423: A project in 2017 to dedicate wooden statues in local Ganesha Park to the Indigenous people of the area, they disagreed over which name, Tongva or Kizh , should be used on the dedication plaque. Tribal officials tentatively agreed to use the term Gabrieleño. The Act of September 21, 1968, introduced this concept of the affiliation of an applicant's ancestors in order to exclude certain individuals from receiving

1856-554: A requirement for inclusion on, the judgment roll. The act of 1968 stated that the Secretary of the Interior would distribute an equal share of the award to the individuals on the judgment roll “regardless of group affiliation.” Many lines of evidence suggest that the Tongva are descended from Uto-Aztecan -speaking peoples who originated in what is now Nevada , and moved southwest into coastal Southern California 3,500 years ago. According to

1972-469: A reservation for the Gabrieleño in 1907 failed. Soon it began to be perpetuated in the local press that the Gabrieleño were extinct. In February 1921, the Los Angeles Times declared that the death of Jose de los Santos Juncos, an Indigenous man who lived at Mission San Gabriel and was 106 years old at his time of passing, "marked the passing of a vanished race." In 1925, Alfred Kroeber declared that

2088-598: A series of letters for the Los Angeles Star from the center of the Gabrieleño community in San Gabriel township, describing Gabrieleño life and culture. Reid himself was married to a Gabrieleño woman by the name of Bartolomea Cumicrabit, who he renamed "Victoria." Reid wrote the following: "Their chiefs still exist. In San Gabriel remain only four, and those young... They have no jurisdiction more than to appoint times for holding of Feasts and regulating affairs connected with

2204-453: A settlement was reached prohibiting the development of the land and allowing tribal nations to use Puvungna for their traditional activities. Under the terms of the settlement, removing the construction debris is not the University's responsibility. Tongva The Tongva ( / ˈ t ɒ ŋ v ə / TONG -və ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and

2320-498: A share of the award to the “Indians of California” who chose to receive a share of any awards to certain tribes in California that had splintered off from the generic group. The members or ancestors of the petitioning group were not affected by the exclusion in the Act. Individuals with lineal or collateral descent from an Indian tribe who resided in California in 1852, would, if not excluded by

2436-401: A suffix that indicated someone was a person from a certain place.) In W. W. Robinson 's 1939 history of the area he wrote: On old maps the cliffs of Ballona's easterly boundary are labeled Guacho, sometimes Huacho, an Indian term meaning high place , according to Cristobal Machado of Culver City, whose memory of La Ballona Valley goes back to Indian days. It was against these cliffs that

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2552-411: A very high rate of death. Children often died very young at the missions. One missionary at Mission San Gabriel reported that three out of every four children born died before age two. In 1844, Hugo Reid referred to the village as Pubugna and stated it could still be identified as existing at Rancho Los Alamitos , which was a subdivision of Rancho de los Nietos. John Peabody Harrington identified

2668-637: A village, which was the center of Tongva life. The Tongva spoke a language of the Uto-Aztecan family (the remote ancestors of the Tongva probably coalesced as a people in the Sonoran Desert , between perhaps 3,000 and 5,000 years ago). The diversity within the Takic group is "moderately deep"; rough estimates by comparative linguists place the breakup of common Takic into the Luiseño-Juaneño on one hand, and

2784-524: Is commonly believed to be San Pedro Bay , near present-day San Pedro . The Gaspar de Portolá land expedition in 1769 resulted in the founding of Mission San Gabriel by Catholic missionary Junipero Serra in 1771. Under the mission system, the Spanish initiated an era of forced relocation and virtual enslavement of the peoples to secure their labor. In addition, the Native Americans were exposed to

2900-508: Is constant communication with ancestors. On October 7, 1542, an exploratory expedition led by Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo reached Santa Catalina in the Channel Islands, where his ships were greeted by Tongva in a canoe. The following day, Cabrillo and his men, the first Europeans known to have interacted with the Gabrieleño people, entered a large bay on the mainland, which they named "Baya de los Fumos" ("Bay of Smokes") on account of

3016-455: Is possible there were as many as half a dozen dialects rather than the two which the existence of the missions has lent the appearance of being standard. The demarcation of the Fernandeño and the Gabrieleño territories is mostly conjectural and there is no known point in which the two groups differed markedly in customs. The wider Gabrieleño group occupied what is now Los Angeles County south of

3132-533: Is the most widely circulated endonym among the people, used by Narcisa Higuera in 1905 to refer to inhabitants in the vicinity of Mission San Gabriel. Some people who identify as direct lineal descendants of the people advocate the use of their ancestral name Kizh as an endonym . Along with the neighboring Chumash , the Tongva were the most influential people at the time of European encounter. They had developed an extensive trade network through te'aats (plank-built boats). Their food and material culture

3248-403: Is where they believe "their world and their lives began". Puvunga is an important ceremonial site and is the terminus of an annual pilgrimage for the Tongva, Acjachemen, and Chumash . Before the arrival of European settlers, Puvunga extended far beyond the contemporary site that remains today. Its presence was first uncovered in 1952, and then in 1974, at the designated location, when trenching

3364-476: The Gabrieleño . This was not their autonym, or their name for themselves. Because of historical uses, the term is part of every official tribe's name in this area, spelled either as "Gabrieleño" or "Gabrielino." Because tribal groups have disagreed about appropriate use of the term Tongva , they have adopted Gabrieleño as a mediating term. For example, when Debra Martin, a city council member from Pomona , led

3480-490: The Old World diseases endemic among the colonists. As they lacked any acquired immunity, the Native Americans suffered epidemics with high mortality, leading to the rapid collapse of Tongva society and lifeways . They retaliated by way of resistance and rebellions, including an unsuccessful rebellion in 1785 by Nicolás José and female chief Toypurina . In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain and secularized

3596-571: The San Gabriel township , which became "the cultural and geographic center of the Gabrieleño community." Yaanga also diversified and increased in size, with peoples of various Native backgrounds coming to live together shortly following secularization. However, the government had instituted a system dependent on Native labor and servitude and increasingly eliminated any alternatives within the Los Angeles area. As explained by Kelly Lytle Hernández, "there

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3712-555: The Sierra Madre and half of Orange County , as well as the islands of Santa Catalina and San Clemente . The Spanish oversaw the construction of Mission San Gabriel in 1771. The Spanish colonizers used slave labor from local villages to construct the Missions. Following the destruction of the original mission, probably due to El Niño flooding, the Spanish ordered the mission relocated five miles north in 1774 and began referring to

3828-602: The Southern Channel Islands , an area covering approximately 4,000 square miles (10,000 km ). In the precolonial era, the people lived in as many as 100 villages and primarily identified by their village rather than by a pan-tribal name. During colonization , the Spanish referred to these people as Gabrieleño and Fernandeño , names derived from the Spanish missions built on their land: Mission San Gabriel Arcángel and Mission San Fernando Rey de España . Tongva

3944-461: The "Gabrieleño" labor population at the mission was recorded to be 1,201. It jumped to 1,636 in 1820 and then declined to 1,320 in 1830. Resistance to this system of forced labor continued into the early 19th century. In 1817, the San Gabriel Mission recorded that there were "473 Indian fugitives." In 1828, a German immigrant purchased the land on which the village of Yang-Na stood and evicted

4060-609: The Cerritos Channel". Despite its known cultural importance, in 1992, the university attempted to challenge Puvunga's designation as a historic site to construct a strip mall over the remaining grounds of Puvunga as well as over a nearby organic community garden that had been established on the first Earth Day . When gardeners organized to prevent a parking lot development intended for the strip mall site, campus officials ignored them. They moved forward with development, claiming that "no cultural resources" were on site. In response,

4176-619: The City limits in localities widely separated... All vagrant Indians of either sex who have not tried to secure a situation within four days and are found unemployed, shall be put to work on public works or sent to the house of correction. In 1848, Los Angeles formally became a town of the United States following the Mexican-American War . Landless and unrecognized, the people faced continued violence, subjugation, and enslavement (through convict labor ) under American occupation. Some of

4292-559: The Gabrieleño culture was extinct, stating "they have melted away so completely that we know more of the finer facts of the culture of ruder tribes." Scholars have noted that this extinction myth has proven to be "remarkably resilient," yet is untrue. Despite being declared extinct, Gabrieleño children were still being assimilated by federal agents who encouraged enrollment at Sherman Indian School in Riverside, California . Between 1890 and 1920, at least 50 Gabrieleño children were recorded at

4408-419: The Indians built their brush-and-mud huts. From them the brown-skinned men went forth to gather clams and shell fish at the beach beyond the lagoon, to hunt small game in the marshes and to find edible berries, seeds and insects in the river growth and on hillside shrubs...The work of the ranch was done by the local Indians, one group of whom had their huts among the sycamores not far from Augustin's home [north of

4524-573: The Japanese Garden along the banks of a now channelized creek , about three miles (5 km) from the Pacific Ocean . The natural area is located near a parking lot at the edge of campus. There was a natural spring located a short distance from the Rancho Alamitos building that flowed until 1956 referred to as Puvunga Spring. Another similar (but larger) Tongva site is Kuruvungna Springs on

4640-544: The L. S. Whaley Company uncovered two dozen ancestral remains and funerary objects during the construction of a housing development. In 1952, an article for the Long Beach Press-Telegram wrote that the "ruins might be part of Pubunga, an ancient 'holy city.'" In 1955, it was noted by Helen Smith Giffen that there were "shell debris littering the fields below the Los Alamitos ranch house [which] bear witness to

4756-413: The Los Angeles basin area, only 20 former neophytes from San Gabriel Mission received any land from secularization. What they received were relatively small plots of land. A "Gabrieleño" by the name of Prospero Elias Dominguez was granted a 22-acre plot near the mission while Mexican authorities granted the remainder of the mission land, approximately 1.5 million acres, to a few colonist families. In 1846, it

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4872-482: The National Register: the adjacent LAn-234 and LAn-306, located just east of campus on the grounds of the historic Rancho Los Alamitos . In 1979, a reburial of an individual disinterred in 1972 occurred. After this reburial, campus workers erected a small engraved wooden sign at the site, which read "Gabrieleno Indians once inhabited this site, Puvunga, the birthplace of Chungicnish, law-giver and god." More than

4988-575: The Padres and the others of the Mission, because they had come to live and establish themselves in her land.’’ In June 1788, nearly three years later, their sentences arrived from Mexico City : Nicolás José was banned from San Gabriel and sentenced to six years of hard labor in irons at the most distant penitentiary in the region. Toypurina was banished from Mission San Gabriel and sent to the most distant Spanish mission. Resistance to Spanish rule demonstrated how

5104-464: The Senate. The US had negotiated with people who did not represent the Tongva and had no authority to cede their land. During the following occupation by Americans, many of the Tongva and other Indigenous peoples were targeted with arrest . Unable to pay fines, they were used as convict laborers in a system of legalized slavery to expand the city of Los Angeles for Anglo-American settlers, who became

5220-509: The Spanish Crown's claims to California were both insecure and contested. By the 1800s, San Gabriel was the richest in the entire colonial mission system, supplying cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, horses, mules, and other supplies for settlers and settlements throughout Alta California . The mission functioned as a slave plantation. Latter-day ethnologist Hugo Reid reported, “Indian children were taken from their parents to be raised behind bars at

5336-466: The Tongva "abruptly abandoned the site in the early 1800s, only a year or so before the first white family took possession of the land". That same year, LAn-235 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places to represent Puvungna "as a means of perpetuating the memory of these native peoples and their religion, and as an aid to the program of public education". Two other sites were included in

5452-532: The Tongva and others organized to stop the development and save the site from destruction. They initiated protests and filed a lawsuit that temporarily stalled any construction. The university's sudden hostile attitude toward the preservation of the site has been credited to a change in the university's leadership and the recent decline in California state support for public education, which had pushed universities to find economic revenue sources "to replace state support for higher education that [had] drastically eroded in

5568-649: The Tongva as "Gabrieleno." At the Gabrieleño settlement of Yaanga along the Los Angeles River , missionaries and Indian neophytes, or baptized converts, built the first town of Los Angeles in 1781. It was called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula (The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porziuncola). In 1784, a sister mission, the Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles Asistencia ,

5684-472: The Tongva people and that none of these persons had authority to cede lands that belonged to the people. An 1852 editorial in the Los Angeles Star revealed the public's anger towards any possibility of the Gabrieleño receiving recognition and exercising sovereignty: To place upon our most fertile soil the most degraded race of aborigines upon the North American Continent, to invest them with

5800-512: The Tongva's production of te'aats to navigate the coastline. The village was a point of departure to the island of Pimu (renamed Santa Catalina by the Spanish), which is located about twenty two miles from the village site, that had economic and cultural significance. Tongva's prosperous villages on the island would trade quarried soapstone , pierced white shell, abalone , and sea otter skins. Evidence of this trade can be found as far east as

5916-703: The Tongva- Serrano on the other, at about 2,000 years ago. (This is comparable to the differentiation of the Romance languages of Europe). The division of the Tongva/Serrano group into the separate Tongva and Serrano peoples is more recent, and may have been influenced by Spanish missionary activity . The majority of Tongva territory was located in what has been referred to as the Sonoran life zone, with rich ecological resources of acorn, pine nut, small game, and deer. On

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6032-441: The University. He pledged to abandon all plans of commercial development on the land and to preserve it, maintaining the open space, as long as he was President. He kept his promise until he left office in 2006. A burial site in the greater Puvunga area was disturbed in the construction of the neighborhood of Hellman Ranch in the adjacent city of Seal Beach . The site is sometimes archaeologically referred to as Puvungna East or as

6148-515: The agricultural area where the village site was located as Los Angeles sprawled outward. In the 1990s, protests began to protect the village site from what was to be Dreamworks Studio at Playa Vista. After an environmentalist's hunger strike, director Steven Spielberg decided to not build the studio at that site. In 2004, the construction of a drainage ditch for the Playa Vista development unearthed four hundred ancestral remains or burials in

6264-471: The area. California cemetery statutes that stem back to the 1850s, amidst the California Genocide , strategically excluded the protection of native cemeteries or burial grounds from desecration. The village site was disturbed for commercial and residential development without protection. As a non-federally recognized tribe , the Tongva had little control over their ancestral remains or artifacts to stop

6380-446: The arrival of Spanish missionaries and soldiers. With the establishment of Mission San Gabriel in 1771, many people from surrounding villages were brought to the mission for conversion and for their labor. They worked on the grounds of the mission in conditions that were recognized as slavery by third-party observers at the time. Between 1785 and 1805, mission records noted numerous baptisms of villagers from Puvunga, indicating that

6496-422: The attempt by converts or neophytes. Toypurina, José and two other leaders of the rebellion, Chief Tomasajaquichi of Juvit village and a man named Alijivit, from nearby village of Jajamovit, were put on trial for the 1785 rebellion. At his trial, José stated that he participated because the ban at the mission on dances and ceremony instituted by the missionaries, and enforced by the governor of California in 1782,

6612-501: The basin, along its rivers and on its shoreline, stretching from the deserts and to the sea." Only a few villages led by tomyaars (chiefs) were "in the mountains, where Chengiichngech 's avengers, serpents, and bears lived," as described by historian Kelly Lytle Hernández. However, "the grand jury dismissed the depths of Indigenous claims to life, land, and sovereignty in the region and, instead, chose to frame Indigenous peoples as drunks and vagrants loitering in Los Angeles... disavowing

6728-399: The church [traditional structure made of brush]." There is some speculation that Reid was campaigning for the position of Indian agent in Southern California, but died before he could be appointed. Instead, in 1852, Benjamin D. Wilson was appointed, who maintained the status quo. The letters of Hugo Reid revealed the names of 28 Gabrielino villages. In 1855, the Gabrieleño were reported by

6844-689: The city streets clean in the 1850s and 1860s but increasingly included road construction projects as well. Although federal officials reported that there were an estimated 16,930 California Indians and 1,050 at Mission San Gabriel, "the federal agents ignored them and those living in Los Angeles" because they were viewed as "friendly to the whites," as revealed in the personal diaries of Commissioner George W. Barbour . In 1852, superintendent of Indian affairs Edward Fitzgerald Beale echoed this sentiment, reporting that "because these Indians were Christians, with many holding ranch jobs and having interacted with whites," that "they are not much to be dreaded." Although

6960-424: The coast, shellfish, sea mammals, and fish were available. Prior to Christianization , the prevailing Tongva worldview was that humans were not the apex of creation, but were rather one strand in the web of life . Humans, along with plants, animals, and the land were in a reciprocal relationship of mutual respect and care, which is evident in their creation stories. The Tongva understand time as nonlinear and there

7076-602: The creator, has been killed, and tells the assembly what they must do to feed themselves." Rare bird species have been identified on the site by the Audubon Society . Puvunga once stood on a rounded knoll or small hill above the expansive wetlands (now known as the Los Cerritos Wetlands ) of the San Gabriel River . The Pacific Ocean came up to the bluff of the village, though it has since been pushed several miles west by settlers and commercial development. Puvunga

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7192-523: The creek at Overland, facing what is now Jefferson], another group having their village against the cliffs beneath the present-day Loyola University. The village is identified as Gaucha on George W. Kirkman 's Pictorial and Historical Map of Los Angeles County from 1938. Until the 1960s, the village site was primarily used for cropland by the Machado family, remaining a natural spreading floodplain of Ballona Creek . Developments increasingly encroached on

7308-514: The dumping. This resulted in a legal challenge by the tribe which halted the dumping in October 2019. The legal proceedings were stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic . Chairman of the tribe Matias Belardes commented on how the dumping reflected a shift in attitude from the university since the 1992 lawsuit: We’ve had a decent relationship since then [the 1992 strip mall incident] .... [We] find it disrespectful and disheartening. Ever since that lawsuit, it

7424-411: The early twentieth century, Gabrieleño identity had suffered greatly under American occupation. Most Gabrieleño publicly identified as Mexican, learned Spanish, and adopted Catholicism while keeping their identity a secret. In schools, students were punished for mentioning that they were "Indian" and many of the people assimilated into Mexican-American or Chicano culture. Further attempts to establish

7540-565: The endonym would be pronounced / ˈ t ɒ ŋ v eɪ / , TONG -vay . Some descendants prefer the endonym Kizh , which they argue is an earlier and more historically accurate name that was well documented by records of the Smithsonian Institution, Congress, the Catholic Church, the San Gabriel Mission, and other historical scholars. The Spanish referred to the Indigenous peoples surrounding Mission San Gabriel as

7656-576: The endpoint of an annual pilgrimage that begins at the village site of Panhe , now located in San Onofre . The Tongva and Acjachemen remember the village as home to Wiyot, one of the First Beings who was their sacred leader. It is "the place of emergence" or where "their world and their lives began". In Tongva traditional narratives , it is also, a few centuries later, the birthplace of Chingishnish , "the prophet or deity who appears at Puvunga after Wiyot,

7772-454: The entire community with the help of Mexican officials. The mission period ended in 1834 with secularization under Mexican rule. Some "Gabrieleño" absorbed into Mexican society as a result of secularization, which emancipated the neophytes. Tongva and other California Natives largely became workers while former Spanish elites were granted huge land grants. Land was systemically denied to California Natives by Californio land owning men. In

7888-457: The fact that this was once the site of an Indian rancheria [Puvunga]." She noted that there was still a "wonderful spring" which flowed at the location. On the first official Earth Day celebration, organic gardens were established on the 22 acres (8.9 ha) of Puvunga that were still undeveloped and available to the public. The garden site was used to grow various foods for personal consumption. In 1972, campus workmen uncovered portions of

8004-481: The first laws passed targeted Natives for arrest, imprisonment, and convict labor. The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians "targeted Native peoples for easy arrest by stipulating that they could be arrested on vagrancy charges based 'on the complaint of any reasonable citizen'" and Gabrieleños faced the brunt of this policy. Section 14 of the act stated: When an Indian is convicted of any offence before

8120-454: The grounds of University High School in Los Angeles . Puvunga can mean "the place of the gathering" or "in the ball", depending on the source. The site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974 for its historical and cultural significance. It remains a ceremonial site for the Acjachemen , Tongva , and Chumash for intertribal gatherings. Puvunga also serves

8236-475: The jail and convict labor crews in Mexican Los Angeles." By 1844, most Natives in Los Angeles worked as servants in a perpetual system of servitude, tending to the land and serving settlers, invaders, and colonizers. The ayuntamiunto forced the Native settlement of Yaanga to move farther away from town. By the mid-1840s, the settlement was forcibly moved eastward across the Los Angeles River , placing

8352-471: The last two decades". As a result, direct action was initiated to prevent the site's development, including protest tent campsites and prayer vigils. In response, the university built a fence around the area and ordered, under threat of arrest, that protestors leave the site. This prompted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to get involved and file a preliminary injunction against

8468-405: The mainland). European contact was first made in 1542 by Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo , who was greeted at Santa Catalina by people in a canoe. The following day, Cabrillo and his men entered a large bay on the mainland, which they named Baya de los Fumos ("Bay of Smokes") because of the many smoke fires they saw there. The Indigenous people smoked their fish for preservation. This

8584-739: The many smoke fires they saw there. This is commonly believed to be San Pedro Bay , near present-day San Pedro . The Gaspar de Portola expedition in 1769 was the first contact by land to reach Tongva territory, marking the beginning of Spanish colonization. Franciscan padre Junipero Serra accompanied Portola. Within two years of the expedition, Serra had founded four missions, including Mission San Gabriel , founded in 1771 and rebuilt in 1774, and Mission San Fernando , founded in 1797. The people enslaved at San Gabriel were referred to as Gabrieleños , while those enslaved at San Fernando were referred to as Fernandeños . Although their language idioms were distinguishable, they did not diverge greatly, and it

8700-418: The mission system. Many individuals returned to their village at time of death. Many converts retained their traditional practices in both domestic and spiritual contexts, despite the attempts by the padres and missionaries to control them. Traditional foods were incorporated into the mission diet and lithic and shell bead production and use persisted. More overt strategies of resistance such as refusal to enter

8816-438: The mission. They were allowed outside the locked dormitories only to attend to church business and their assigned chores. When they were old enough, boys and girls were put to work in the vast vineyards and orchards owned by the missions. Soldiers watched, ready to hunt down any who tried to escape.” Writing in 1852, Reid said he knew of Tongva who “had an ear lopped off or were branded on the lip for trying to get away.” In 1810,

8932-457: The missions . They sold the mission lands , known as ranchos, to elite ranchers and forced the Tongva to assimilate. Most became landless refugees during this time. In 1848, California was ceded to the United States following the Mexican-American War . The US government signed 18 treaties between 1851 and 1852 promising 8.5 million acres (3.4 million ha) of land for reservations . However, these treaties were never ratified by

9048-471: The names and addresses of several Gabrieleño living in San Gabriel, showing that contact between the group at Tejon Reservation and the group at San Gabriel township, which are more than 70 miles apart, was being maintained into the 1920s and 1930s. Guashna Prior to the arrival of European settlers, tar located near the village, possibly at what was later renamed Baldwin Hill , was an important resource for

9164-619: The native Pueblo peoples of what is now New Mexico. No other village throughout mainland Tovaangar was as important for coastal trade and connection with the islands. The coastal village of Puvunga was a major regional trading center located about 20 mi (32 km) down the coastline. Like other Tongva villages in the area, the village declined with the arrival of Spanish missionaries and soldiers . The villagers were brought to Mission San Gabriel, where they were baptized and forced to work in conditions that were identified by third-party observers as being slavery "in every sense of

9280-404: The new majority in the area by 1880. In the early 20th century, an extinction myth was purported about the Gabrieleño, who largely identified publicly as Mexican-American by this time. However, a close-knit community of the people remained in contact with one another between Tejon Pass and San Gabriel township into the 20th century. Since 2006, four organizations have claimed to represent

9396-416: The northern boundary was somewhere between Topanga and Malibu (perhaps the vicinity of Malibu Creek ) and the southern boundary was Orange County's Aliso Creek . The word Tongva was coined by C. Hart Merriam in 1905 from numerous informants. These included Mrs. James Rosemyre (née Narcisa Higuera) (Gabrileño), who lived around Fort Tejon , near Bakersfield. Merriam's orthography makes it clear that

9512-479: The people living in San Gabriel during this time. In 1859, amidst increasing criminalization and absorption into the city's burgeoning convict labor system, the county grand jury declared "stringent vagrant laws should be enacted and enforced compelling such persons ['Indians'] to obtain an honest livelihood or seek their old homes in the mountains." This declaration ignored Reid's research, which stated that most Tongva villages, including Yaanga , "were located in

9628-510: The people were displaced to small Mexican and Native communities in the Eagle Rock and Highland Park districts of Los Angeles as well as Pauma , Pala , Temecula , Pechanga , and San Jacinto . Imprisonment of Natives in Los Angeles was a symbol of establishing the new "rule of law." The city's vigilante community would routinely "invade" the jail and hang the accused in the streets. Once congress granted statehood to California in 1850, many of

9744-655: The people: Two of the groups, the hyphen and the slash group, were founded after a hostile split over the question of building an Indian casino . In 1994, the state of California recognized the Gabrielino "as the aboriginal tribe of the Los Angeles Basin." No organized group representing the Tongva has attained recognition as a tribe by the federal government . The lack of federal recognition has prevented self-identified Tongva descendants from having control over Tongva ancestral remains, artifacts, and has left them without

9860-613: The presence of shell middens in the Rancho Los Alamitos area. At the time, Harrington consulted three Indigenous informants, Jose de Los Santos Juncos, José de Grácia Cruz , and a "very old informant" Guorojos. All three identified the site in Los Alamitos as the village, which they referred to as "Puvu'na" or "Puvu". Harrington's report of these events was published in 1933. In June 1950, the City Council of Long Beach purchased

9976-485: The property. In response, six departments at CSULB are developing film and educational resources to teach the campus community about the significance of the site in an attempt to prevent future damage. In August 2020, the California Office of Historical Preservation criticized the university for damaging the site. The following January, the university's president issued a message claiming that rumors of development on

10092-416: The provisions of the Act of 1968, remain on the list of the “Indians of California.” To comply with the Act, the Secretary of Interior would have to collect information about the group affiliation of an applicant's Indian ancestors. That information would be used to identify applicants who could share in another award. The group affiliation of an applicant's ancestors was thus a basis for exclusion from, but not

10208-537: The rights of sovereignty, and to teach them that they are to be treated as powerful and independent nations, is planting the seeds of future disaster and ruin... We hope that the general government will let us alone—that it will neither undertake to feed, settle or remove the Indians amongst whome we in the South reside, and that they leave everything just as it now exists, except affording us the protection which two or three cavalry companies would give. In 1852, Hugo Reid wrote

10324-533: The same land for generations, did not hold legal title to the land, and used the law to evict Indian families." The Gabrieleño became vocal about this and notified former Indian agent J. Q. Stanley, who referred to them as "half-civilized" yet lobbied to protect the Gabrieleño "against the lawless whites living amongst them," arguing that they would become " vagabonds " otherwise. However, active Indian agent Augustus P. Greene's recommendation took precedent, arguing that "Mission Indians in southern California were slowing

10440-571: The same time, three languages were recorded in Mission San Fernando. Prior to Russian and Spanish colonization in what is now referred to California, the Tongva primarily identified by their associated villages ( Topanga , Cahuenga , Tujunga , Cucamonga , etc.) For example, individuals from Yaanga were known as Yaangavit among the people (in mission records, they were recorded as Yabit ). The Tongva lived in as many as one hundred villages. One or two clans would usually constitute

10556-481: The sawmill." A missionary during this period reported that three out of four children died at Mission San Gabriel before reaching the age of 2. Nearly 6,000 Tongva lie buried in the grounds of the San Gabriel Mission. Carey McWilliams characterized it as follows: "the Franciscan padres eliminated Indians with the effectiveness of Nazis operating concentration camps...." There is much evidence of Tongva resistance to

10672-481: The school. Between 1910 and 1920, the establishment of the Mission Indian Federation, of which the Gabrieleño joined, led to the 1928 California Indians Jurisdictional Act, which created official enrollment records for those who could prove ancestry from a California Indian living in the state in 1852. Over 150 people self-identified as Gabrieleño on this roll. A Gabrieleño woman at Tejon Reservation provided

10788-594: The settlement of this portion of the country for non-Indians and suggested that the Indians be completely assimilated," as summarized by Singleton. In 1882, Helen Hunt Jackson was sent by the federal government to document the condition of the Mission Indians in southern California. She reported that there were a considerable number of people "in the colonies in the San Gabriel Valley, where they live like gypsies in brush huts, here today, gone tomorrow, eking out

10904-521: The sight of Spanish sticks that spit fire and death, nor [to] retch at the evil smell of gunsmoke—and be done with you white invaders!’ This quote, from Thomas Workman Temple II's article “Toypurina the Witch and the Indian Uprising at San Gabriel” is arguably a mistranslation and embellishment of her actual testimony. According to the soldier who recorded her words, she stated simply that she ‘‘was angry with

11020-542: The site of Puvungna were untrue, but a report released three months later showed that the university did have plans of building another parking lot on the site. The same month, a number of organizations and tribal nations sent governor Gavin Newson a letter requesting that he restore Puvungna. In August 2021, the Native American Heritage Commission started a formal investigation on the topic. One month later,

11136-500: The superintendent of Indian affairs Thomas J. Henley to be in "a miserable and degraded condition." However, Henley admitted that moving them to a reservation, potentially at Sebastian Reserve in Tejon Pass , would be opposed by the citizens because "in the vineyards, especially during the grape season, their labor is made useful and is obtained at a cheap rate." A few Gabrieleño were in fact at Sebastian Reserve and maintained contact with

11252-691: The supernatural." As stated by scholars John Dietler, Heather Gibson, and Benjamin Vargas, "Catholic enterprises of proselytization , acceptance into a mission as a convert, in theory, required abandoning most, if not all, traditional lifeways." Various strategies of control were implemented to retain control, such as use of violence, segregation by age and gender, and using new converts as instruments of control over others. For example, Mission San Gabriel's Father Zalvidea punished suspected shamans "with frequent flogging and by chaining traditional religious practitioners together in pairs and sentencing them to hard labor in

11368-543: The system, work slowdowns, abortion and infanticide of children resulting from rape, and fugitivism were also prevalent. Five major uprisings were recorded at Mission San Gabriel alone. Two late-eighteenth century rebellions against the mission system were led by Nicolás José, who was an early convert who had two social identities: "publicly participating in Catholic sacraments at the mission but privately committed to traditional dances, celebrations, and rituals." He participated in

11484-545: The university. Raleigh Levine of the ACLU stated, "This case is about the First Amendment rights of the Native Americans to whom Puvungna is sacred. They have the right to freely exercise their beliefs without the state stepping in to pave over their place of worship and put a mini-mall on it." A short film of the event titled Sacred Lands, White Man's Laws was made available in 1994. In 1995, Robert Maxson became President of

11600-498: The very close settlement of Motuucheyngna (at modern-day Seal Beach ), now sometimes referred to in archaeological terms as Puvungna East; Guashna (now at Playa Vista ) located about twenty miles up the coast; and the village of Lupukngna , located down the coastline at the mouth of the Santa Ana River . Like many other Tongva villages in the greater Los Angeles Basin area, village life at Puvunga deteriorated immensely with

11716-400: The village in the construction of te'aats and for trade. In 2004, four-hundred burials in the area were unearthed in the construction of a drainage ditch in the Playa Vista development. The Tongva had little power to prevent the desecration despite numerous protests. Tar was reportedly an important resource of Guashna, which was used in trade with numerous neighboring villages and for

11832-519: The village of Motuucheyngna, because of its proximity to Puvugna and in acknowledgment of the large area the village once comprised. About 35 bodies were disturbed in the development of Hellman Ranch, along with numerous artifacts of the Tongva. In 2019, CSULB received backlash after dumping dirt and trash on the site. Local self-identified Indigenous groups, such as the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians ( Acjachemen Nation), were not consulted in regard to

11948-513: The village was likely depleted shortly after. In 1822, Geronimo Boscana referred to the village as Pubuna and located it within the Spanish land grant Rancho de los Nietos established in 1784, which was eight leagues northwest of Mission San Juan Capistrano . Many villagers likely died at the mission and many did not survive the mission period . At Mission San Gabriel, there were a total of 7,854 baptisms (2,459 children) and 5,656 deaths (2,916 children) until secularization in 1834, indicating

12064-537: The villagers were at Mission San Gabriel and the village had been depleted, the governor of Alta California granted the land area, referred to as Guaspita , a variant of Guashna, as "a land grant received by Antonio Ignacio Ávila, which later was combined with the Salinas land grant to become Rancho Sausal Redondo , present-day Westchester ." Mission registers of the era show a number of entries for people from Guasna and Guashna, or Guaspet, Guachpet, or Guashpet (-pet being

12180-404: The word." At Mission San Gabriel, there were a total of 7,854 baptisms (2,459 children) and 5,656 deaths (2,916 children) until secularization in 1834, indicating a very high rate of death. Children often died very young at the missions. One missionary reported that three out of every four children born at nearby Mission San Gabriel died before reaching the age of two. In the 1820s, while

12296-463: Was a large village that extended far beyond the remaining area associated with the village. It was a regional trading and ceremonial center for the Tongva and Acjachemen . Villagers used te'aats to travel on culturally-important journeys out to villages on Pimu ( Santa Catalina Island ) and other islands off the coast, now referred to as the Channel Islands . Nearby coastal villages included:

12412-409: Was based on an Indigenous worldview that positioned humans as one strand in a web of life (as expressed in their creation stories ). Over time, different communities came to speak distinct dialects of the Tongva language , part of the Takic subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan language family. There may have been five or more such languages (three on the southernmost Channel Islands and at least two on

12528-535: Was done for the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden . The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. In 1992, the university challenged its historic designation and threatened to forcefully build a strip mall on the site, which was blocked by direct action and intervention by the ACLU . In 2019, dirt and trash were dumped on the site by the university. The site is located near

12644-438: Was founded at Yaanga as well. Entire villages were baptized and indoctrinated into the mission system with devastating results. For example, from 1788 to 1815, natives of the village of Guaspet were baptized at San Gabriel. Proximity to the missions created mass tension for Native Californians, which initiated "forced transformations in all aspects of daily life, including manners of speaking, eating, working, and connecting with

12760-435: Was heavily dependent on Native labor and "grew slowly on the back of the Gabrieleño laborers." Some of the people became vaqueros on the ranches, highly skilled horsemen or cowboys, herding and caring for the cattle. There was little land available to the Tongva to use for food outside of the ranches. Some crops such as corn and beans were planted on ranchos to sustain the workers. Several Gabrieleño families stayed within

12876-430: Was intolerable as they prevented their mourning ceremonies. When questioned about the attack, Toypurina is famously quoted in as saying that she participated in the instigation because “[she hated] the padres and all of you, for living here on my native soil, for trespassing upon the land of my forefathers and despoiling our tribal domains. … I came [to the mission] to inspire the dirty cowards to fight, and not to quail at

12992-410: Was no place for Natives living but not working in Mexican Los Angeles. In turn, the ayuntamiunto (city council) passed new laws to compel Natives to work or be arrested." In January 1836, the council directed Californios to sweep across Los Angeles to arrest "all drunken Indians." As recorded by Hernández, "Tongva men and women, along with an increasingly diverse set of their Native neighbors, filled

13108-423: Was noted by researcher Kelly Lytle Hernández that 140 Gabrieleños signed a petition demanding access to mission lands and that Californio authorities rejected their petition. Emancipated from enslavement in the missions yet barred from their own land, most Tongva became landless refugees during this period. Entire villages fled inland to escape the invaders and continued devastation. Others moved to Los Angeles,

13224-539: Was recorded by Anglo-American settlers, "'White men, whom the Marshal is too discreet to arrest' ... spilled out of the town's many saloons, streets, and brothels, but the aggressive and targeted enforcement of state and local vagrancy and drunk codes filled the Los Angeles County Jail with Natives, most of whom were men." Most spent their days working on the county chain gang , which was largely involved with keeping

13340-553: Was returned to the conservancy in Altadena , which marked the first time the Tongva had land in Los Angeles County in 200 years. Tongva territories border those of numerous other tribes in the region. The historical Tongva lands made up what is now called "the coastal region of Los Angeles County , the northwest portion of Orange County and off-lying islands." In 1962 Curator Bernice Johnson, of Southwest Museum , asserted that

13456-427: Was thought that there would be a better understanding of what that site means to us. Somewhere along the way, there’s been a disconnect. Now we’re back to square one after all these positive things from the original lawsuit all those years ago. We thought we were past it already. It shouldn’t have come to this. The university should know the site's significance, what it means to the tribes, and what you can and can’t do on

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