Gabrielino

The first Spanish explorations into Alta California in the 16th century by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo described a native population that included the Gabrielino (sometimes also Gabrieleno or Gabrileno). Two centuries passed, however, before Gaspar de Portolá and Franciscan Father Junípero Serra arrived in 1769 to establish a Spanish settlement in Alta California through the creation of the mission system. Spaniards encountered a Gabrielino population, numbering as many as five thousand, in the region of present-day Los Angeles and Orange Counties and confirmed earlier reports of natives in the region with descriptions varying from primitive stone-age survivors to sophisticated civilizations. Gabrielino resource wealth, sophisticated culture, and economy impressed these visitors, who ranked them second only to the Chumash in their level of civilization. Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, established in 1771 as the fourth of twenty-one missions, not only controlled the lives and destiny of this indigenous population; their attachment to this mission conferred on them the name Gabrielino.

As with countless other Native American tribes in the Southwest, the lives of the Gabrielino irrevocably changed with the arrival of Spanish explorers and Franciscan padres, armed with muskets, Bibles, and a plan to turn California's first peoples into gente de razon, people of quality. California, the site of numerous myths, lay thousands of miles and many months of difficult travel from Mexico City, capital of New Spain, and even further from Spain itself. Finding settlers for this remote possession eluded Spanish authorities, who eventually devised a plan to convert, Christianize, and civilize Indians to become the settlers so desperately needed.

Contrary to the commonly held perception, Gabrielino Indians were not the original human inhabitants of present-day Los Angeles and Orange Counties. William McCawley's The First Angelinos suggests by its title they were the first; however, he and others explicitly acknowledge the “shadowy existence” of an earlier Hokan population in the region. Neither of these populations possessed a written language, and the subsequent lack of written records creates the necessity for archaeological and anthropological evidence verifying that the Gabrielino replaced a Hokan-speaking Chumash civilization on the southern Channel Islands. Techniques such as radiocarbon dating provide scientific evidence of the existence of human cultures in the southern Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. Recent testing confirms sites on San Clemente Island as early as 7785 BCE and on San Nicolas Island by 6210 BCE.

The Gabrielino belong to the Uto-Aztecan linguistic group, which once extended from the Great Basin area of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, and California into Mexico. (Earlier literature referred to this group as a Shoshonean culture.) There is solid evidence dating their migration from the Great Basin region into southern California around 6000 BCE. Gabrielino legend identifies a settlement of “first people” in the Cajon Pass during a time when “the earth was still soft,” a people who were “naked, cold and lonely… led by [Page 262]a wise captain southward into an ever-expanding land” (Johnston 1962). The fertile environment of southern California, compared to the less hospitable deserts of Nevada, affords the most likely reason for migration, although warfare cannot be entirely ruled out. The land chosen by this migratory people was rich in resources, virtually eliminating the danger of famine, and by the time of contact with the Spaniards, the Gabrielino developed a society marked by material wealth and cultural sophistication. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts suggest the area supported a peaceful population of approximately five thousand living in fifty to a hundred settlements on both the mainland and coastal islands.

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