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Introduction (FACT DUMP ONLY) Agave and juncus textilis (reed) were perhaps some of the most useful plants and were used in baskets, houses, and to make sandals. Band gathering areas were specific areas within the tribal territory and belonged to the group collectively. They were used by the entire population and were under the management and control of the 'captain'. Supplies were gathered and distributed from these areas. Body painting consisted of geometric shapes such as parallel lines, dots, zigzags or hand prints. Both girls and boys learned the use of the throwing stick to hunt rabbits and the use of bows and arrows. Women were the potters and basket weavers. Both men and women gathered acorns and pine nuts, participated in rabbit drives, and wove their own sandals. Provisions were carried on the head using burden baskets. The burden basket was then placed across the top of the forehead with the basket cap used to protect the head. Basket caps were worn by both sexes Bows were made from mountain ash and screw bean mesquite. Sinew was wrapped below the nock to keep it from splitting. Bow strings were make of milkweed. Arrows were made of chemise or arrow weed. Common wooden implements were the bow, rabbit sticks, pottery paddles, stirring paddles, agave chisels, shovels, and wooden mortars in the desert. War clubs were heavy mesquite wood and ceremonial objects were also made of wood: bull-roarer, dance wands, and painted boards. Creation myths involved animate and inanimate objects. The bear and the eagle were considered sacred. The porpoise was thought to be the guardian of the world. Diegueños also practiced sand painting, carved bone, and did ceramic etching. Diegueños celebrated births, deaths, marriage, puberty, hunting, and phases of the moon. Diegueños traded food, tools, shells, shell beads in a barter system. Diegueños wore little or no clothing. Instead they wore jewelry and face/body decorations. Rabbit skin blankets were worn in cold weather, while at other times women wore small aprons in the front and back, and men went naked. Face and body painting was mostly for ceremonies. Girls were tattooed on the chin as part of their puberty ceremonies. Jewelry consisted of bead necklaces, stone or pottery pendants, and hair ornaments. Each band also had a cemetery or cremation area that was used for sacred disposal of the dead. It was maintained as a restricted area. Each territorial band consisted of a large village in which the kwaaypaay lived. The territory extended from ten to thirty miles along a stream and its tributaries up to the drainage divides. Dispersed homesteads belonging to the band were scattered along the drainage and side valleys where springs existed. Entrances to houses always faced east the direction of the sacred mountain origin of the Diegueños. Families that lived by the sea, lived in basket-like huts made of tules. Inland huts were made of brush and branches. Families or individuals owned areas which were tended and provided food. They grew grain grasses, perennials, shrubs, oaks, cactus, corn. They also had special areas that provided clay, basket-grass, minerals, or water. These areas were inherited by the sons and used by wives and daughters. Usually they owned resource areas in several different locations depending on where the tribe was living. . Diegueños did not wander but had carefully planned routes and time schedules. The tribe moved to where the food was growing the best. The amount of land varied widely among families based on status. Games included a type of lawn bowling played with stones. The object of the game was to land your stone closest to the first stone. This was also played with a bow and arrow. There was also a loop and pole game played by young men. Women and girls juggled two to seven items in one hand. Pinon nuts, small squash, or stones were frequently used. Homarp was a guessing game and was popular. Individuals owned property which they made, received as a gift, or traded. Other possessions included agave bags, clay gourds used for dishes and storage. After death, all property had to be destroyed by fires, including crops not yet harvested. Intangibles such as songs, dances and stories, curing rituals, and legends were privately owned and their performance ceased with the death of the owner unless they had been given to a younger relative or someone else trained as an apprentice. Kumeyaay shared meat, mescal, and other resources. Since acorns were gathered communally, they were also owned communally. Village leaders played a part in fair distribution. Many Diegueño myths revolve around Cuyahomarr or Chaup, the wonder working boy. He lived on earth as a man but now is associated with ball lightening. He is responsible for the distinctive marks on many animals, the results of striking them with a stick. Men sometimes went naked and smeared black and white paint onto their bodies and wore feathers to look fierce. (picture in one of the books shows a group). Men were the principle combatants in war, although women and children frequently went to war with them and acted as provision bearers, picked up arrows after they were used. Diegueño women were among the few Indians women who accompanied men to war. Natives practiced land management by using controlled fires to reduce the risk of large fire, provide nutrients to the soil, remove undersize oaks, and provide native grasses with a better, open environment for growing. Rabbit skin blankets required 20 jackrabbit pelts or 40 cottontails. They were usually made from a combination of the two. Strips of rabbit fur were woven around a warp of yucca or milkweed fiber. Rocks were used to mark group boundaries and were defended by sorcery and arms. Band territory included such things as trails, general hunting territories, religious and ceremonial areas, band gathering areas, and family or individually owned land. Sacred lands existed at the national and band level. Each tribe or nation lived within the territory encompassed by their creation or prophetic stories. San Diego Indians worked hard to hunt, gather food, fish and farm. Shoes were made of animal hides. Sandals were woven from yucca. Sandals could be made in two hours with expertise. They were strong and were turned frequently to prevent wearing out. Some villages contained as many as 300 people. Stonework included mortars, pestles, metates and manos, projectile points, stone pipes, and sucking tubes, heating stones, arrow shaft straighteners and roughly flaked knives and chopping implements. Occasionally small stone sculptures were made of birds or animals, or double-headed figures which may have been hunting amulets. Tattooing was common, especially among the women. Usually 2 or 3 vertical lines on the chin were worked into the skin while girls were adolescents. The artist used cactus spines and charcoal. The coyote represents a bad nature. The coyote is a bad man, always trying to deceive people and do things he shouldn't. The coyote is not to be trusted. He is pathetic. He lies and eats the dead. No one wants him for a relative. The Kumeyaay and Cupeño fought together to defend their territory, had leaders that went beyond the band level, and had a national courier or information systems for transmitting info from one end of the territory to the other. The San Diego Indians shared some resources, maintained trails between groups, and spoke related dialects. The social, economic, religious and political ties were closer than to other tribes outside of San Diego. There was little tribal organization, so crimes usually went unpunished. Sometimes damages were demanded by the victims. Executions were done using bows and arrows. Most punishment was inflicted by the victims family, not by the tribe as a whole. Their tools were made from stone, wood, bone, and shell. Soapstone from the Channel Islands was occasionally used for containers. Cooking because it distributed heat. There were few musical instruments: deer and tortoise shell rattles, six hole flutes were played by men and boys, an upside down basket was used as a percussion instrument. Typical Diegueño lived in the foothills in the winter, moved to the mountains in the summer, and traveled to the pinon groves in Fall. Sometime they journeyed to Yuma to live with another tribe (Quechan). They would plant crops in Imperial.Valley. sometimes. When a baby turned one or two, the family had a big party. People brought food and danced. They brought presents: baskets, ollas, food, mud dolls, bow and arrows, whatever was needed to give the child a good start. Sometimes they made miniatures. The child was given a name at the party. Food Kumeyaay may have developed techniques to exploit agricultural resources and increase supplies of food. They planted corn, beans and squash in some locations. They also broadcasted grain-grass seeds into freshly burned fields, transplanted wild onions and other bulbs and tubers, planted cuttings of cactus and opuntia near villages, cleared land for planting seeds of wild greens (chempodium), shrubs (manzanita or elderberry), or tree crops (oak, mesquite, wild plum) and cleared fields for domestic crops. Diegueños ate seeds and foraged for food. These agricultural areas were well-tended (pruning, debris removal, clearing with fire, hand-clearing or grubbing, and guiding water to specific crops. Caring for these crops overtime led to a quasi-ownership of these plots. Rabbits were hunted with nets or throwing sticks for food and skins. Deer were the most important large game along with mountain sheep and antelope. They were stalked and ambushed with bows and arrows. Other animals such as quail, waterfowl, and small mammals, were hunted too. They killed and/or ate crows, mice, snakes, frogs, coyotes and crawfish with weapons that varied from arrows, slings, clubs, throwing sticks, and bare hands. Some creatures were not eaten for religious reasons: squirrels, bears, doves, pigeons, and mudhens. Mesquite pods were gathered in late summer in the desert. These pods were rich in sugar and were pounded into meal. Pinon nuts from the pinon pine were highly desirable and Indians would travel great distances to harvest them. Pinon nuts could be roasted in the cone, removed and parched, or ground into a paste-like meal. The agave or century plant grew in the desert. In Spring the plant was severed from the root, the outer leaves were trimmed off, and the heart was cooked in a pit oven. The most important staple food was the acorn. Manos or milling stones and stone pestle were used to grind acorns into flour, which was boiled into gruel in pottery bowls. In fall the Black Oak which grows at higher elevations was preferred but Live Oak acorns were also used because they are so common. Acorns were shelled, pounded to make flour which was then leached to remove the bitter tannin. Then it was cooked into mush. Unshelled acorns were stored in basket granaries of roughly woven willow branches and leaves. Shawii-Acorn mash. Tribes fought over possession of oak groves. Men often pit-roasted mescal from their desert journeys. Men tended bees for honey and hunted for meat. Women were responsible for gathering wild greens, seeds and fruit. Women ground seeds and acorns in stone mortars and prepared most of the food. Special jobs within the village. The captain, or kwaaypaay, was the leader of the village. Above the kwaaypaay, was the regional general or Kuachult Kwaataay. The kwaaypaay was usually male, and served as the arbiter and mediator. He organized and directed all ceremonies for individuals and weather control. He determined when to move based on input from shamans to an area for new resources. He lead diplomatic or war efforts. He organized defensive strategies for the group. Kwaaypaays received produce and valuables for their management skills. Leadership was often inherited. But sometimes when a leader died, a successor was chosen from another village to insure harmony between families. An outsider also brought an objective attitude. Medical man's treatments involved sucking blood from the wound, blowing smoke on it, or spitting on it. Some medicine men specialized becoming experts in snake-bits, head aches, rainmaking, etc. Head aches were usually relieved by sucking the demons out of the victims skull. Often they concealed small animals or insects in their mouths and pretended they had sucked the mouth. Obedience was optional. All men assisted in defense against an invading group; but each decided whether or not to participate in raids. The kwaapaay was followed not for his orders; but for his greater knowledge and managerial abilities. Potential kwaaypaays were trained from childhood in various Diegueño dialects and rituals. Loyalty was maintained by popularity and generosity. Other native positions were speaker, singers, dancers, runners (messengers), carriers, and lookouts. Positions of power and status were inherited. The band captain and other leaders had more land in order to entertain and feed the ill and needy. They also had slaves or servient land less persons assisting. Religious leaders were assigned by heredity; altho not always so. Usually there were several shamans in a village, each with a specialty-healing, weather seer, visionary, or someone who percieved things differently. A shaman could be male or female. Singers and dancers made rattles for ceremonies. These were traditionally made of clay or deer hooves. Gourd rattles were a slightly more recent introduction from the Mohave Desert. Deer hoof rattles were hard to make. Only dancers knew how to make them. After the dance, which was often at the funeral (Image Ceremony), they were destroyed so hardly any are left. The kwaaypaay had an assistant who was the speaker and a council of shamans called kusteyay who were specialists in resource and ritual management. After consultations , the kwaaypaay had the speaker announce the decisions. Examples of decisions: go to the mountains, go to the coast, have a ceremony. Each family was free to follow it or not as they pleased. Most often, they followed the decisions and valued the kwaaypaay's greater ability and access to essential knowledge of resource conditions. The kwaaypaay maintained harmony. The kwaaypaay role was inherited. The son was trained by the father. At the death of a kwaaypay, a successor was chosen from among the sons of all kwaaypaay and then approved by the band. The shaman specialized in spiritual and herbal healing. Older women served as herbalists who aided in the healing of injuries and illnesses that did not have supernatural causes. The Shamans or nuut (net or noot) led the social, political, economic, and religious organization. Shamans and others in control of supernatural powers had special ownership rights to medicinal plants, crystals, and other resources. These could overlap, coincide, or be contained in other recognized areas of ownership. These rights could pass out of existence or be inherited by the individual trained by the shaman. |
