Their tribal government is based in San Fernando, California, and includes the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, the Tribal Senate, and the Council of Elders.[2] The current Tribal President of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians is Rudy Ortega Jr., who is a descendant of the village of Tochonanga.[3][4]
The Tataviam are a not federally recognized, which has prevented the tribe from being seen as sovereign and erased the identity of tribal members.[5][6] The tribe has established an Acknowledge Rent campaign to acknowledge "the financial hardships placed on non-federally recognized tribes."[7][6]
History
Ancestral land
The Santa Clarita Valley is believed to be the center of Tataviam territory, north of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In 1776, they were noted as a distinct linguistic and cultural group, by Padre Francisco Garcés, and have been distinguished from the Kitanemuk and the Fernandeño.[8]
Lifestyle
The Tataviam people had summer and winter settlements. They harvested Yucca whipplei and wa'at or juniper berries.[9]
Traditional language
Colonial scholars found themselves confused in their attempts to discern the language spoken by the Tataviam. Eventually it became clear that errors had been made in compiling their word lists: the vocabularies recorded by colonial scholar C. Hart Merriam were not in fact Tatavian, but rather were from a Chumash dialect, while the vocabularies recorded by Alfred Kroeber and John P. Harrington were of the Uto-Aztecan language, meaning it is probably more likely that their recordings are the language spoken by the Tataviam people before they experienced genocide and language loss. Further research has shown that the Uto-Aztecan language belonged to the Takic branch of that language family, specifically the Serran branch along with Kitanemuk and Serrano.[10] The last known Tataviam speaker died before 1916.[9]
Neighboring tribes
According to settler accounts, the Tataviam were called the Alliklik by their neighbors, the Chumash (Chumash: meaning grunter or stammerer), probably because of the way their language sounds to Chumash ears.[11]
Spanish colonization
The Spanish first encountered the Tataviam during their 1769-1770 expeditions. According to Chester King and Thomas C. Blackburn (1978:536), "By 1810, virtually all the Tataviam had been baptized at Mission San Fernando Rey de España." Like many other indigenous groups, they suffered high rates of fatalities from infectious diseases brought by the Spanish.
Tataviam land ceded to the United States
Following the Mexican Cession 1848, the ancestral land of the Tataviam people changed from Mexican rule to being part of the United States.
The United States Indian Affairs decided to group the Tataviam with other Indian Villages in the same region, which is now Fort Tejon Indian Reservation.[12]
The California Genocide
During the California Genocide from 1846 to 1873, California’s Native American population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000.[13] Many contemporary Tataviam people trace their lineage back to the original Tataviam people through genealogical records,[8] demonstrating the resilience of the Tataviam people in the face of genocide.
Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) estimated the combined population of the Serrano, Kitanemuk, and Tataviam to be 3,500 people in 1770. By 1910, their population was recorded at 150.
↑ Pamela Munro with John Johnson. 2001. "What Do We Know about Tataviam? Comparisons with Kitanemuk, Gabrielino, Kawaiisu, and Tübatulabal," paper presented to the Friends of Uto-Aztecan Conference, Santa Barbara, California, July 9, 2001.
Champagne, Duane and Goldberg, Carole. 2021. A Coalition of Lineages: The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona.
King, Chester, and Thomas C. Blackburn. 1978. "Tataviam," In California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp.535–537. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
The Tongva are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2). 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 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.
Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family was created to show that it includes both the Ute language of Utah and the Nahuan languages of Mexico.
Newhall is the southernmost and oldest community in the city of Santa Clarita, California. Prior to the 1987 consolidation of Canyon Country, Saugus, Newhall, and Valencia into the city of Santa Clarita, it was an unincorporated area. It was the first permanent town in the Santa Clarita Valley.
Chumashan was a family of languages that were spoken on the southern California coast by Native American Chumash people, from the Coastal plains and valleys of San Luis Obispo to Malibu, neighboring inland and Transverse Ranges valleys and canyons east to bordering the San Joaquin Valley, to three adjacent Channel Islands: San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz.
The Kawaiisu are a Native Californian ethnic group in the United States who live in the Tehachapi Valley and to the north across the Tehachapi Pass in the southern Sierra Nevada, toward Lake Isabella and Walker Pass. Historically, the Kawaiisu also traveled eastward on food-gathering trips to areas in the northern Mojave Desert, to the north and northeast of the Antelope Valley, Searles Valley, as far east as the Panamint Valley, the Panamint Mountains, and the western edge of Death Valley. Today, some Kawaiisu people are enrolled in the Tule River Indian Tribe.
The Tongva language is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language formerly spoken by the Tongva, a Native American people who have lived in and around modern day Los Angeles for centuries. It has not been a language of everyday conversation since the 1940s. The Gabrielino people now speak English but a few are attempting to revive their language by using it in everyday conversation and ceremonial contexts. Presently, Gabrielino is also being used in language revitalization classes and in some public discussion regarding religious and environmental issues. Tongva is closely related to Serrano. The names of several cities and neighborhoods in Southern California are of Tongva origin, and include Pacoima, Tujunga, Topanga, Azusa, Cahuenga in Cahuenga Pass and Cucamonga in Rancho Cucamonga.
The Kitanemuk are an indigenous people of California. They traditionally lived in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Antelope Valley area of the western Mojave Desert of southern California, United States. Today some Kitanemuk people are enrolled in the federally recognized Tejon Indian Tribe of California.
The Tübatulabal are an indigenous people of Kern River Valley in the Sierra Nevada range of California. They may have been the first people to make this area their permanent home. Today many of them are enrolled in the Tule River Indian Tribe. They are descendants of the people of the Uto-Aztecan language group, separating from Shoshone people about 3000 years ago.
The Serrano are an indigenous people of California. They use the autonyms of Taaqtam, meaning "people"; Maarrênga’yam, "people from Morongo"; and Yuhaaviatam, "people of the pines." Today the Maarrênga'yam are enrolled in the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, and the Yuhaviatam are enrolled in the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. Additionally, some Serrano people are enrolled in the Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians.
The Tataviam language was spoken by the Tataviam people of the upper Santa Clara River basin, Santa Susana Mountains, and Sierra Pelona Mountains in southern California. It had become extinct by 1916 and is known only from a few early records, notably a few words recorded by Alfred L. Kroeber and John P. Harrington in the early decades of the 20th century. These word lists were not from native speakers, but from the children of the last speakers who remembered a few words and phrases.
The Nicoleño were an Uto-Aztecan people who lived on San Nicolas Island in California. Its population was "left devastated by a massacre in 1811 by sea otter hunters". Its last surviving member was given the name Juana Maria, who was born before 1811 and died in 1853.
Mission Indians are the indigenous peoples of California who lived in Southern California and were forcibly relocated from their traditional dwellings, villages, and homelands to live and work at 15 Franciscan missions in Southern California and the Asistencias and Estancias established between 1796 and 1823 in the Las Californias Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
The Acjachemen are an Indigenous people of California. Their ancestral lands extend south of what is known as Aliso Creek and north of the Las Pulgas Canyon in what are now the southern areas of Orange County and the northwestern areas of San Diego County.
The Takic languages are a putative group of Uto-Aztecan languages historically spoken by a number of Indigenous peoples of Southern California. Takic is grouped with the Tubatulabal, Hopi, and Numic languages in the northern branch of the Uto-Aztecan family.
Kizh Kit’c are the Mission Indians of San Gabriel, according to Andrew Salas, Smithsonian Institution, Congress, the Catholic Church, the San Gabriel Mission, and other Indigenous communities. Most California tribes were known by their community and geographic names.
The Vanyume or Desert Serrano are an Indigenous people of Southern California. Traditional Vanyume territory extended along the Mojave River from the Eastern Mojave Desert to present day Victorville and may have included portions of southern Antelope Valley. The major village of Wá’peat was part of this area.
Orchard Hills is one of the master-planned communities of Irvine, California. To the east, it borders Limestone Canyon Regional Park, and to the west lies North Tustin, California. Located between 261 Highway and 241 Highway, the community is home to the Rattlesnake and Syphon reservoirs.
Tochonanga was a Tataviam village now located at the area of what is now Newhall, Santa Clarita, California, along the Santa Clara River. People baptized from the village were largely moved to Mission San Fernando Rey de España and referred to in mission records as Tochonabit. Current tribal president of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, Rudy Ortega Jr., is a descendant of the village.
Chaguayanga was a Tataviam village located at what is now Santa Clarita, California, around the Newhall, Valencia, and Castaic areas. Its original site was located approximately fifteen miles north and slightly west of the San Fernando Mission in the eastern areas of the San Fernando Valley. Mixed Chumash and Tataviam populations may have resided at the village.
Siutcanga, alternatively spelled Syútkanga, was a Tataviam and Tongva village that was located in what is now Los Encinos State Historic Park near the site of a natural spring. The traditional trading route which the village relied on to flourish is now the street known as Ventura Boulevard. The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians organization has indicated that the majority of their members descend from the village and maintain a deep relationship to the site. People of the village are known as Siutcavitam.
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