Yak Tityu Tityu, Northern Chumash, and the Chumash:
A General Overview
by Karl Kempton
Edited by Carol Georgi
Part One
Introduction
This article is part one of a two part presentation on the Chumash in general and Northern Chumash, Yak Tityu Tityu, specifically. Part One will focus on the Chumash relationship with ocean, land, and coast. Part Two will briefly cover language and some known weavings of their cosmology, the Chumash Ethnosphere.
The following overview covers the criteria of archaeological, historical, and cultural significance of the Chumash People in general and—more specifically—the northern most speakers of a Chumash language, Yak Tityu Tityu, the people, living north of Point Sal, California. Criteria for National Marine Sanctuary protection include, "its conservation, recreational, ecological, historical, scientific, cultural, archaeological, educational, or esthetic qualities; the communities of living marine resources it harbors; or its resource or human-use values." (See: Sanctuary Designation Standards)
Previous Marine Sanctuary articles outline our internationally and nationally significant oceanographic features and habitat (that is, the criteria of "ecological, scientific, and esthetic qualities and the communities of living marine resources it harbors"). This addition to the articles continues the broad outline with a short article on the Chumash, whose population today is in the thousands.
Quick Overview
Before the Spanish conquest, the Chumash were martilocal fishers, hunters and gatherers living along the coast and 40 miles inland between Malibu (a Chumash word) to Ragged Point in villages sometimes numbering a thousand or more inhabitants. Between 3000 to 1000 years ago they lived as far north as Kirk Creek, if not further to the Esselen. Today, the Chumash are found throughout their former lands as well as up and down the West Coast.
They domesticated the oaks for the acorn. To leach out its tannic acid, acorns have to be soaked and drained in eleven washings. It appears they were the first people in California to become horticulturists, others say proto agriculturalists or proto horticulturists given their use of fire to maximize vast open spaces for seeds. They were aware of farming because the Native American Mohave trekked into the area for numerous reasons. They chose not to farm, having created a sustainable lifestyle requiring 20 hours or less effort a week. Currently, the oldest acorn processing site recovery is near Morro Bay.
They fished with a complex array of fishing gear including harpoons, shell carved hooks, nets, lines, sinkers, fish traps, and the only sewn, sea going plank canoe caulked with tar in North America. This plank canoe — the tomol — allowed them to travel back and forth between the mainland and the Channel Islands with ease. They also constructed a variety of smaller watercraft for nearshore and estuary fishing. (See: California's Native People - The Southern Coastal Region and Native American Tomal)
Their basketry is considered world class. Using juncus rush, their waterproof, complex patterned baskets were woven with over 200 weaves per inch. Also skillfully woven were hats, cradles, trays, and fish traps. Undoubtedly the patterns and basketry, woven and coiled, were coded with cosmological meanings and values. (See: Indian Basket Chat)
They were the inventors of bead money as well as the bankers of the region. The beads were fashioned from the Olivella shell, a subtidal mollusk. Their shell bead money has been found as far away as northern Utah. Sites can be dated from these beads, given the change in style over millennia.
They had craft guilds specializing in specific economic functions. For example, the tomol was built only by those of its specialized guild.
They had an overarching pan Chumash priesthood, the "Antap." They believed in reincarnation. Their spiritual beliefs were shared, it now appears, with at least the Salinian people to the north and the Yokut people to the east.
Their rock art is considered world class, given its complexity and placement. Many pictograms and pictographs were astronomically aligned as they were also skilled in astronomical observation and construction of complex solstice sites (see Part Two in next month's issue). Their cosmological view is familiar: a world above, the earthly plain, and the world below. ( See: An Eclipse in Chumash Petroglyphs)
The Land and Ocean
The following two maps are based upon collated archaeological and ethnographic evidence to date. Having participated in these findings over many years, Yak Tityu Tityu agree. Archaeologists have recovered considerable and detailed knowledge over the years. During the last twenty years, with a cross disciplinary working relationship with other scientists and archaeologists and aided by Yak Tityu Tityu observers, they have improved upon general environmental, technological, dietary, and spiritual information that illustrate the complexity of the Chumash culture and its relationship to land and ocean.
Chumash Land
Click the image above to view an outsized map of the Chumash Villages
The First People
The First People, the Chumash, have lived within their area, which was shaped almost as a triangle. The Channel Islands on the south align east-west. The Santa Maria Basin coastline aligns northward on the west. The east side boundary line runs from the northwest corner of Ragged Point along the Tremblor Range to Mount Pinos and Frazier Mountain on the South East. I have determined this forms an intriguing line running nearly parallel to a winter solstice sunrise/summer solstice sunset alignment. Completing the almost triangle is the southern line running from Mount Pinos and Frazier Mountain to Malibu out to the islands.
Recent findings suggest that the Chumash have continuously lived, fished, hunted, and gathered thousands of years earlier than archaeologists thought possible. Given such a time span, exact and symbolic knowledge of their land and Spiritual Path or Way would have been extensive and detailed enough in local areas to have developed fine tuned "accents" associated with individual locales or micro environments much in the same way a language evolves its local dialects.
The racial and cultural genocide begun by the Spanish Mission system and continued with other formal and informal programs by the Mexican and then American governments and peoples was so thorough that the cosmological sung narrative of the Chumash was almost totally erased. Only transcribed oral fragments, active open and hidden lore (including many of their songs) within Chumash families and groups, and the known, hidden, and forgotten sacred non-destroyed sites remain.
A sign that the racism continues is that the padre responsible for building the missions from San Diego to San Francisco — which was the Spanish response to the expanding Russian Orthodox presence further north — is being considered for sainthood. This irresponsible movement ignores the hundreds of thousands of Native California peoples' deaths caused by the mission system from the imported European diseases, the Spanish caused malnutrition and/or depression and/or post traumatic stress syndrome (present today).
When the Native American population in a mission shrank because of these causes, the demand for laborers was filled by new expendable replacements lured or forced into a mission. They were segregated by gender and age (i.e. families torn apart), and worked as if slaves. They were forbidden to speak their language or practice any form of their religious and Spiritual Way. Punishment was handed out upon those breaking these and other rules. Many villages in our county had thousands of years of continuous thriving generations until pulled away by the Spanish.
Racist phrases ignoring or diminishing the Chumash have appeared for years in the local daily newspaper's historical column and in other sections of the paper describing the Chumash. For example, in the July, 2011 yearly insert in the local daily, hundreds of generations of Chumash history were covered in one inaccurate opening sentence summation. Then, as if the Chumash quietly disappeared, the article stated more or less that the Spanish "found" wide open spaces for their endeavorers. Also, the July, 2011 centennial celebration literature for the City of Arroyo Grande began the area's history with the Spanish. This is the same city where a recent cross burning created a community wide forum against hate and bias; the Chumash were not invited.
Statewide publications continue their apologist articles for the Spanish Mission system. The actual historical truth would hurt the mission tourism draw. As for the nominated padre, a March, 2011, story by the Catholic News Agency suggests that his sainthood is but one Church bureaucratic and ecclesiastical recognized "miracle" step away.
Surviving pieces of the Chumash cosmology narrative remain scattered and stored in archaeological files and vaults. Coded notes are still in the process of seeing the light of day for the general public to read. Only researchers of the dominant culture have had access until recently, when Chumash elders won demands based for the most part on the Native American Religious Freedom Act sponsored and signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978. There has been much recovery work by the few conscientious and conscious archaeologists working with the Chumash to rebuild a new Chumash Way. However, many researchers continue to pass on to their students a conscious and unconscious implied inferiority of the Chumash. Such beliefs continue to dominate much thought and action of researchers. Much work that has been published contain errors and in many cases one finds conscious efforts to rewrite or dismiss the oral records.
Prior to the archaeological 1968-1969 work at Diablo Canyon, archaeologists, in general, did not accept the Chumash stedfast claim that they were the First People of the area and had lived here for countless generations. Thus, a model of four separate groups was constructed based upon how a specific population interacted and lived with its environment. The groups were named after economic and technological adaptations.
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant was permitted to be built upon land that would destroy several Yak Tityu Tityu sites, one being a burial area. The oldest tested carbon date was 9300 years old. Top to bottom, the culture was of the same people, Yak Tityu Tityu. At the bottom layer of the burial area, obsidian (volcanic glass) was found. Research identified it as having come from the east side of the Sierra — Glass Mountain near Mammoth. That is to say, an extensive multi hundred mile trade route existed 9300 years ago. More than likely, it was older — much older. Thus, the model of four separate peoples with its number of theories proved to be wasted efforts.
Soon thereafter, two 10,000 year old sites were dated in Cambria. Cayucos was dated 8000 years old. A village at Sunset Palisades in Pismo was dated 8000 years old (continuously lived in until ripped off by the Spanish mission system), and Pismo itself has a 9500 years old date near Highway 101 and the Price Canyon overpass. The oldest official date in San Luis Obispo County is that of a projectile point — 11,000 years old. Other 9,000 and pre 10,000 years old sites have been dated on Vandenberg Air Force Base and 10,000 years old sites were found along the shores of the Southern California Bite.
The oldest intact burial within the contiguous 48 states is 13,000 to 13,500 years old — the Chumash Arlington Springs woman found on Santa Rosa Island. At that time the ocean level was at least 150 to 200 feet lower; the northern islands were then joined as one. In the San Luis Obispo County area 10,000 years ago, today's Yak Tityu Tityu coastal village sites were two to four miles inland. This means the older Yak Tityu Tityu and general Chumash record is under water.
Easy access to protein is along the coast. Village sites most often were located where continuous fresh water meets the ocean. The Chumash knew this. Oral tradition in our area, for example, mentions sacred sites offshore, under water. Archaeologist Robert Gibson recovered an exposed cinnabar mining site uncovered by ocean rise erosion twenty years ago north of the light house at Piedras Blancas — it was dated 6000 years old. It is now gone, washed away. Cinnabar was used for red paint. Upon its finding, it was the oldest known mining site in North America.
The oldest unofficial date for Yak Tityu Tityu goes back 20,000 years (carbon dated with 90 per cent possibility) to a mastodon butchering site found by geologist Ralph Bishop 36 feet below ground level in the Arroyo Grande-Nipmo mesa watershed. Tools were found with the fossil bones that seem to be associated with the Chumash tool kit. The ocean was even further out at that time.
(See: Mastadon)
It is our hope and wish that the marine sanctuary program educates the general public about the importance of the Yak Tityu Tityu and the larger Chumash culture and its heritage. European descendants have lived on this land less than one per cent of the span of the Yak Tityu Tityu and Chumash generation count.
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