Chumash
Rochelle Johnston
Black Gold Cooperative Library System. (2021). Native Americans on the Central Coast. Calisphere. https://calisphere.org/collections/26869/
This is a collection of 127 images of “Chumash” people and lands contained on Calisphere, an internet-based digital archive of primary sources contributed by the University of California and other statewide organizations that have primary sources in their archives. The Calisphere is a project of the University of California libraries, and it was developed and is maintained by the California Digital Library. The items in the Calisphere are digital photographs or scans of items of historical interest. The overview page on the archive website gives notice that some items on the archive as well as metadata may contain bias and “may include culturally insensitive material.” The website text explains the reasons the bias or insensitivity may exist and asks that archive users who have more information about the provenance or subjects contained in the images to provide it in order to make the archive more complete. I noted that perhaps some of the images, due to when they were taken, exhibited a colonial settler bias.
The archive can be very easily viewed over the internet. According to the metadata, the photographs were taken from 1873 through the 1960’s. A large number of photos consist of people who identified as Chumash posing together in locations of historical importance. The metadata also gives names of the people in the photographs which relate back to A. L. Kroeber’s and J. P. Harrington’s Native consultants who the researchers interviewed in the early to mid 20th Century. Of particular note, there is a photo of J.P. Harrington with one of his Native consultants and her children contained in the archive. Because of the technicality of photography being invented after the Spanish Missions had been established these images document Chumash life after contact. However, some of the older images are dated at 1873 and would benefit from some background investigation due to their age. It would be exciting to see the age of these photos verified as it would have been of individuals within one or two generations of “before Missionization.” Included are images of the Chumash traditional home building, baskets, of the tomol, and of persons in Native dancing regalia. These images can be used to get a deeper understanding of Kroeber and Harrington’s work with the Chumash as well as ascertain the lifestyle of Chumash people after 200 years of acculturation.
Kelley, D. F. (2012). Ancient Traditions, Modern Constructions: Innovation, Continuity, and Spirituality on the Powwow Trail. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 11(33), 107–136.
Due to the history of Natives being killed or moved from their original homes, today’s Natives live on reservations or have become urban dwellers. To maintain traditional beliefs and cultures, Natives are participating in supratribal or pan-Indian powwows, sweatings and sacred pipe rituals. Kelley highlights the powwow because it serves two overlapping functions. It educates Native youth about “tribal heritage and spirituality” (p. 111) and when it is held as a public event, the “traditionalism at the powwow is the presence of, and respect for, Native protocols and the adherence to these by participants as well as non-Indian observers.” (p. 112) It is the author’s belief that ritual is the manner we use to encounter the sacred aspects of our worldview. By performing rituals on an individual and community level, we learn “one’s proper role in that system.”(p. 119)
Supratribal, pan-Indian and Indian Country are terms that describe an overarching ethnic-based Native educational, political and activist organization that came to be as the outcome of historical forces of genocide and forced relocation to reservations. For all the tribes of North America, it is a common set of issues, concerns, and outlook. (p. 121.) He explains that modern supratribal rituals are from many different tribes and may not have any direct historical precedence in a particular tribe’s culture, yet by participating it holds space for the “eventual return to a tribal-specific religious identity.” (p. 122) “Powwow practices draw on this fluid nature of Native sacred ideals.” (p. 118)
Kelly notes that through pan-Indian powwows and other ritualized activities, Natives have been moving to “Indianess gradually”, first participating in powwows as children and then bringing their children to more tribe-specific activities. He sees the trend of Natives seeking out more knowledge of the past to inform how they will create the present and future culture (p 129).
Kroeber, A. L. (2020). The History of Native Culture in California. In The California Indians, 112–128. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520340497-008
Kroeber’s chapter is a hypothesis of his theory that breaks California’s indigenous cultural history into four periods based on relationships between population groups and their technologies, laws and religion. He diagrams the aspects of culture that he has definite archeological information about and then speculates on what could have happened based on the chart. He begins his chapter, “while it starts from the solid ground of twenty years of inquiry into the culture and speech of the California aborigines it pretends to no greater validity than any summary, undocumented, historical reconstruction may claim.” (p. 112)
Secondly, he looks at attempts to date the objects that have been found. He says lack of pottery in California hampers the dating (implying that being indestructible, differences can be seen in artifacts.) He cites the ubiquity of Chumash artifacts (baskets, shells) throughout time and location, their age cannot be ascertained through stratification. And most damning is his criticism of sloppy archeological practices which do not make proper notes of where and what depth artifacts were found. He specially calls out the archeological sites in Santa Barbara saying that it is “almost inconceivable” that the advanced shell work found was made there or that it was the first shell work made on the island (p. 126). He is very frank in his criticisms of some of the California digs, “It seems impossible even to say whether the evidence is actually non-existent or is merely unknown to us because of lack of discrimination and exploration.” (p. 127) He does give credit to archeologists that used carbon dating and other unspecified scientific methods. With that information he says that humans could have been in California from 4-8,000 years ago. He concludes that further study and integration of the information that has been found needs to be done.
Kroeber was a founder of the field of anthropology and started the department at UC Berkeley in 1901. Archeology was a new field and research methods were being tested out. It is interesting to note, his writings on indigenous peoples would have been the primary sources Native scholars consulted during the “Red Power”era of the 1960’s.
Paldam, E. (2018). White sage, bears, and territory: contemporary indigenous religion among the Chumash. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 33(3), 467–486. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2018.1535374
Paldam interviewed 24 Chumash consultants for 49 hours over 15 months between 2010- 2014. Her paper describes current Chumash religion and juxtaposes Pagan and Chumash methods to reinterpret cultural traditions that were interrupted by Christianity.
According to Paldam, within a half century of the establishment of the Spanish Mission system in 1769, almost all of the coastal peoples were either dead or converted Catholics. Secularized in 1834-6 by the Mexicans, the Mission Indians continued as Catholics but by 1880 had shrunk to about 200 people (p. 469). In the 1960s, many ethnic groups were engaging in the US Civil rights movement, and “Red Power” brought about revitalization of Native traditions; it was at this time that South-central Coastal Natives started using “Chumash” to indicate indigenous solidarity and religious practice (p. 469). Paldom states at the time of revitalization there were only “fragments” of precontact religious information available so the Chumash incorporated large amounts of pan-Indian tribal rituals. Subsequent archeological scholarship has filled in the gaps (p. 469).
Love and reverence for nature is the center of indigenous religion. They hold the landscape sacred, they pray to, towards and in some cases prayed within the land (p. 472). Their self-concept is one of “Indigenous” and that gives them connection to the land and as well as being close to their dead ancestors buried in the land. In the ‘60’s, the Chumash fought as a group to protect the territory from developers. They also have worked as archaeological monitors to assure any Indian remains are treated respectfully and re-interred with proper ritual. On the whole, environmentalism is a high priority and many equate nature with church (p 473).
Making and using traditional clothing, jewelry, and instruments in a traditional manner is also an important aspect of their religious revitalization. Some aspects of Chumash religion are actually pan-Indian, such as bear symbolism and smudging white-sage (p. 475-77). When the Chumash began to reconstitute their traditions, they studied existing scholarship on pre-contact coastal Natives, were influenced by pan-Indian rituals and cobbled together rituals and traditions, “allowing authentic spiritual practice.” (p. 477) As time has gone on, more scholarship has been done and more information about life before contact has been uncovered. The tomal (plank canoe) is an example of new information being incorporated into the Chumash rituals. Learning about the tomal and the society that surrounded it has spawned an annual event on Santa Cruz Island where a tomal is paddled across the channel and people spend a weekend “living the culture.” (p. 474)
The Chumash were and are living within a Christian mainstream and have much in common with other groups reviving ancient traditions such as Paganism (p. 479). Just as in most societies, Chumash “religion permeated” all aspects of daily life pre-contact. Paldam notes that “modernity and industrialization” have separated religion out from socio-political spheres. The Chumash and Pagans similarly look back for the pre-Christian traditions they can apply to their spiritual practices today. In both, these new traditions are held either strongly or loosely dependent on how the individual wants to experience religiosity. She notes this is due to these religions coming up in an era when “religiosity is an optional choice” for people (p. 481).
Robinson, D. (2013). Drawing Upon the Past: Temporal Ontology and Mythological Ideology in South-central Californian Rock Art. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 23(3), 373-394. doi:10.1017/S0959774313000310
Robinson wants to explain how traveling directions in hunter gatherer/trading indigenous tribes were transmitted by combining rock art (pictographs) and myths. He uses the Chumash and surrounding tribes to show how peoples who have a large complex trading and traveling relationships could have used pictographs and myths to orient themselves in the landscape and society as they traveled and traded within their trading zone.
California Indians had an oral tradition of community gathering in winter to listen and see reenactments of traditional stories based on mythic animals going from location to location in the physical world, “affixing associations between animal characters and specific places.”(p. 376) Through these tales everyone learned about the origin story, their world (both human and nonhuman) and how society worked based on “animals-as-persons.”(p. 375) The stories were transmitted to all the communities in the trading area because revered storytellers would go from community to community and get gifts in exchange for stories.
Further he explains that pictographs also functioned as a pedagogical tool to explain to all (human and nonhuman) the relationships and the power between beings. In the stories, animals had certain qualities of power: “Panther was a good hunter,... Coyote was cunning yet fallible” (p. 376) As symbols, the animals could link up the animals, environment, landscapes and features and humans. By telling stories about certain animals visiting certain rock art, the storytellers were essentially layering their myths. South Central California has many rock paintings situated in a region 165 miles long and 85 miles wide (p. 377). According to Robinson, early in the 20th century, archaeologist A.L. Kroeber documented a man named Chalola who grew up in Tejon. Chalola related the story of the journey of “Coyote and Prairie Falcon” which were related to where rock art sat in the landscape. The story would guide a Native through the land, finding food and water and also relaying social norms in the regions a Native would pass through, so they would behave appropriately in each tribe (p. 377).
Robinson outlines the way the Chumash view time. They believe at the beginning, there was a time of flood and mythic animals went underwater to bring up mud to make the landscape. Animals were people in the mythic times and some of the world’s landscape is made of these animals as they petrified. Then there was a transition time when humans were coming up, this would be considered pre-history but separate from the earlier times that are considered mythical. There are individual and group times that go back a few generations—those are punctuated by events such as droughts or migrations. Finally, there's the lived present. They have a mythical past; a historical past; a recent past; and a current lived present (p. 383). Archaeologic study, carbon dating and pigment analysis has shown that this region has had humans in it for the past 3500 years (p. 385).
Robinson states, “The role of animals is fundamental to the indigenous ontology.” (p. 389) The different roles of the animals had their counterpart in the current day: Eagles were leaders in mythic times and chiefs would consider themselves Eagles. Equating certain animals with certain titles gave a template on how to act within the society but also made different power levels legitimate in the political structure of the tribe. Political structures evolved due to extraordinary natural resources of food which allowed for the trading of “storable food supplies.” This trading added social complexity to their communities and they needed methods to help travelers and traders traverse through the region (p. 389). Robinson wants to emphasize this work shows rock art should be viewed as a community method to share relational ontologies over time and over the region, as opposed to current traditional views that rock art is about the thinking of a person making the painting.
Timbrook, J. (1990). Ethnobotany of Chumash Indians, California, Based on Collections by John P. Harrington. Economic Botany, 44(2), 236–253. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4255231
Jan Timbrook, the writer of this article, was an associate curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. She examined John P. Harrington's unpublished field notes and specimens held at the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution. She states (as of 1990 when the article was published) that most of the knowledge of the Chumash was gathered by John P. Harrington. Harrington, an ethnographer and linguist, traveled across the US interviewing elderly Native consultants to preserve “ancient traditions” (that were dying out with the Native Americans). Most of Harrington's work with the Chumash was in the 1910’s to 20’s but he worked with original consultants’ children and grandchildren until he died in 1961.
According to Timbrook, Harrington's field notes for the Chumash were in the thousands of pages and there were 497 pressed plant specimens collected. The specimens were collected by consultants who also gave the name of the plant in the language of their tribe and what the plant was used for. She notes that the specimens do not fully represent the entire area of the Chumash, they are primarily from the Santa Barbara area. She notes that there may have been more specimens but they seem to have been lost, implying that the Smithsonian wasn't taking excellent care of the Harrington archives.
This article is Timbrook’s work of transcribing Harrington’s field notes and putting them in order so further study could be accomplished. She included a nine page appendix which is her work of transcription of the unpublished field notes. It shows the names of the plants in the many Chumash dialects or languages as well as what the plants were used for.