|
|
|
|
Site Index | CVA Index | Site Map | Native American Home
|
|
|
|
Cahuilla
Background
3 groups of Cahuilla:
Desert Cahuilla (near Palm Springs, CA)
Mountain Cahuilla
Pass Cahuilla
We will focus on Desert Cahuilla
Environment: desert, with desert plants, hot temps, and sparse rain except monsoonal downpours in the summer.
Language group: Uto-Aztecan.
Settlements and Architecture
Villages located near mouths of canyons, near water source such as spring or well.
Dwellings: rectangular post and beam houses, with gabled roof.
Walls laced willow and brush; roof woven palms or reeds. Brush walls held in place with horizontal poles.
Settlements
Each village also had a sweathouse.
Ramadas adjoined house for shade.
Food stored in raised platforms made of woven branches and brush.
Women’s work around the house: grinding and processing nut and seed foods using manos and metates. Ground stone slabs made for this purpose.
Materials for Living
Plant fiber was the main material for making everything in Cahuilla culture.
Baskets best known artifact.
Baskets made by coiling method, typical of California baskets.
Subsistence
3 main seasons: budding trees, hot days, and cold days.
Main food: mesquite beans, from mesquite trees that grow in groves in the desert.
Other foods: screw beans, acorns (but not as much as other people of California).
60 different plant foods used, including cactus stalks, chenopodium, and chia seeds.
Hunting and trapping brought in rabbit and mule deer meat.
Kinship
Patrilineal descent, patrilocal residence.
Two moieties: wildcat and coyote. Clans recognized within each moiety.
Marriage limited to person of opposite moiety.
Children were members of father’s clan and moiety.
Clan let by a "net." Primogeniture governed the passage of this responsibility.
Children
Naming of children took place in clan ceremonies, and a group of children were named at the same time.
Naming done when a child between 4 and 12 years of age in a clan ceremony.
Female names referred to plants, while male names referred to animals, birds, or insects.
True names were private; people known by nicknames outside own clan.
Growing Up
Boys and girls both had initiation ceremonies, to mark their passage into adulthood.
Girls were tattooed from lower lip to chin by cactus thorns.
First menstruation involved similar activity as associated with giving birth: lying in heated sand trough, covered with heated sand.
Boys initiation included drinking jimson weed, a hallucinogenic.
Marriage and Death
People married outside their own moiety, and also avoided marrying known rellies on either side.
Marriage simple, with wedding gifts but no elaborate exchange.
Early times: a house in which a person had died was immediately burned with the body inside, amounting to immediate cremation. Later, a cremation ceremony was held the morning after the death, and the house then burned.
When wood frame houses replaced the brush houses, a more traditional funeral ceremony was in association with at cremation. Some houses still burned after the death of three household members.
Religious Activities
Male shamanism central for curing, dealing with disasters.
Eagle-killing ceremony managed by the paha.
Mourning Ceremony most complex ceremony. Held each fall or winter for clan members who had died that year. Mourning ceremony marked the end of the period of mourning.
Cahuilla Land
Cahuilla land located in and around Palm Springs, California - - enormously valuable.
Land right have been continuous controversy.
Modern reservation created in 1896. Allotment created legal disputes because of disparity in value of the allotted land.
Contemporary Political Issues
In 1957, only 32 adults and 64 children remained of the Desert Cahuilla tribe. There were only 10 adult men, with 2 in the Navy, 2 over 70, and 2 incompetent. Women thus had prominent role in political governance.
Land disputes complex and multi-faceted, but resolved in 1977 by Supreme Court decision.
Contemporary Land Issues
Many Cahuilla no longer have land allotments, and those who do have highly fragmented shares.
Cahuilla now have significant income from businesses, including spa, casino, hotel, and country club in Palm Springs.
Tribe shares income with all tribal members, although disparity exists because of the different land rights held by those individuals.
California Basket Making
Baskets are the best known artifact from the California area.
The Pomo tribe’s baskets are best documented.
Territory: northern California coast, just north of San Francisco Bay.
Hokan speakers, with bilateral kinship.
Pomo Culture
Pomo were wealthy in that had many different resources available, including salmon, acorns and berries, sea mammals, and shellfish. Hunger was unknown.
Pomo were great travelers, and exchanged ideas with many other people.
Basket Making Techniques
Two methods used in California:
North: used twining
South: used coiling
Both methods produced baskets so tight they could hold water for days and be used for cooking by placing hot rocks inside the liquid contents.
Rock Paintings and Rock Art
California also well known for its rock carvings and rock painting.
Much debate about purpose and meaning.
One theory especially centers on California material.
Theory that this rock art was created by shamans in an altered state of consciousness.
Entoptics and Shamanism
Entoptics, or phosphenes, created by human nervous system under certain circumstances.
6 types of entoptic images:
Intersecting lines forming a grid
Parallel lines
Circles and dots
Zigzag lines
Curved lines
Meander lines
Stages of Entoptic Imagery
Stage 1: Entoptic or phosphene images themselves.
Stage 2: Entoptic images transformed into iconic forms based on viewer’s body state and cultural principles (e.g. if hungry, circle might become an orange or a deer.)
Stage 3: Iconic imagery is fully recognizable form, complete with accompanying phosphene forms.
