California Indians - The Often Untold Story

Several months ago I wrote a short article about visiting the Skirball Center in Los Angeles and the exhibit "Who is a Jew?" In my mind there were a lot of parallels between the Native American and Jewish experience, and it was these similarities that I saw over and over again in the exhibit.

One reader responded angrily that there's a wealth of information about the Jewish Holocaust and no museum devoted to the American Indian Holocaust, which was equally devastating, brutal and tragic.

At first I felt like they had missed the point of what I was trying to say; that the Skirball Center exhibit was a fine example of documenting a cultural experience. But the more I thought about those terse words, the more I was compelled to learn about the experience of California peoples, and to realize that this person was right.

It's a common misconception that California's natives were spared the fate that fell upon the better documented attempts at annihilating the Plains tribes, the Cherokee's Trail of Tears and many other atrocities that occurred throughout the United States into the 1900s.

California's people were not spared these atrocities. In fact, fully three quarters of California's Indian population was destroyed in a time span of perhaps no more than 200 years. Some nations, like the Hupa, lost closer to eighty per cent of their population. Others were completely wiped out.

The missions that line the California coast were not built by the padres. They were built by the forced labor of native peoples. As one padre recollected, "The Indians do very well when living in the wild, but once captured and brought to the missions, they fatten, sicken, and die."

Those who lived inland from the coast fared no better. They fell prey in great numbers, literally three out of four, or worse, to the fever of the California gold rush.

The state and several counties had bounties on Indian scalps and heads. Indians were called "diggers" and were massacred at every opportunity. Hunting Indians was a sport, and a lucrative one. Sometimes women and children were spared only to be raped or sold as slaves or indentured servants. But just as often they were murdered outright.

In a recent conversation with a friend who is creating an exhibit in a Chumash museum, he said to me "I don't know what the Chumash are so angry about. They didn't go through all the horrors the rest of the nation went through." In the best way I could I tried to enlighten him about the mission system's impact on native peoples. I wrote a letter to the cultural center which houses the museum and asked them to please consider representing the real story of the Chumash people.

I suggested they do it in three parts; what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. A wall devoted to pre-contact life in California, a wall devoted to the mission era that honestly describes the actions of the missionaries and the effect it had on the people, and a wall devoted to the survivors who carry their culture forward today.

I'd like to think someone read that letter. I'd like to believe that the people who sit on the Board of the Center will do the Chumash people some bit of justice through an honest look at the history of California. But mine was just one small voice. Perhaps more than this is needed.

I haven't been back to see how the exhibit is coming along, but I would like to encourage other people to offer their input, in a good and positive way. In fact, I would go so far as encouraging you to contribute to the process of creating that exhibit, if you can. If you have knowledge, photographs, family memoirs or histories to share, please consider offering your expertise to the process.

The California Indian experience is shrouded in a veil of economic glory and pioneer nostalgia. The truth is as horrific as any massacre of any people, in any time frame. We cannot change the past or escape the effects of genocide. We can shed light on the true history of native peoples in California, and thereby present a basis for understanding who today's California Indians really are.

Please send letters supporting a true and honest historical accounting of the Chumash experience to:
Board of Directors, Oakbrook Park Chumash Interpretive Center
3290 Lang Ranch Parkway, Thousand Oaks, CA 91362
Written and submitted by Corina Roberts, Founder, Redbird
www.RedbirdsVision.org
email: redbirds_vision@hotmail.com
P.O. Box 702, Simi Valley, CA 93062