Southern California

i. Some sheen acquired by human touch.

ii. Size ranged from 1/3” to 1” dia. and from 1/3” to ½” thick.

c. Measured variously - tip of middle finger to palm crease, circumference of palm and fingers, circumference of elbow and finger tips.

i. System based on doubling or quadrupling measurements.

d. Haliotis (abalone) or rock clam shell made into cylindrical beads highly valued.

a. Elder friends tell of not even disturbing rocks in the landscape, saying the old ones may have put it there for a reason obscure to us. Bad to disturb.

1. Music and dance was used in both sacred and secular situations. Few group ceremonials. All performed out in the open.

a. Six-day long ceremony for the year’s dead involved burning a tule effigy and the burning and redistributions of property.

b. Characteristic group ceremonial dress was hand crafted.

i. Shamans were typically males and wore finely wrought dress.

ii. Cahuilla, Chumash wear a short skirt of eagle-down twisted into milkweed or hemp string, adorned with eagle feathers (Eagle Dancers).

iii. Cahuilla shaman used hair pins made of owl feathers for mourning events.

iv. Chumash shaman wore tall (38cm) headdress of magpie feathers, surrounded by a base of crow feathers.

v. Luiseño shaman wore eagle feather cap.

vi. Diegueño shaman wore a tatahuila skirt.

c. Little known of religion of coastal people.

d. Six-day long Datura drinking ceremonies by choice of individual.

e. Instruments included cocoon rattle and clapper sticks.

f. Sand paintings made for ceremonies for change: mourning, healing, adolescent initiation, marriage, birth, solstice, eclipse

i. Made of seeds and grasses, reflects gathering patterns.

ii. Paintings convey ceremonial knowledge and mythological information within a religious context.

aa. Local creatures depicted, wolves, rattlesnake, black widow spider, gopher snakes.

bb. Highly specific recording of astrological data.

iii. Paintings made outdoors in full view of the community

iv. Paintings centered around a spitting hole; the accuracy of the spit wad of meat, salt, or plant material indicted and related to success of change.

v. Offerings set out around paintings: tobacco, money, cloth.

g. Birdsongs are pan-tribal music form, most everybody sings.

i. Maybe the most rhythmically complex of the Americas.

ii. Several hundred songs. Some are very old and not sung in any recognizable modern Indian language.

iii. Every group has songs in their own language.

2. Clothing.

a. Men’s clothing included a breechcloth of buckskin, but nudity was preferred. In winter, rabbit-skin or mud-hen robes in winter.

i. Sandals usually only worn away from home, made of yucca fiber.

ii. Men went bare headed, mostly.

b. Women’s clothing consisted of front and back aprons of shredded willow bark falling to between ankle and knee. In winter a robe of rabbit skin or feathers.

i. Sandals worn in dry weather when traveling.

ii. Women wore basket hats when transporting loads.

3. Juncus, tules and other fibers.

a. Basketry was mostly coiled of Juncus. Muhlenbergia rigens and Rhus trilobata used, too.

i. Acorn leaching and rough work baskets made of whole Juncus. Cahuilla name “throw away basket.”

ii. Some baskets covered with pitch or asphaltum (tar) to make them waterproof.

b.   Chumash have long been considered premier artisans of SoCA.

i. Used for food gathering and preparation, storage, traps and weirs, cradles, gambling trays, dance accessories.

ii. Designs are mostly horizontal or banded. Large number of geometrics.

c. Tule boats used in calm ocean margins by Kumeyaay and Gabrieleno.

i. Carried up to six adults and their possessions.

d. Housing made of available poles and thatch. Not earth covered. Year-round occupation. Men hauled, everyone built.

i. Some houses were single family dwellings (Cahuilla, Luiseño) some housed up to ten families, each with its own area (Chumash).

ii. Chumash had Sacramento Valley style earth-covered round house.

iii. Ramadas used extensively

iv. Small sweat houses were used.

e. Tump line and carrying net used.

f.   String and cord made of wild milkweed or hemp fibers.

g. Cane pipes probably used, not survived.

4. Wood work. Most wood imported some distance.

a. Dice were made from walnut shells filled with asphaltum and inset with abalone chips.

b. Fire drill.

c. Mush-paddles and a few bowls. Chumash had mother of pearl inlay.

d. Bows are mostly unbacked.

e. All arrows fletched - wood-tipped cane for waterfowl hunting and stone-tipped hardwood arrows used for bigger game.

f. Chumash made plank canoes, some 25 feet long with a four-foot beam.

5. Horn, bone and shell.

a. Bone awls and scrapers.

b. Shell necklaces.

c. Shell fishhooks.

d. Shell money and treasures.

6. Stone implements.

a. Used obsidian, granite, quartz, and soapstone.

With the exception of the black grindstone or metate and hand stone or mano, none of these manos match the grinding stone or bowl they are paired with. They have apparently been matched according to the best color sense of the curator.

b. Food processors.

i. Mortar and pestle = bowl and pounding tool of stone or wood.

ii. Metate and mano = flat stone and flat grinding stone.

c. Stone points, knives, hammers, and scrapers chipped from imported lithics.

d. Bowls and pipes of steatite and serpentine

i. Most steatite quarried on Santa Catalina Island by the Tongva.

ii. Oldest steatite work at Malibu Ranch and Santa Barbara Channel Islands.

iii. Most characterized by massive size - 2 ' bowl; 7 lb pipe.

7. Pottery made only by Cahuilla and Kumeyaay.

a. Sand-tempered, mostly undecorated, coiled construction.

b. Idea believed imported from the Colorado River cultures.

i. Imported 500 years ago or so.

c. Made by paddle and anvil method.

d. Pit fired.

e. Decorations confined to dots, circles, and lines.