Tribe: The Chumash, also known as the "Costanoan."
Meaning of Name: "Seashell People."
Location: The Chumash have occupied the coastal regions from Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo through Los Angeles, including the Channel Islands, since about 10,000 BC. Place-names include Malibu, Lompoc, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Point Hueneme and Simi Valley, which also gives a good indication of where they lived. Because of the mild climate, the Chumash lived quiet, settled lives and didn't need to plant crops or store food, because where they lived, food was plentiful, and they traded with the other local tribes for what they needed.
Original Language: Chumash (it appears to be unrelated to other dialects except for some linguistic similarity to Polynesian.)
Tribal Affiliations: Other Chumash tribes and the Tongva, who also lived in the Los Angeles Basin but spoke Ute-Aztecan, and the Kumeyaay to the south, who spoke Yuman, which is a branch of the Hokan linguistic family.
Traditional Enemies: The Spanish missionaries.
Traditional Style of Houses: Very large dome-shaped houses made of willow branches and reinforced with whalebone. Probably made by the men but owned by the women. Villages also had sweat-lodges and menstrual-lodges.
Traditional Attire: The Chumash men usually went naked except for a belt, and the women wore a knee-length grass or animal-skin skirt and a fez-shaped basket-weave hat. The Spanish missionaries changed all that when they invaded the coastline of California, at which point, the enslaved Chumash were forced to switch to cotton peasant garb: plain white one-piece dresses for the women and a pair of white cotton trousers and a plain white cotton shirt for the men.
Traditional Foods: The men gathered mussels, abalone, clams, oysters, spiny lobster, octopus, squid, oceanic fish and mammals (due to the Chumash's fine canoes) such as whales, dolphin, bass, swordfish, bass, Bonita, and river fish like trout and chub. They and their neighbors the Tongva feasted on grunion after the grunion runs. The men hunted for or trapped deer, rabbits, ducks and geese while the women gathered dandelions greens, wild onions, wild lettuces, currants, gooseberry, elderberry and blackberries and flavored their foods with sage, mustard, bay leaves, and gathered black walnuts, laurel sumac, and wild grains like rye, buckwheat and chia. And, like the other acorn-eating tribes of California, the women gathered acorns, bleached out the bitter tannins and made it into a mush which could be stored and eaten at leisure. The Chumash were also talented herbalists.
Position of Women: Equal to that of men. A Chumash daughter could inherit her father's chieftain or shaman position. What seemed to matter most is if a person was rich in Olivella shells, because money meant power, which had to be kept within the family. Transsexuals and homosexuals were also accepted and esteemed in Chumash society.
Chumash Courtship: If a Chumash man wanted a particular girl, he had to pay a bride-price, probably in Olivella shells or other things that the bride's father wanted. Other than that, I have no idea.
Interesting Tidbits: The Chumash used strands of cut-out pieces of Olivella shells (they look like white olive seeds) as currency.... They used tar, most likely from the La Brea Tar Pits, to seal their plank-wood boats.... Flat noses were considered an attractive trait, so babies' noses were flattened soon after birth. This may also suggest that thousands of years ago, wide-nosed Polynesians arrived in the Channel Islands then immigrated down to Mexico, where they founded the Olmec civilization, and that what remained of their Polynesian culture was a preference for wide-noses by both the Chumash and the Olmecs.... The book, The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (1960) is based on the true story about a Chumash girl who was left alone on one of the Channel Islands, managed to survive on her own for many years, and then died soon after she was rescued.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion and (reluctantly) Catholicism.
Slavery and the Chumash: The Spanish used Chumash slaves to make their missions and do their farm-work, care for livestock, tan hides, and produce the things necessary to run the missions. Taking care of crops and livestock was not part of the Chumash lifestyle, which did not endear the Chumash to the missionaries, or the missionaries to the Chumash, so many of the Chumash tried to run away. Unfortunately, there was no Underground Railroad in California for the mission slaves, so when they were caught and returned to the missions, they were brutally punished or killed. Death rates were high among the Chumash due to slavery and diseases against which they had no natural immunity, including those diseases borne by European livestock.
Current Population: There are more than 5,000 registered Chumash.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Originally, bead-making, basket-weaving and trading. Now, mostly casinos.
Famous Chumash: None that I have heard of.
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