Fernandeiio Tataviam Band of Mission Indians Federal Petition Office Of

Fernandeiio Tataviam Band of Mission Indians Federal Petition Office of Federal Acknowledgment Bureau of Indian Affairs U.S. Department of Interior Supplementary and Updated Information to the Petition of 2009 CRITERIA 87.3(a) Fernanderio Tataviam Band of Mission Indians I 2015 Supplement Federal Recognition §83.7(a) Supplementary and Updated Information to the Fernandeiio Tataviam Band of Mission Indian Petition of 2009 Section 83.7 (a). The petitioner has been identified as an American Indian entity on a substantially continuous basis since 1900. Identification and Recognition Before 1900 To comprehend identification as an American Indian entity since 1900, it is essential to understand the social and cultural organization of the Indian groups that populated the San Fernando Mission, as well as the region, for centuries, if not longer, before the missions were established. Before significant European contact, the Indians of California, including the Indians who eventually entered into San Fernando Mission after 1797, were independent, decentralized, uni-lineal kinship groups. Political recognition with each other came from mutual respect of boundaries, and agreement upon rules of ceremonial activities, economic exchange, as well as political cooperation and respect. The eminent anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, who wrote in the 1950s, called this form of social and political organization a "tribelet." Kroeber said: (T)hese tribelet units, with around 200 to 300 members, were the basic political and social units in native California Indian life. Ultra-miniaturized as they were, they nevertheless constitute the nearest equivalent to the State or Nation among ourselves. This is true in the sense that, just as what in Europe is called the State, but in this country the Federal government or the Nation -just as this state or Nation does not recognize any authority or power superior to itself, and is supreme and autonomous, so in native California these tiny tribe let units recognized no superior authority, but were self-governing, independent, and land owning.1 Since each lineal group-village shared a common ancestor, kinship members could not marry inside, and therefore married eligible individuals from other lineages, which often spoke different languages. The region that composes the recruiting ground for San Fernando Mission included the territory of present-day San Fernando Valley, Catalina Island, Malibu, Santa Clarita Valley, parts of northern Los Angeles, and other contiguous areas. At least 130 named settlements provided individuals to the San Fernando Mission.2 The region prior to contact was multi-lingual, multi-cultural, decentralized, and based upon lineages that were interconnected and mutually supported through networks, marriages, ceremonies, and trade. Linguistic speaking groups did not form political entities. Each linguistic group was internally composed of 1 See document: 000261.BL, p. 22. 2 80799.Johnson, p. 7. 1 Fernandefio Tataviam Band of Mission Indians I 2015 Supplement Federal Recognition §83.7(a) independent lineage groups that held territory and political autonomy from all others, whether linguistically related or not. 3 When the Spanish missionaries arrived, they encountered an active regional multi-cultural economic, political, and ceremonial network, where the Indians respected cross-lineal rules and obligations, and where land, economic resources, and political leadership were established and carried on for many centuries. The pre-contact Indians recognized each other's land, ceremonial, kinship, and political relations. Recognition in the pre-contact period came from the respect of mutual rights and obligations observed among the regional network of lineages. Kroeber went on to argue that the tribelet is the equivalent to a tribe elsewhere in Native North America: This village-community or "tribelet" is the native California equivalent to the "tribe" among other American Indians in the following senses: First, it is the largest group which was autonomous, self governing, and independent. Second, it is the largest group over which any one person, leader, or chief had recognized authority or near authority. An able chief might be known and respected and listened to among neighboring tribelets, but his actual following was limited to his own tribe, and strictly so. And in third place, it was the tribelet that was the largest unit to own a territory, and in much of California the only such unit. To the tribelet belonged the land which its members traveled over, lived on, gathered food in, and which they claimed and occupied .... 4 In native California, the most constant feature of the tribelet unit probably was their unity and solidarity of spirit; the sense that they were one people with common fortunes .... 5 The tribelet community (was) usually distinct from the settlement. The difference between village-community or tribelet and the village or settlement is that the former may contain several settlements. These several settlements - there might be three or four or five of them - sometime were more or less the same in size, but more often one was dominant or permanent, the others more like suburbs of it. They might be situated some miles away. The smaller settlements were like to be inhabited seasonally, or by certain families only, perhaps for a stretch of years, after which their population might drift back to the main settlement. Also whenever there was anything like a council of the group, when war was threatening, or especially 3 See the John R. Johnson's linguistic map in document 80943.Johnson, p. 6. 4 000261.BL, pp. 15-16. 5 000261.BL, p. 23. 2 Fernanderio Tataviam Band of Mission Indians I 2015 Supplement Federal Recognition §83.7(a) when a festival was announced and a dance was held, it was the largest, principal, or most permanent settlement within the tribelet that would be the gathering point for all members of the group.6 The kinship clan in Southern California. - The next largest unit above the house or family, numbered perhaps fifty with a range of variation from as low as twenty or twenty-five to seventy-five, or perhaps a hundred. This would be the group consisting of a number of houses that were related by blood. In other words, this group was based on kinship, although not always kinship of the closest or most immediate sort. In size, and in the fact that the bond between the members of these groups was that of blood or marriage relationship, ... These thirty or forty, fifty or seventy people were usually related primarily in the paternal line, with wives married in from adjacent groups and with daughters marrying out into neighboring groups. The males were the primary owners of a tract sufficiently large, with varied natural resources to support them. They acted together in times of emergency. They were likely to act together in time of visits, festivals, and dances. In Southern California, these kin groups have been called clans, which are an adequate enough term if one does not read too much into it. They all trace. relationships back to common ancestor, usually to the fifth generation bexond the children of the group. The older men would remember him as father or uncle, or perhaps grandfather. The younger men may have a shadowy recollection of him. To the little boys in the group, this common ancestor from whom they were descended would be merely a name. In addition, there were the women born into the clan; 1be younger ones still girls and unmarried, the older perhaps a few widows who had been married out and returned later to the group among which they had been raise.<!. The other women would be from other clans in the neighborhood, who had b~1narried in. The picture was not always so strictly regular as this because residen~e was somewhat shifting, due to the fact that when a man married he was likel~:W live mostly with his wife's family until a child or two was born. After that htfwas likely to return to his native clan and bring her with him. 7 The Chumash-speaking lineage communities that are matrilineal, rather than pltrilineal, complicate the region where San Fernando Mission was built. Nevertheless, t~Ghµmash did not marry entirely within their own linguistic, cultural, or political groupings, ~d also married among the Gabrielefios, Tataviam, Kitanemuk, as well as others. The choice about whether the 6 000261.BL, pp. 14-15. 7 000261.BL, pp. 10-11. 3 Fernanderio Tataviam Band of Mission Indians I 2015 Supplement Federal Recognition §83.7(a) partners in a "mixed marriage" might chose patrilineal or matrilineal rules of residence appears to have been flexible and went both ways, in practice. The San Fernando Mission records provide documentation of baptisms, marriages, and burials of all the mission recruits or neophytes. The standard baptism record gives information about the date of birth and date of baptism, name of the baptizing mission, the officiating priests, and witnesses who served as godparents. The baptism records often include names of parents, if they are Christians, and often the parents' place of origin, or birth, and the parents' baptism number, and name of the parents' baptizing mission. The place of origin is usually a lineage community name, or as Kroeber says, a tribelet, or a lineally related family attached to a central tribelet settlement. Since names of the lineage communities are often given in the Mission record, one knows the name of the lineage or place where the neophyte was born, and consequently the neophyte's lineage relations. When a neophyte was born at San Fernando Mission, the mission was given as the neophyte's place of origin. However, it is usually possible to trace back through the baptism record to parents, grandparents, or older ancestors, if available, to find the name of the neophyte's lineal community. Descendants from Chumash lineal community are traced through the mother, while the other lineage communities traced lineage relations through patrilineal relatives.

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