American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The arrival of Spanish invaders on the shores of Alta California in 1769 spawned a biological holocaust among Southern California Indians. The epidemics that swept across the coast, mountains, valleys, and deserts of California were catastrophic, causing Native Californians to attempt to comprehend the sickness and death stalking their various communities. European diseases significantly affected the lives of many Indians of California, including the Tongva of the Los Angeles basin and the Chumash north of them along the Santa Barbara coast. Tongva and Chumash people responded to epidemics brought to their homelands by the Spanish in a manner consistent with their spiritual and practical worldview. In one sense they internalized the diseases, attempting to comprehend the massive suffering and death in a way that made sense to them. Traditional Native views of death and sicknesses shaped their response to them. This was clearly the case of the Tongva people living near Mission San Gabriel. The Tongva of the Los Angeles basin spoke a dialect of the Takic family of languages derived from the larger Uto-Aztecan linguistic stock. The mainland Tongva were divided into two groups, one associated with the San Fernando Valley, and the Tongva proper, whose territory embraced the watershed of the Los Angeles and Santa Ana river basin. Ninety percent of their territory was within the rich Sonoran life zone whose ecological resources included vast quantities of acorn, pine nut, small game, and deer. On the coast, shellfish, sea mammals, and fish were taken. They followed an economy of hunting, collecting, and fishing that supported a population of approximately five thousand just prior to the Spanish invasion. The religious beliefs, practices, and mores of the Tongva centered on the cosmological belief that humankind was not the apex of creation but simply a strand in the web of life. Humans, like plants, animals, and even the landscape, shared reciprocal obligations to one another. According to creation stories, each provided something for the other and required a display of mutual respect and care. Careful stewardship of food resources and sacred places was proscribed.