The Chumash are a Native American people of the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what became Kern, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south to Mount Pinos in the east. Their territory includes three of the Channel Islands: Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel; the smaller island of Anacapa was likely inhabited seasonally due to the lack of a consistent water source.
Modern place names with Chumash origins include Malibu, Nipomo, Lompoc, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Port Hueneme, Piru, Lake Castaic, Saticoy, Simi Valley, and Somis. Archaeological research shows that the Chumash people have deep roots in the Santa Barbara Channel area and have lived along the southern California coast for millennia.
History
Prior to European contact (pre-1542) Indigenous peoples have lived along the California coast for at least 11,000 years.Dartt-Newton, Deana & Erlandson, Jon (Summer/Fall 2006). "Little Choice for the Chumash: Colonialism, Cattle, and Coercion in Mission Period California". American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 3 & 4, 416 Sites of the Millingstone Horizon date from 7000 to 4500 BC and show evidence of a subsistence system focused on the processing of seeds with metates and manos.Glassow et al. 2007: 192–196
During that time, people used bipointed bone objects and line to catch fish and began making beads from shells of the marine olive snail (Callianax biplicata).King 1990: 80–82, 106–107, 231 The name Chumash means "bead maker" or "seashell people" being that they originated near the Santa Barbara coast. The Chumash tribes near the coast benefited most with the "close juxtaposition of a variety of marine and terrestrial habitats, intensive upwelling in coastal waters, and intentional burning of the landscape made the Santa Barbara Channel region one of the most resource abundant places on the planet."(Newton 416).
While droughts were not uncommon in the centuries of the first millennium AD, a population explosion occurred with the coming of the medieval warm period. "Marine productivity soared between 950 and 1300 as natural upwelling intensified off the coast."Fagan, The Long Summer, 2004, p. 222 Before the mission period, the Chumash lived in over 150 independent villages, speaking variations of the same language. Much of their culture consisted of basketry, bead manufacturing and trading, cuisine of local abalone and clam, herbalism using local herbs to produce teas and medical reliefs, rock art, and the scorpion tree.Barry.
The scorpion tree was significant to the Chumash, as shown in its arborglyph: a carving depicting a six-legged creature with a headdress including a crown and two spheres. The shamans participated in the carving which was used in observations of the stars and in part of the Chumash calendar.(Newton 416). The Chumash resided between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the California coasts where a bounty of resources could be found. The tribe lived in an area of three environments: the interior, the coast, and the Northern Channel Islands.Gamble 21.
The interior is composed of the land outside the coast and spanning the wide plains, rivers, and mountains. The coast covers the cliffs, land close to the ocean, and the areas of the ocean from which the Chumash harvested. The Northern Channel Islands lie off the coast of the Chumash territory. All of the California coastal-interior has a Mediterranean climate due to the incoming ocean winds.Timbrook 164. The mild temperatures, save for winter, made gathering easy; during the cold months, the Chumash harvested what they could and supplemented their diets with stored foods. What villagers gathered and traded during the seasons changed depending on where they resided.Gamble 228. With coasts populated by masses of species of fish and land densely covered by trees and animals, the Chumash had a diverse array of food.
Abundant resources and a winter rarely harsh enough to cause concern meant the tribe lived a sedentary lifestyle in addition to a subsistence existence. Villages in the three aforementioned areas contained remains of sea mammals, indicating that trade networks existed for moving materials throughout the Chumash territory.Coombs and Plog 313.Fauvelle, Mikael. and Perry, Jennifer. (2023) Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity on California’s Islands: Feasting, Ceremonialism, and the Ritual Economy. In Archaeology of Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity in North America. Christina Perry Sampson, ed. Pp. 194–224. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. The Chumash were connected to extensive trade networks reaching into modern-day Arizona, from which pottery and textiles were traded in exchange for shell beads.Smith, Erin M., and Fauvelle, Mikael (2015) Regional Interactions between California and the Southwest: The Western Edge of the North American Continental System. American Anthropologist 17(4):710-721 https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12346 The emergence of this trade network within the Chumash territory was facilitated by the existence of three distinct Chumash ecological groups including the island, coastal, and mainland Chumash. Access to distinct resources for these different groups made inter-Chumash trade a large part of life. Villages along the mainland coast emerged as intermediaries between groups.
The closer a village was to the ocean, the greater its reliance on maritime resources.Gamble 6.Fauvelle, Mikael, and Somerville, Andrew D. (2021) Spatial and Temporal Variation in Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Diets in Southern California: Bayesian Modeling Using New Baseline Stable Isotope Values. Quanternary International 601(2021):36-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2021.06.025 Due to advanced canoe designs, coastal and island people could procure fish and aquatic mammals from farther out. Shellfish were a good source of nutrition: relatively easy to find and abundant. Many of the favored varieties grew in tidal zones.Gamble 26–28. Shellfish grew in abundance during winter to early spring; their proximity to shore made collection easier. Some of the consumed species included mussels, abalone, and a wide array of clams. Haliotis rufescens (red abalone) was harvested along the Central California coast in the pre-contact era.Hogan, C.M. Los Osos Back Bay. The Megalithic Portal, editor A. Burnham (2008). The Chumash and other California Indians also used red abalone shells to make a variety of fishhooks, beads, ornaments, and other artifacts. Large piles of shellfish waste were expanded over time to create ceremonial and residential mounds.
Ocean animals such as otters and seals were thought to be the primary meal of coastal tribes people, but recent evidence shows the aforementioned trade networks exchanged oceanic animals for terrestrial foods from the interior. Any village could acquire fish, but the coastal and island communities specialized in catching not just smaller fish, but also the massive catches such as swordfish.(Gamble 156). This feat, difficult even for today's technology, was made possible by the tomol plank canoe. Its design allowed for the capture of deepwater fish, and it facilitated trade routes between villages.
Some researchers believe that the Chumash may have been visited by Polynesians between AD 400 and 800, nearly 1,000 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Americas.Did ancient Polynesians visit California? Maybe so. , San Francisco Chronicle The Chumash advanced sewn-plank canoe design, used throughout Polynesia but unknown in North America except by those two tribes, is cited as the chief evidence for contact. Comparative linguistics may provide evidence as the Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe", tomolo'o, may have been derived from kumula'au, the Polynesian word for the redwood logs used in that construction. However, the language comparison is generally considered tentative. Furthermore, the development of the Chumash plank canoe is fairly well represented in the archaeological record and spans several centuries.Arnold, Jeanne E. 1995.Gamble, Lynn H. 2002. The concept is rejected by most archaeologists who work with the Chumash culture, and there is no evidence of a genetic legacy. and . See also Terry Jones's homepage , California Polytechnic State University.
Before contact with Europeans, coastal Chumash relied less on terrestrial resources than they did on maritime; vice versa for interior Chumash.(Gamble 164). Regardless, they consumed similar land resources. Like many other tribes, deer were the most important land mammal the Chumash pursued; deer were consumed in varying amounts across all regions, which cannot be said for other terrestrial animals. Interior Chumash placed greater value on the deer, to the extent of developing unique hunting practices for them.
They dressed as deer and grazed alongside the animals until the hunters were in range to use their arrows. Even Chumash close to the ocean pursued deer, though in fewer numbers. The villages also relied on smaller animals, such as rabbits and birds, to supplement their meat needs. Plant foods composed the rest of the Chumash diet, especially acorns, which were the staple food despite the work needed to remove their inherent toxins. They could be ground into a paste that was easy to eat and store for years.Gamble 23. Coast live oak provided the best acorns; their mush would usually be served unseasoned with meat and fish.Brittain 5.
Spanish/Mexican era (1542–1846)
The maritime explorer Juan Cabrillo was the first European to make contact with the coastal Alta Californian tribes in the year 1542. Cabrillo was killed following an attack by Tongva braves and was buried on San Miguel Island, but his men brought back a diary that contained the names and population counts for many Chumash villages, such as Mikiw. Spain claimed what is now California from that time forward, but for some centuries returned only infrequently—for example, during the Morro Bay Landing of 1587, when Chumash braves murdered one Spanish sailor and one Filipino sailor. Full-scale Spanish settlement began in 1769, when the Portolá expedition brought Spanish soldiers and missionaries with the double purpose of Christianizing the Native Americans and facilitating Spanish colonization. By the end of 1770, missions and military presidios had been founded at San Diego to the south of Chumash lands and Monterey to their north.Brown 1967
With the arrival of the Europeans "came a series of unprecedented blows to the Chumash and their traditional lifeways. Anthropologists, historians, and other scholars have long been interested in documenting the collision of cultures that accompanied the European exploration and colonization of the Americas." In 1770, Spain settled in Chumash territory. They founded colonies, bringing in missionaries to begin evangelizing Native Americans in the region by forcing Chumash villages into numerous missions that emerged along the coast.
The Chumash people moved from their villages to the Franciscan missions between 1772 and 1817. Mission San Luis Obispo, established in 1772, was the first mission in Chumash-speaking lands, as well as the northernmost of the five missions ever constructed in those lands. Next established, in 1782, was Mission San Buenaventura on the Pacific Coast near the mouth of the Santa Clara River. Mission Santa Barbara, also on the coast, and facing out to the Channel Islands, was established in 1786.