The Indians of Mission San Fernando

TheIndians of Mission San Fernando by JohnR. Johnson INTRODUCTION 'Ra'wiyawi was the name of the capitan of Tujunga.Juan [Menendez l's mother used to tell stories (especially this story) y aqui salia un cancion, aqui y aqui O uan M.illustrates by draw ing withhis fingeron thetable, thesongs branching offhere and here, etc.). [They] learnedthe stories fromher but cannot tell them like she did.... 'Ra'wiyawi must have been his name, because that is what the calandria [meadowlark] called him when the calandriawent to notifythe cerviol [stag] (thecapitan grande ) of the mischief 'Ra'wiyawi had been doing-that is what the calandria sings now: kasisoko' 'ra'wiyawi, kasisoko' 'ra'wiyawi ['soon 'Ra'wiyawi comes'] .1 Thiscolorful introduction, quoted here in nearly its original formto give a flavorof its telling, is theprelude to a fascinatingnarrative by Juan Menendez, one of the lastremaining Fernandefiodescendants stillknowledgeable of the old cycle of Indian mythsfor the San Fer nandoValley region (Fig. 1).2 CarobethTucker Harrington wrote it down in a mixture of Spanish, English, and Fernandefio on the evening of November 9, 1917 at theold Calabasasadobe. 3 Thetale Menendez told about 'Ra'wiyawi was divided into threeparts, respec tively, relating the misdeeds and untimely endings of 'Ra'wiyawi's daughter, his son, and 'Ra'wiyawihimself. Its scenes shiftfrom little Tujunga Canyon to a rancherianear LosAngeles, to El Escorpi6n in theSimi Hills, to thedesert side of theSierra de San Fernando (San Gabriel Mountains), to the Malibu Coast. The myth explains how Tujunga became named (fromTuxuunga 'old woman place'), because thewife of 'Ra 'wiyawiturned herself to stone there out of grief forher dead offspring. The setting for the 'Ra'wiyawi story encompasses much of the territory inhabited by Indians whobecame associated withMission San Fernando. 249 SouthernCalifornia Quarterly Fig.Í.Juan and Juana Menéndez, Calabasas, 1917. /. P. HarringtonCollection, Santa Barbara Museumof NaturalHistory. Whowere the original peoples who were incorporated into the AmericanIndian community atMission San Fernando over the thir- ty-sevenyears of its existence and what became of them after secu- larizationofthat mission in 1834?Only recently have ethnohistoric sourcesbecome accessible that allow us toreconstruct the complex NativeAmerican history of MissionSan Fernando.Besides the 'Ra'wiyawi myth and other tidbits of Fer nandeño lore now available in J. P. Harrington'santhropological papers, perhaps even more importantare themission's baptismal, marriage, and burial regis- tersthat document village names, family relationships and demo- graphicpatterns.4 With the advent of computers, these registers are being systematicallystudied, and when combinedwith other archivaldocuments, provide us an opportunitytoanswer questions aboutNative American lifeways in "the Valley."5 A further source of 250 TheIndians of Mission San Fernando informationis the oral historical record surviving in families of Fer- nandeñoancestry. Woven together, these various strands of ethno- historicinformation contribute to our knowledgeof the Native peoplesassociated with Mission San Fernando at the time of its foun- dation,during its period as an activemission, and after seculariza- tion. Culturaland LinguisticAffiliations InSeptember 1795, a twoweek-long reconnaissance was under- takento selecta site forthe futureMission San Fernando.Fr. Vicentede SantaMaria of Mission San Buenaventura kept a diaryof thisexploration, which included surveys of SimiValley, Triunfo Canyon,San FernandoValley, and upper Santa Clara River Valley. His observationsof Native peoples reveal the extent to which their lifestyleshad changedduring two and a halfdecades offrequent interactionwith Spanish-Mexican colonists. At the Rancho San Jose ofFrancisco Reyes, the site eventually selected for the mission, he commentedthat: Inthis place we came to a ranchería[Achooykomenga]6 nearthe dwellingof said Reyes - withenough Indians. They take care of thefield of corn, beans, and melons, belonging to said Reyes, whichwith that of the Indians could be coveredwith two fanegas ofwheat. These Indians are the cowherds, cattlemen, irrigators, bird-catchers,foremen, horsemen, etc. To thislocality belong, andthey acknowledge it, the gentiles of other rancherías, such as Taapu,Tacuyama, Tacuenga [sic] , Juyunga,Mapipinga, and others,who have not affiliated with Mission San Gabriel.7 Afterleaving Reyes's rancho, Santa Maria traveledsoutheast to the Paraje de la Zanja: Thefirst thing we met in this place [Haahamonga ], which is the ranchoof Corporal Verdugo (although we sawnot a whiteper- sonthere) ,was a greatfield of watermelons, sugar melons, and beans,with a patchof corn, belonging to an oldgentile called Requiand to other gentiles of the same class, who live contigu- ousto the ranch of Verdugo.8 . .on thisexpedition I observedthat the whole pagandom, betweenthis Mission [San Buenaventura]and thatof San Gabriel,along the [coast] ,along the Camino Reál, and along the 251 SouthernCalifornia Quarterly borderof the north, is fondof the Pueblo of Los Angeles, of the ranchoof Mariano Verdugo, of the rancho of Reyes, and of the Zanja.Here we see nothingbut pagans passing, clad in shoes, withsombreros and blankets, and serving as muleteersto the settlersand rancheros,so thatif it were not for the gentiles therewould be neitherpueblo nor rancho . .9 In otherwords, by the time Mission San Fernandowas founded on September8, 1797,the Native peoples of the surrounding region hadalready undergone a major shift in their subsistence practices to supplementtheir traditional hunting and gatheringeconomy throughgrowing their own crops and tending the livestock of the pobladoresof Los Angeles. The firstgroup of ten children baptized on theday the mission wasestablished were said to be fromAchoicominga (Achooykomen- ga) , thesame ranchería described by Santa Maria two years earlier whereIndians had settledwho workedas laborersat Francisco Reyes'srancho. Clues fromsubsequent mission register entries indicatethat some ofthese children had originallybeen bornin otherrancherías and included speakers of several different Indian languages.Indeed Santa Maria's own comments during his original visitto Achooykomengasuggest that people there had formerly belongedto Chumashand Tataviamcommunities in additionto thosenative to theSan FernandoValley proper.10 Thus, from the verybeginning a mixedspeech community had beenformed that wasto persist throughout the period of the mission's history. Earlyin 1814,in response to the questionnaire sent to the mis- sionarieson Indian customs, Fr. Pedro Muñoz and Fr. Joaquín Pas- cualNuez replied that three native languages were spoken among Indiansliving at the mission.11Apparently these missionaries referredto the threedominant languages: Gabrielino/Tongva, Tataviam,and Ventureño Chumash, respectively comprising about 40 percent,25 percent,and 24 percentof Native converts (Fig. 2). Actuallyby 1814 a fourthlanguage, Serrano, was spoken at the mis- sionby people who had come from the Antelope Valley region, con- sistingof about 9 percentof the converts.12 Speakers of all these languagesand their children intermarried with those who spoke dif- ferentlanguages, so bythe end of the Mission Period, most families wereof mixed tribal ancestry. 252 TheIndians of Mission San Fernando Fig.2. Rancheríaswhose peoples were incorporated into Mission San Fernando andapproximate linguistic boundaries. The spellingsof ranchería names follow usage inmission documents. 253 SouthernCalifornia Quarterly Determiningthe linguistic affiliations and locations of the more than130 ranchería names documented in the Mission San Fernando registersis notan easymatter. Not only do spellingsof such names differaccording to the orthographic and linguistic abilities of the misr sionaries,but sometimes names for the same village were completely differentinthe various languages spoken at the mission. The princi- pallinguistic division was between Ventureño Chumash in the Chu- mashanfamily and the various Takic languages in the Uto-Aztecan stock(Gabrielino/Tongva, Tataviam, and Serrano) . A missionregis- terentry for a personfrom a givenranchería might list its name in its Spanishpopular name, its Ventureño Chumash version, or one of sev- eralTakic forms. Typically ranchería names in these Takic languages appeareither as a referenttothe place itself (using the locative suffix - nga)or to a personofthat place (with a -vitor -pet suffix) .13 For exam- ple,the rancheríaname for El Encinowas usuallywritten in the missionregisters as either"Siutcanga" or "Siutcabit," depending on whichform of the name was being used.14 Both forms were based on theGabrielino/Tongva word syutka live oak', i.e., encino.15 Severalmethods may be used to makecorrelations between namesfor the same ranchería in different languages, including recon- structingfamily groups and identification ofindividuals who trans- ferredbetween missions. A good exampleof the way such an equivalencemaybe established isprovided by the case of Ongobepet, a rancheríaname in the Gabrielino/Tongva language associated with fourindividuals baptized at MissionSan Fernando.On March30, 1803,a seventy-year-oldcapitán (chief) of Ongobepet was christened Eduardo.When this chief transferred toSan Buenaventura Mission, he was listedfrom Umalibo (Humaliwo), the ranchería from which manyof his children had been baptized at that mission. Lucio Tupin- auytand Lucia were two other individuals atSan Fernando said to

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