Tag Archives: Fernandenos

Achoicomenga; or, Where the Indians Were

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THE THEATRE OF CONVERSION, Part 2

Take in View: Achoicomenga, the Valley’s largest Indian rancheria. It sat at the apex of a vast sunny triangle, on the high ground of a south-east tilting wetland plain. Foothills and canyons were all around, dribbling their creeks. These canyons were cool in the summer. And because the plain, in winter, lies above the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains, it was a warm spot during the solstice festival. The village was sun-kissed, and excellent for human morale. (The very name “Tataviam” means “people facing the sun,” or “people of the southern slopes.”)

Each side of the Valley was the territorial limit of a different tribe, each with its own language. The Tongva were most numerous, and held the Santa Monica Mountains and the LA River valley. The Tataviam settled around 650 C.E. on the southern slopes of the San Gabriels, but their range extended through the mountain canyons up to their core homeland in the Santa Clara Valley. Both the Tongva and Tataviam languages descend from the Takic, of the Uto-Aztecan family. Tongva and Tataviam were not necessarily mutually intelligible in speech. The band of Chumash that settled in the West Valley, Simi Valley, Calabasas and on the Malibu coast, were the southern-most of the Chumashan peoples. Their main territory extended to Ventura, where the Franciscans had already begun to reduce (sic) the Indians and disrupt the ancient Chumash culture. Achoicomenga contained residents of all three tribes. The town lay just outside each of the tribes’ core territories; or, conversely, just inside each tribe’s frontier. it was a metropolis; it was an expression of the Valley’s geography.

Pacoima, the lush mini-valley surrounding the village, was the southern-most land of the Tataviam. Pasaakogna (Pacoima) means “The Entrance Place,” Entrada, or canyon-mouth. This implies a kind of front yard or porch leading to their home lands. It’s reasonable to conjecture the village was originally a Tataviam settlement, which then attracted Tongva and Chumash; eventually these outnumbered Tataviam.

A house in Achoicomenga was a kije, or kiche, a dome of tule-reed mats tied onto a willow frame. A kije could be sized for an individual, or could be large enough for a family, or several families, on platform-beds. Around the village would be temescals, sweat lodges, and at the center a wamkech — a kind of temple, or dancing-floor for the performance of sacred choreography. Seasonally, or when kijes got filthy or worn out, they were burned; so the town rebuilt itself.

The foothills and canyons supplied abundant game, a pharmacopeia of herbs, basketsful of berries seeds, mineral crystals for amulets, potions and pigments, game animals for meat, skins and feathers for costumes and ceremonies, and bounties of nutritious acorns. The dry/wet Valley floor teemed with rabbits, tule elk, deer and antelope, yuccas and sage. Steelhead ran up the creeks as far as Little Tujunga. Grizzlies prowled everywhere.

Tongva, Tataviam, and Chumash people shared and integrated each others’ cultures at Achoicomenga. This is a generic illustration from the Santa Monica Audubon, but the setting looks just like Pacoima Wash: looking south past the green Lopez hills to the Santa Monica Mountains.

Click below for social historian John R. Johnson’s article “The Indians of Mission San Fernando.”

https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/hssc97-3_jjohnson.pdf

During the first four years of the mission’s existence, the missionaries concentrated most of their conversion efforts among the Gabrielino/Tongva inhabitants of
rancherías within the San Fernando Valley proper, especially the large rancherías of Cahuenga, Tujunga, Siutcanga, and Jajamonga. In 1802 and 1803 the focus was on Tataviam rancherías of the upper Santa Clara River watershed, while Ventureño Chumash from the
Malibu Creek drainage and Simi Valley were mostly proselytized between 1803 and 1804…

— John R. Johnson, The Indians of Mission San Fernando, So. Cal. Hist. Soc.

THE ?ANTAP RELIGION

Achoicomenga was a, or possibly the, center of the ?antap religion, which apparently came from the Chumash. ?antap was a spiritual movement that elaborated and overlay the tribes’ traditional religions; it did not displace their myth cycles, clan totems or seasonal hunting dances, but adapted and re-regulated them. ?antap brought a new class of shamans or spiritual elites, in alliance with a new class of chiefs. The main innovation of ?antap was the ritual consumption of jimsonweed, or moonflower, of the genus Datura. The Spanish word for the plant is “toloache;” the Chumash name is Momoy, same as their moon goddess. Toloacheros, toloache doctors, were a class of mostly Chumash shamans who skilled themselves in preparing doses that would promote visions and altered states of consciousness. (Momoy can be either hallucingenic or deadly poison in nearly equal doses.)

Thus, clan ceremonies that had been traditional, like puberty rites, male initiations, hunting rituals, and mourning ceremonies, took on an element of extreme out-of-body mysticism by adding the goddess Momoy to the myths. It’s also certain that other synergistic drugs were involved, especially various kinds of tobacco. Nicotiana attenuata or Nicotiana glauca were consumed along with Momoy. It is likely that toloacheros might mix different blends for different individuals. Vision questers would meet their guide animals, consult the dead, or meet the great chiefs on a toloache trip.

“Momoy” was the Chumash goddess of the moon, about whom many myths were told. Momoy was also the word for the moonflower. Thus, as in all true myth: the drug you ingested was the body of the goddess, who was the moon, which was the myth.

Many California tribes took toloache sparingly, and in the context of a public ceremony; maybe, only once or twice in a lifetime. But at Achoicomenga around the time of the Spanish invasion, individual seekers seem to have been visiting toloacheros throughout their lives, as a kind of religious self-help cult. It seems to have been a way of coaxing the individual back to the voices of the animals and the gods; righteous voices which affirmed Indian lifeways in the face of great environmental and social change. Momoy helped Indians hear the voices that were no longer so loud and clear.

“In major villages, at least a dozen ?antap operated, performing ceremonies and rituals locally, and traveling to disparate villages to participate in ceremonies there. The ?antap cult helped to integrated Chumash society across geographical boundaries, and membership in the cult enhanced a person’s status… Individuals of all stations used it, including shamans and curers — the latter administering it occasionally to their patients. Chumash of both sexes routinely ingested the drug… Chumash used datura for individual rather than collective reasons; and people consumed it routinely in the village, rather than at a special site. Datura suffused all of Chumash society. It stood at the center of Chumash life, fully integrated into mythology, used in religion, medicine, and personal spiritual growth.”

— James A. Sandos, “Levantamiento! The 1824 Chumash Uprising Reconsidered.”

Richard B. Appelgate’s 1975 article on the Datura cult among the Chumash:

https://escholarship.org/content/qt37r1g44r/qt37r1g44r.pdf

But the most fascinating thing about the religious life of Achoicomenga in 1795, is that, atop the intricate pattern of ancient myth-dances, seasonal or celestial observances, and awe-some hallucination ceremonies, there was a more recent religion, a dynamic revivalist cult that swept over Southern California’s rancherias in the second half of the 18th century. This was the cult of a semi-divine hero, Chinigchinich, who appeared at the moment his tyrant father was overthrown (he had reigned over a Golden Age, but then grew into a corrupt and impotent tyrant). Chinigchinich taught the Indians to BE Indians, it was said; he created them from what they were before into men. He instituted the proper dances and ritualized what foods were good and when to hunt. When he left this realm he danced his way up to the stars, where the good captains [chiefs] go. But he left Raven on Earth to watch people’s behavior. If the laws and ways of Chinigchinich were followed, all the spirit animals would help the Indian find right living and gain enormous supernatural power. But if the values and dances of Chinigchinich were dishonored or ignored, or the Indian became lazy or cruel or unreliable to his friends, then Chinigchinich would send his spirit animals, snake and coyote and scorpion, to torment and chastise the evil-doer.

The Chinigchinch cult grew upon, and into, and out of, and then grew protectively all around, the ?antap religion — just as a mighty oak grows upon, and into, and out of, and finally all around, the boulders in a canyon.

NEXT: THE THEATRE OF CONVERSION, Part 3: Chinigchinich; or, The Curious Franciscan

Rancho Los Encinos; Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana

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THE THEATRE OF CONVERSION, Part 1

Pacoima means “the Entrance.” ironically it translates to the Spanish word “La Entrada” which means both “mouth of a canyon”, and “conquest; invasion.” Though much altered in 200 years, especially by dams, this stretch of Pacoima Creek running adjacent to the oak-denuded back hills of Lopez Canyon, and just upriver of San Fernando Mission, suggests a rough picture of the landscape of the Indian rancheria of Achoicomenga. Oak felling and Spanish pasture grass were already introduced a couple of years before the Franciscans arrived.

By 1795, its 26th year, the Spanish Entrada in Alta California had built 13 missions, San Diego to San Francisco. Spain had secured the ports with four presidios, with military villages attached. Though mere timber stockades, the forts convinced the Russians, the French, the British and the Norte Americanos that Spanish troops were actually present in California. And California had two lively farm-and-market towns, with solid, Spanish-speaking, God-fearing, King-obeying Mexican peasants, safely huddled, when not awash, in their valleys. They industriously cropped enough wheat, barley, corn and beans so the Presidio soldiers could grow huge families, on the Royal credit.

But the “Ten Year Plan” to annex the province by converting “los Indios” in a blitz of faith and power (it might also be called the “Cortez Plan”), had already clearly failed. Much to the Padres’ disappointment, and the Army’s disgust, the Franciscans had not inculcated a Spanish civil society in California. Fr. Junipero Serra died in 1784; now, his successor, Fr. Fermin Lasuen, heard from Mexico City that the government was cutting funding for the missions. The lands would be secularized, and the number of missionaries cut in half, so that each friar would serve alone. The reason was that many of the veteran soldados de cueras, men like Cpl. Jose Maria Verdugo and Cpl. Juan Francisco Reyes, had just passed their 25-year enlistment. Having served their King, they must be paid, and there was no money in California. Loyal vassals should have fiefs of their own, in the tradition of the Crown of Castile. Thus, land grants.

Cpl. Reyes petitioned the Crown for the richly-watered plain at the top of the “Valley of the Oaks.” Reyes recalled the name given in 1769, by Fr. Juan Crespi, to the plain: “Valle de Santa Catarina de Bonnonia, de Los Encinos,” St. Catherine of Bologna of The Oaks. The Indians called the north Valley “Pacoima.”

And Reyes received his grant, the very first Spanish land grant in Alta California. Don Juan dubbed his spread “Rancho Los Encinos.” He moved in not as a leisured gentleman, but as an entrepreneur, hiring scores of Indians from the neighboring village of Achoicomenga, the largest rancheria in the Valley. He taught his crew to cut timber, to ride horses and run livestock, and to plant European crops. All this, without, apparently, ever mentioning the doctrine of Original Sin, or St. Catherine of Bologna. Reyes’s Indian workers thus became the first farmers and vaqueros in the San Fernando Valley. There are vague references that he taught them to make adobes, and fire lime kilns; an adobe ranch house may have been built on the site; thus Reyes would be the Valley’s first California Vernacular Architect, rather than Fr. Lasuen.)

But Padre Lasuen was an able defender of his turf. He argued that the Indians owned California’s land (under Franciscan stewardship, of course). Lasuen pulled strings and lobbied Mexico and wrote letters and sent reports, and blamed the army and the retiring “dons” for debauching and exploiting the natives. Lasuen finally argued that it would be much cheaper to fund new missions to pacify the coast Indians, than to send regiments of soldiers. Lasuen’s boss, the Prefect of the College of San Fernando in Mexico City, took coffee with the banker who was the manager of the Pious Fund for the Indies, and, lo, there was plenty of money in the vaults after all, enough to fund a Franciscan surge in California. Gov. Borica authorized Fr. Lasuen to found five new missions, run by ten new missionaries. And if ranchos were granted to veterans, they wouldn’t be carved out of mission lands, or worked by mission Indians.

“Meanwhile the…friars…endeavored to reach the numerous body of savages not yet brought under the influence of the Cross. To accomplish this end it was found necessary to increase the number of missions in order to fill up the gaps and make the establishments more equidistant….In the summer of 1795 Gov. Borica, accordingly, gave orders to search for suitable sites….[An] exploring expedition…left in August…in order to scour the country between Mission San Buenaventura and San Gabriel. They went by way of Cayegues, Conejo, Simi Valley, Triunfo, Calabazas, Encino Valley, Reyes Rancho, Zanja [Rancho San Rafael], Mission San Gabriel, Los Angeles, and then turned back through the Portozuelo [Cahuenga Pass]…until they reached the starting point [Ventura].”

— Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, Missions and Missionaries, 1898
  • The ridge of the waterfall
  • …the boulder in the stream
  • …the rock on the bank
  • …the stone in the foundation of the Mission reservoir.

“We found the place quite suitable for a mission, because it has much water, much humid land, and also limestone…stone for the foundations of buildings is nearby. There is pine timber…northwest, not very far away. Also pastures are to found, and patches very suitable for cattle. But there is a lack of firewood, for the place has no more to be found than is found in the arroyo, which is about one league long. [He means the stretch of Pacoima Wash in the video above.] There we found willows, alders, poplars, and a few live oaks, at a distance of a quarter or half a league…

— Fr. Vicente de Santa Maria, report to Fr. Lasuen, 1795
  • Alders and willows
  • …pasture and oaks
  • … limestone for firing into quicklime for whitewash.

Fr. Santa Maria also reported that Siutcanga, the rancheria at the southern end of the Valley of the Oaks, what we now call Encino, was also very good for a mission. Only the Siutcanga residents, lounging by their spring-fed swimming pool, demonstrated “no interest in conversion.” At Reyes’s Rancho, by contrast:

“In this place we came to a ranchería [Achoicomenga] near the dwelling of said Reyes – with enough Indians. They take care of the field of corn, beans, and melons, belonging to said Reyes, which with that of the Indians could be covered with two fanegas
of wheat. These Indians are the cowherds, cattlemen, irrigators, bird-catchers, foremen, horsemen, etc. To this locality belong, and they acknowledge it, the gentiles of other rancherías, such as Taapu, Tacuyama, Tacuenga, Juyunga, Mapipinga, and
others, who have not affiliated with Mission San Gabriel.”

— Fr. Santa Maria, 1795

When the explorers visited Verdugo’s rancho, la Zanja, they also discovered Indians there running the place: good employees and farmers and model subjects of the King, only not Christianized in the least. In the scandalized opinion of the Franciscans, the new “dons” had spoiled their potential converts by making the Indians modern, enamored of commerce, industry, gain, and the bright lights of the Pueblo:

“The first thing we met in this place [Haahamonga ] ,which is the rancho of Corporal Verdugo (although we saw not a white person there) , was a great field of watermelons, sugar melons, and beans, with a patch of corn, belonging to an old gentile called Requi and to other gentiles of the same class, who live contiguous to the ranch of Verdugo. . . .on this expedition I observed that the whole Pagandom, between this Mission [San Buenaventura] and that of San Gabriel, along the [coast] ,along the Camino Reál, and along the border of the north, is fond of the Pueblo of Los Angeles, of the rancho of Mariano Verdugo, of the rancho of Reyes, and of the Zanja. Here we see nothing but pagans passing, clad in shoes, with sombreros and blankets, and serving as muleteers to the settlers and rancheros, so that if it were not for the gentiles there would be neither pueblo nor rancho . . .

— Fr. Santa Maria

Records are scarce for what happened when the Padres approached Reyes and demanded his ranch for their Mission. One story says he was pious, and graciously gave way; another story claims Reyes resisted his dispossession, but was politically outmaneuvered thanks to Lasuen’s lobbying. In either case, Reyes was amply rewarded with the consolation prize of the Encino property with the swimming pool. He defiantly re-re-dubbed it “Rancho Los Encinos.” Reyes, Retired was by no means through playing a role in history — as a military veteran, a budding ranchero, and a bullish new citizen of Los Angeles, Reyes was elected alcalde three times. Don Juan Francisco Reyes was a mulatto; his astonishing story as America’s first black mayor, and also America’s first Hispanic mayor, is cheerfully presented in the following bank commercial.

https://youtu.be/3cLDW5tkcdA
The career of Juan Francisco Reyes, though somehow appropriated by UnionBank, remains a source of pride for LA.

The Franciscans now had their mission site in Pacoima. In September 1797 they renamed the whole shebang — Achoicomenga, St. Catherine’s Valley and all — for Saint Ferdinand, the King of Spain, the most nationalistic and bellicose saint in Spanish Christendom. The Indians, no matter their ancestral traditions, were renamed “Fernandenos.” Fr. Lasuen himself dedicated the church, with Fr. Dumetz, and, at least ceremonially, probably planted the palms. At the dedication mass, the Franciscans baptized ten children from Achoicomenga. After lunch, they set about to convert all the kids’ kith and kin — in the village, up in the hills, across the wide Valley, and down on the shores of Malibu — to the religion of the warrior king of Medieval Spain.


Next in THE THEATRE OF CONVERSION: “Achoicomenga, or Where the Indians Were”