Santa rosa plateau adobe

Box , Sacramento, CA For more information,call the visitor center office at Recreation History Recreational Opportunities Activities: wildlife viewing, hiking NOTE: Visitors are responsible for knowing and complying with all regulations pertaining to the use of Department lands.

Area History Evidence of Native American use has been identified in the form of village sites, morteros and cupule stones.

Related Documents. Click to enlarge. According to Chapa, the presence of this guardian spirit was not uncommon around important ceremonial sites. Barely visible today, there is a nearly circular ring of small boulders placed around a clearing of well-packed earth. Nearby is a small cave containing a zig-zag pictograph symbolizing a snake.

The layout of this site led her to believe that it was used by the tribe to initiate boys into manhood and full tribal membership and responsibilities. While there is a great deal of archeological evidence, there are very few first person accounts by the early missionaries and explorers. The California Indians were subjected to a lot of bad press and their virtues were rarely appreciated.

Considering the fact that the Spanish had probably not bathed in months and with many of them sick with scurvy, the Indians probably would have described the Spanish as evil looking, smelly, hairy, and most certainly treacherous. Historians who have thoroughly studied all the available accounts have determined that the California Indians were relatively peaceful. The chief of the tribe was not necessarily the military leader, unless he had given some special evidence of military skill.

Wars were seldom more than local feuds of revenge, more commonly involving persons and families than tribes. Even when an intertribal offense led to a small battle, one side would often pay the other to prevent further attacks.

If a series of reprisals occurred, it might end with each side compensating the other for the damages. Trespassing and food poaching were also occasional causes of war. Although there was no individual land ownership, the concept of tribal property was strongly developed.

These hostilities might appear more quaint than imperial, but the participants took them seriously and waged them mercilessly. The opposing warriors were killed on the spot, with women and children receiving the same treatment or being captured and incorporated into the tribe. Native peoples in Southern California spoke languages from two linguistic families. The people of the plateau, at the time the Spaniards found them spoke Luiseno, named after the mission San Luis Rey.

Father Lusuan traveled through the vallley in search of a site for what would be the San Luis Rey Mission. He noted that the native peoples spoke three different languages in the territory of this mission.

But an experience many years ago in an interview with two women of the Cahuilla tribe convinced me that the Indians themselves felt that their language was completely different from that of their neighbors. Certainly there are some English dialects that sound very different from the English spoken on our local radio and television. Very few written accounts of native life exist. While a few were written by the early Spanish, most were gathered long after the Mission period came to an end, over years since these people had lived and worked here.

Unfortunately a great deal has been lost. The Spanish worked hard to eliminate local languages and superimpose their culture over the natives.

If this is the case, acceptance of the accounts by early informants must be taken as the heritage of the band, not for the entire coastal region of California. Their legends and religious practices will be left to their descendants. For now I urge a bit of skepticism of these early written accounts. Based on our understanding of what it is to be human, I will try to tell how it might have been on the Plateau three hundred years ago.

In areas near the coast in Southern California the Indians were named by the Spaniards for the mission in their territory. Of course, these peoples had their own names for themselves. The Luiseno people lived in the area from the coast inland up to the San Jacinto Mountains. Prior to the Indians lived in family groups. Villages varied in size from perhaps 60 to individuals [11]. The larger villages appeared to be along the coast where an abundance of sea food was easily available.

The size of a community would have been determined by the ability of the land to provide the necessary resources. Groups were dynamic. People socialized, traded, and intermarried. They were, with a very few exceptions, [12] all closely related.

Archeological evidence indicates that there were several year round village sites on the lands of the old Rancho Santa Rosa. The village of Meqa was obviously occupied by many people for thousands of years, and yet the Pechanga tribe of Luisenos remembers only that these lands were used in summer.

Since there was no dramatic climate change, what happened to the population? What happened during these years was the arrival of smallpox, chickenpox, malaria, mumps, measles, and flu, all diseases to which the Indians had no immunity.

Many years ago the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles estimated the death rate of the Indian population under the Spanish, for the forty year period from through , at eighty percent! The Indian population of California before has been estimated to be around , Recent examination of Mission records has indicated that the losses among the native population were far greater, particularly among children, than had previously been reported.

The greatest loss of life was in those tribes living along the coast, and the best chance of survival was for those who lived greater distances from the missions. The Chumash, a tribe of about 20, people inhabiting the coastal regions and who traveled routinely to the Channel Islands, were reduced to members by the end of the colonial era, for a rate of survival of 1 in The population density was about 15 people per square mile in Southern California.

This could be an underestimation, but if there were three villages of each, the population could easily have been reduced to at most sixty people by , and within a few years only thirty-five or so would have survived. Of varying ages, and scattered in groups perhaps as small as ten individuals, these few remaining people probably would have combined forces and moved down to the village of Avaxat at the foot of Cole Canyon, in an attempt to continue their way of life together.

All the other missions nearly wiped out their Indian populations. If by the end of the American period only two people of a given family group remained to pass on the survival skills and the tribal memories, just who were they? Were they the Shamans, the ones who were trained to tell the stories of their tribe?

Were they very old — very young? Anthropologists do their best to reconstruct a lifestyle based upon archeological evidence and fragmented stories using logical thinking. A Luiseno tribal leader told me some years ago that it was not uncommon for informants Indians who told their stories to white men who paid for their information to spin tall tales of bizarre practices to hold the interest of the anthropologist, to protect family secrets, to avoid admitting his own ignorance, and to prolong the flow of cash.

Malki Museum was the first museum by and for Indians on a reservation in California. It was moved to an adobe building specially built for the purpose. Every year they have events, the biggest being the Memorial Day Fiesta or Kewet. Their list of technical and popular publications on California Indians is impressive.

Penn and Mrs. Saubel explained how the Cahuilla shamans managed the harvest of their crops. The Shaman inspected the food source each year, directing how much should be harvested for the community and determined how much should be left for the animals and for the gods. There were some years when the production was so small that everything would be left for the animals and the gods. Like humans today, Native Americans changed their environment just by being there.

Life was not as bucolic as we might like to imagine. Except for differences in available plants and animals, the lifestyle of the people who lived on the Plateau varied little from any other California coastal people.

They lived in small villages and collected most of their food within a two or three hours walk from their homes. California was not a pristine paradise. It was a garden, carefully cultivated to provide a sustainable lifestyle for the people living here. The most conspicuous of these cultivation practices was the regular burning of grasslands to keep the brush under control, and encourage new succulent growth that provided optimum grazing and browsing for game animals.

By changing the makeup of the plant communities it changed the numbers and distribution of animal species. One species, known as Dickelostema, Wild hyacinth or Blue dix was regularly harvested for its nutritious bulbs. It is now discovered that thinning of these bulbs by regular harvesting allows for larger and healthier plants.

Acorns were the primary food for most California tribes. But, the oak trees do not produce a bumper crop every year. And, the crop could fail entirely in a dry year. Therefore it was in the interests of everyone to share this resource.

According to some sources there was a wide-spread economic system throughout southern California based on acorns, by sharing a plentiful crop with neighbors in a good year, and thus establishing credit, for years when your crop failed. Tribal memory is spotty regarding the simple details of everyday life. Was it acorn for dinner and bread baked on a hot rock for breakfast along with some dried meat or berries?

Did they all gather around the fire for breakfast and dinner, or just for an evening meal? These practices probably varied from family to family, day to day and season to season. People would have eaten when they were hungry, whatever food was available. When the sun set they could then settle down before a fire to visit, sing and tell stories. Work was shared by all, particularly, as in the case of grasses, where the harvest season can be very short.

Some activities were limited to a single sex. Men hunted, and fashioned their hunting tools, arrowheads, and spear points and shafts. They also participated in the acorn harvest. Children would have brought water from the nearby creeks in baskets closely woven by the women from tules and fibrous plants gathered the year before.

Uphill on the slopes, dry branches of chamise were gathered for the fire, and more pliable ones to weave into brush shelters. Put in blender and add water and a heaping teaspoon of baking soda. Blend thoroughly and pour out liquid. Bird species such as band-tailed pigeons, acorn woodpeckers, red-shouldered hawks, screech owls, and great horned owls utilize these two oak species. The native bunchgrass prairie on the Santa Rosa Plateau is considered the finest example of native grasslands remaining in California.

The prairie reveals a host of native wildflowers — among them chocolate lilies, mariposa lilies, lupines, checkerblooms, shooting stars, and Johnny jump-ups.

The grasslands are used by badger, mule deer, and many burrowing rodents. Vernal Pools. Vernal pools are found on mesa tops, and support some of the rarest plant and animal species in the region — California Orcutt grass, San Diego button-celery, thread-leaf brodiaea, and fairy shrimp. During the winter months, these seasonal pools are frequented by many water fowl, including green-winged teals, Canada geese, grebes, greater yellowlegs, and long-billed dowitchers.

As the water recedes in spring, brightly-colored wildflowers such as yellow goldfields and purple downingia circle the banks of the pools with bright color. The most common plant community in California can be found on the Plateau in areas of granite rock outcroppings. Plant species such as chamise ceonothus and manzanita are characterized by their tough, woody stems and small leaves which help conserve water. Gem Type: Historic Site.

Comment Type:. Add Check-In. Save Check-In. Oct 31, Nearby Trails 4. Murrieta, CA. Lakeland Village, CA. Minor Issues. Muddy - Mud-fest on the upper peak trail. Bring poles if you do it this week. Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.