Date of Award

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Applied Archaeology

Department

Anthropology

First Reader/Committee Chair

Matthew DesLauriers

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The Kizh of Southern California were an influential part of the trade, commerce, and ceremonial networks in the region before the invasion of the Spanish colonists into their ancestral territory. Their ancestral territory consisted of what is today known as Santa Catalina, Santa Nicholas, Santa Clemente, Santa Barbara Island, Los Angeles County, northern Orange County, western San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. At time of Spanish contact, the Kizh people identified themselves as “Kizh”, the people of the willow houses”. After the Kizh were forced into the Spanish mission system, the Spanish renamed them the “Gabrieleño” connecting them to the Mission San Gabriel. Later their name was incorrectly rewritten as “Gabrielino” by various American ethnographers and anthropologists. Most recently, some individuals in academia have started to use the name “Tongva”. Unfortunately, this term is also incorrect, this term is not how the aboriginal people identified themselves, nor given to them by Spanish at time of contact or given to them by the early American ethnographers. Instead, it is a well-documented name of a spring within the Kizh ancestral territory. This term was developed in the 1980’s by modern-day academics and has been falsely used as a ancestral name ever since. For these reasons, I will use the term(s) used by the aboriginal people, and given to the Spanish explores at time of contact by the Kizh people. Kizh ancestral territory was rich in natural resources provided by the Pacific Ocean and moved into their mainland territories. One of their revered goods was from the southern Channel Islands, in the pacific coast was the Olivella shell disk bead. The Olivella disk bead and the diagnostic Kizh incised disk bead was an important economic resource because it was used in direct trade, commerce, and ceremony with surrounding Uto-Aztecan speaking southern California tribes like the Cahuilla, Serrano, and Luiseño. This Olivella shell bead was then traded by the surrounding tribes, with their neighboring tribes of the Mojave Desert and southwest territories. The exclusivity of location via trade routes, ceremony, same language family, and fundamental religious practices made the Kizh of Southern California affluential among fellow tribal communities before the decimation of their social and economics structure by wave after wave of colonization. Unfortunately for them, this detrimental effect is still being felt today with the inability to be Federally Recognized by the United States government. Until then, the lineal descendants of the People of the Willow Houses now known as the Kizh Nation-Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians will continually fight to prove who they are, that they are still here, and that by birthright they were and are a major participant in the Southern California Native American story.

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