SAN EMIGDIO CREEK REGION – TASHLIPUN VILLAGE GROUP
By John Johnson
Environment
The San Emigdio Creek region abuts the northern edge of the Mt. Pinos uplands of the Transverse Range. Elevation in the region, as drawn here, varies from a low of 600 feet on the Kern Lake plain (at the north end of the region) to a high of 4,600 feet along the upper limits of the year-round habitat at the southern end. The steep uplands continue to rise beyond that boundary, reaching 7,495 feet at San Emigdio Mtn., less than two miles to the south; and 8,831 feet at Mt. Pinos, five miles to the south. Several creeks cut deep canyons through the area from the uplands to the south, including San Emigdio, Pleito, and Pleitito creeks. All of these become dry in places during the summer and fall, but have productive springs here and there along their stream beds. Native vegetation was predominately grassland, which covered the plain to the north (unless some of that plain was valley saltbush scrub) and all of the low foothills in the central area. A rim of blue oak woodland grew on the higher southern uplands, and gave way to pinyon woodland in higher lands beyond the region to the south.
Early Expedition References
Investigation of an Indian Attack in 1790. A detachment of soldiers from the Santa Bárbara presidio was attacked in San Emigdio Canyon in 1790. While most of the soldiers were away from camp, two soldiers left as guards were taken by surprise and killed. The subsequent investigation revealed that the war party of 58 men had been composed mostly of men from Kashtiq and allied mountain rancherías along with a few Yokuts allies. Four men from "Taxilipu" (Tashlipun) were among the attackers (Johnson 2007:91-93).
Longinos Martínez 1792. An itinerary kept by the naturalist José Longinos Martínez mentions a side trip from Santa Bárbara to what was apparently San Emigdio Canyon in order to inspect a vein of ore. Whether he actually made this excursion into the interior mountains is in doubt, and there is no specific mention of the ranchería of Tashlipun in his account (Simpson 1961).
Zalvidea 1806. The Zalvidea party from Santa Barbara entered the San Emigdio region on August 4, 1806 on their way south from explorations to the north as far as modern Bakersfield:
We entered a canyon where some years ago the Indians killed two soldiers [in 1790]. At the entrance of this canyon a stream of water flows out, carrying a quantity equal to that of the San Gabriel River. Soon we came to a village of five houses, called Taslupi [sic], but at present there are no Indians living on it. … It is five leagues distant from the village at the end of the lake, the same distance from Buenavista [Zalvidea 1806 in Cook 1960:247].
The next day the Zalvidea party moved south up the San Emigdio Creek canyon and over a ridge into Cuddy Canyon (see section on Gorman region). Geiger ([1940] 1957) has pointed out that the name San Emigdio was apparently bestowed by Zalvidea in honor of the feast day of Saint Emygdius while the expedition was at Tashlipun.
Proposal for a Mission at San Emigdio, 1820. On June 2, 1820, Father Mariano Payeras issued an extensive report on conditions at the missions in Alta California. In it he proposed that a new chain of inland missions be established "in the area opposite from Santa Bárbara to San Diego." He suggested that San Emigdio Canyon was one of two suitable sites in the southern San Joaquin Valley:
<blockquote.Between the Missions of San Buenaventura and San Fernando, in about latitude 34-1/2°, and to the north of the former 20 to 25 leagues distant, is located the Cajón de los Difuntos, so called because at that place the pagans treacherously killed two soldiers [in 1790]. The region promises support for a good mission with all its needs—many people, water, timber, and some pasture with a large area for ranchos. Although low mountains intervene, its communication with this chain is easy because it is already on a mule train road [Payeras 1820 in Cutter 1995:264].</blockquote>
Chumash Uprising, 1824. The first reference to the existence of a mission rancho at San Emigdio is contained in documents pertaining to the Chumash uprising. An advance party of Barbareño rebels killed two non-Indians who appear to have been engaged in mining in upper San Emigdio Canyon (Cook 1962:153; Johnson 1984; Phillips 1993:). According to Angustias De la Guerra:
…the Indians from Santa Bárbara killed two white people at the rancho called San Emigdio. One was an American named Daniel (I do not remember his last name) and the other was a Californio named José Antonio Félix. … When the Indians got hold of Señor Félix, first they cut off his right hand so they could dance with it, and then they killed him [De la Guerra 1878 in Beebe and Senkewicz 2006:208].
An expedition was eventually sent to parlay with the fugitive Indians from Mission Santa Bárbara who had sought refuge in the Tulares at an island in Buenavista Lake called "Mitochea." Captain Pablo de la Portilla kept a journal of the expedition:
We traveled along the plain, and leaving the lake on the right hand, we went toward the place called San Emigdio, a ranch of Santa Barbara Mission, where we met the division of Lieut. Estudillo who had arrived the previous day without incident. San Emigdio is 9 leagues from the exit of Grapevine Canyon [Portilla 1824 in Cook 1962:155].
Aided by the president of the missions, Sarría, and the minister of Santa Bárbara, Ripoll, an agreement was reached with the Barbareño Indian leaders, and the neophytes returned with the expedition through the mountains and back to the coast.
Rodríguez 1828. In May 1828, while searching for runaway neophytes and stolen horses from Mission San Miguel, Sergeant Sebastián Rodríguez arrived at Rancho San Emigdio at 8:00 on the morning of the 30th:
There I encountered a heathen named Francisco and some old women, who were cultivating their garden. This man gave me 4 horses and said that he had turned over 50 to Sergeant Salazar who had been authorized by the Commandant of Santa Barbara. He said he would go and show me a village where there were a lot of horses, a village called Carrizo [Cook 1962:186].
The "village called Carrizo" perhaps refers to a ranchería of the Hometwoli at Kern Lake, because the latter were called the "Carrises" tribe when they signed the Tejon Treaty in 1851 (Heizer 1972). The next day’s reference refers to pursuing a runaway neophyte from Mission San Miguel into the mountains of San Fernando, so it is unlikely that the "Carrizo" ranchería referred to what is now called the Carrizo Plain, as Cook (1960:208, n. 31) suggested.
Young 1832. In 1830 Ewing Young became the first Euro-American to lead a trapping expedition into California’s Central Valley, traveling from Mission San Fernando northward to San Francisco where he sold his pelts. Over the next few years, Young continued to visit California to trap and trade. According to J. J. Warner, who accompanied Young on one of these trips, the trappers ascended San Emigdio Canyon in October 1832, where they encountered a group of Indians gathering pinyon nuts and noticed an old smelter, presumably that used by the two miners who had been killed during the Chumash uprising (Outland 1969:47; Warner in Outland 1969).
Mission Register References
Twenty-three baptisms are registered at four of the missions: two at San Luis Obispo in 1794 and 1813; one at San Miguel in 1813; five at San Buenaventura between 1810 and 1815; and 15 at Santa Bárbara between 1818 and 1825.
The first individual baptized at San Luis Obispo was recorded as being from Taslib; he subsequently transferred to San Buenaventura where his ranchería name was recorded in the padrón as Tashlipún. At San Buenaventura, the ranchería name was always recorded as Tashlipún by Fr. José Señan, the most phonetically accurate of all missionaries in writing Chumash names. Most of the people baptized at Santa Bárbara were recorded under the name Taxlipu, with Taxlipo and Taislipu being variant exceptions. At San Luis Obispo, the name was written as Taslib and Taslipu. At San Miguel the name was recorded as Tasslipú.
Intervillage Kinship Links. The mission records document the following intervillage kinship connections pertaining to people from Tashlipun: five marriages and/or parent-child relationships to other Chumash rancherías in the far interior (three Kashtiq, one Mat’apxwelxwel, one K’o’owshup), six links to rancherías in the mountains and valleys behind Santa Bárbara and San Buenaventura (one Saq’ka’ya, one Shnaxalyiwi, one Shniwax, one Mat’ilha, one S’eqp’e, one Mupu), a single connection to a Chumash coastal town (one S’axpilil), and three marriages to non-Chumash groups (one Tuhohi ["Auyamne"], one Hometwoli ["Xexulpistuc"], one Kitanemuk ["Ajtanumú"]). One girl from the neighboring ranchería of Malapwan on Santiago Creek ran away from Mission San Buenaventura to reside with her grandmother in "the Tulares" and subsequently died at Tashlipun in 1812.
Special Notes. The chief of Tashlipun was Andrés Uichojo, 55 years old, baptized at Mission Santa Bárbara in 1818 along with what appears to have been the majority of his people. He was said to have been a relative of an Indian named Pablo at Mission Santa Bárbara (probably Pablo Lihuisanaistset from Shniwax, who was said to have been one of the chiefs of Syuxtun on the Santa Bárbara waterfront at the time of his daughter’s baptism). The movement of the Tashlipun group to Santa Bárbara appears to have resulted in the establishment of a fledgling mission rancho at San Emigdio a short time before the 1824 Chumash uprising. The chief’s brother was Luis Calala, who was sent as an emissary of the Barbareño rebels to the Southern Valley Yokuts during the uprising (Johnson 1984).
1840-1900 Historical References
San Emigdio was granted as a rancho on July 13, 1842 to José Antonio Domínguez, who died soon afterwards. It may have been about this time that an adobe building was constructed as the rancho headquarters at the former site of Tashlipun; it is conceivable, although undocumented, that an adobe dwelling may have been built even earlier in the 1820s. Cattle were removed by Francisco Domínguez, son of the original grantee, in the mid-1840s to property closer to the coast in order to be free of Indian depredations (Hoover et al. 1966:127). By the time of the Anglo-American conquest of California, a wagon road later referred to as El Camino Viejo became the preferred route of travel into the San Joaquin Valley, passing over the San Emigdio Mountains and down San Emigdio Canyon (Latta 1933).
Apparently a native community persisted alongside the rancho buildings and corrals that began to be established at Rancho San Emigdio. The existence of resident Indians at this site had been noted by Rodríguez in 1828. There is no way of knowing whether these were a group who had been part of the original Tashlipun ranchería or had moved there from elsewhere. Certainly after 1841, Indian residents would have been employed by the rancho. Among those who signed the 1851 treaty at Tejón were two men from "San Imirio": José María, chief, and Francisco (Heizer 1972). Because the name is so common, it is far from certain whether this last-named individual was the same Francisco whom Rodríguez had encountered at San Emigdio 13 years earlier. In 1854, a correspondent for the Los Angeles Star reported that José María "from the old Mission ground of San Emigdio" had moved with his people to Mat’apxwelxwel at the bottom of Grapevine Canyon in order to become part of the Tejon Reservation (Giffen and Woodward 1942:30; Phillips 2004:123).
San Emigdio Canyon (called by him "San Amédio") was visited in 1854 by geologist William Blake, who accompanied the party engaged in finding the best route for a railroad through the San Joaquin Valley:
During our stay at the Tejon, I learned that masses of ore were found in the mountains to the southwest, about twenty miles distant. It was supposed to be lead or silver ore, being called "plata" by the Indians, who seemed to think it could be found in immense quantities. … [T]he services of an Indian guide, named José, were procured, and I started, with two men, for the locality [Blake 1856:41].September 21 [San Emigdio Canyon].—Left camp soon after sunrise, being detained by the absence of José, who had gone off in pursuit of mountain sheep. He soon returned, excited, but not successful. About four miles from camp we reached a spring, and near it found the ruins of a log-house. This, according to our guide, was the "Campo de los Americanos;" being the place where some adventurers had lived and attempted to smelt the ore. The ruins of the cabin were charred by fire; and at a short distance we found the walls or adobes of a forge or furnace, in the bed or hearth of which a mass of slag remained.
We did not find any great quantity of slag or cinder about this furnace, and concluded that it had not been used long when it was abandoned. There was no evidences of mining in the vicinity, nor any heaps of ore. José seemed to think that his duty was accomplished, and was disinclined to go further. In answer to inquiries about the ore, and where it was obtained, he only pointed to the forge and ruins, saying: "Me sabe no mas." He, however, went towards the confusedly mingled debris and rounded fragments of rock at the end of a long ravine, and soon found a mass of the ore about as large as one’s fist, and much rounded by attrition. On breaking this open, it was found to consist of nearly pure sulphuret of antimony; the freshly broken surfaces being brilliant, and like those of the ore of the East Indies. The ascent of the ravine was immediately commenced with the intention to find the vein from which the masses of ore were transported [Blake 1856:43].
Blake and his companions eventually located the vein that was the source of the antimony ore, which he described as appearing to be "from four to ten feet thick, and…bounded on each side by granitic rock" (1856:41). This was at what is still today called Antimony Peak in the San Emigdio Mountains. Apparently Blake was describing the location where the two miners (one being a Norteamericano) had been working when they were killed during the Chumash uprising of 1824. The same smelter had been seen by J. J. Warner and Ewing Young in 1832. These early descriptions provided the historical basis for the later legends of the "Lost Padres Mine" that were to become popular in the late nineteenth century and beyond.
It is curious that Blake omits mention of the adobe buildings at Rancho San Emigdio, but his concern was primarily to do a geological survey.
A half interest in Rancho San Emigdio had been purchased from the Domínguez family by John C. Fremont on November 29, 1851. Fremont’s friend Edward Beale, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California, founded an Indian Reservation at Tejón in 1853. After a survey of the proposed reservation, encompassing nearly 50,000 acres, was completed by H. S. Washburn, Beale instructed him to survey a second tract about half the size at San Emigdio. Called the "Santa Remelia [sic] Military Reserve," this land was never developed as a reservation (Phillips 2004:120).
Rancho San Emigdio continued to be developed and was visited by William Brewer in 1863. Brewer noted that the ranch house "was surrounded by the houses and huts of [the] Mexican and Indian vaqueros" (Brewer 1966:__). In 1869 the patent for San Emigdio was conveyed to Alexis Godey, who originally came to the southern San Joaquin Valley as a companion of Fremont and Beale. Godey had previously managed the rancho during the period that Fremont was part-owner of the ranch. Several stories are told about Godey’s interactions with his Indian laborers during this period (Latta 1939). In the plain below the San Emigdio ranch headquarters, a small pueblo grew up, composed of "Mexicans and Indians," that survived for some years until the Kern County Land Company bought out the last of the settlers in the 1890s (Gray 1957; Hoover et al. 1966:127).
Classic Ethnographic References
Merriam gathered some information at the Tejon Ranchería about the nineteenth-century ethnogeography of the southern San Joaquin Valley and surrounding uplands between Nov. 10 and 12, 1905. His information about the people of the San Emigdio region follows (Merriam 1967:436):
San Emigdio. Tribe, Tash’-le-poom Koo-koo (Chumash). In their own language:
The place: Tash’-le-poom
The people: Tash’-le-poom’ Koo’-koo’
Merriam’s data indicate that Buenavista and Valley Yokuts speakers also called the San Emigdio people Tash-le-poom, merely substituting their own words for "people" and "place" (Merriam 1967:436). Merriam recorded the Kitanemuk name of San Emigdio as Ko-kow’-ă-pe-ah, information obtained during an interview with Mrs. J. V. (Narcisa) Rosemyer at Tejón in 1903 (Merriam 1898-1938).
Kroeber (1925:Plate 48) mapped both Tashlipunau and Kamupau on San Emigdio Creek. He wrote, "Kamupau, Tashlipunau [and some Grapevine Creek village names] are Yokuts forms, but some of them may rest on Chumash originals" (1925:552). He had nothing more to say about the people of the San Emigdio region.
The most extensive ethnographic information pertaining to the San Emidgio region was collected by J. P. Harrington during interviews with elders at the Tejón Ranchería and Tule River Reservation (Harrington 1985, 1986). He recorded the Chumash name of San Emigdio as Tashlipun and its Kitanemuk name as Quqawpea (cf. Merriam’s "Ko-kow’-ă-pe-ah," above). Harrington reported that the name was derived from qoqait, meant raiz de lavar or ’soaproot’ (Harrington 1986:Rl. 98, Fr. 423, 672). Harrington’s photograph of the adobe ruins at San Emigdio is labeled "Tashlipun" in his handwriting (Harrington 19xx:___).
One of Harrington’s consultants at Tejón was Sebastiana Higinio, whom he interviewed in 1916. Sebastiana stated that María Villareal, whom Merriam had interviewed at Tejón, "was of San Emigdio," but her native language was Tulamni (which had also been the language of Sebastiana’s mother; Harrington 1986:Rl. 98, Fr. 661). Kroeber, another who had interviewed María Villareal, obtained a Tulamni Yokuts vocabulary from her (Kroeber 1963:179). The reported affiliation of this Yokuts woman with San Emigdio may refer to an association of her family with the Rancho San Emigdio, rather than to the original ranchería of Tashlipun.
Sebastiana Higinio told Harrington the following regarding place-names in the San Emigdio region:
El Pleito is just around the point of the hill, La Punta de la Loma [north end of Wheeler Ridge], somewhere near where El Pleito Canyon comes in. The Tej. [Tejoneño] name means El Guatamotal [meaning ’the Mule Fat’ (Baccharis salicifolia)]. Tashlipun and San Emigdio are still farther around the point of the hill. Seb. [Sebastiana] knows the exact site of Tashlipun well [Harrington 1985:Rl. 89, Fr. 572].
In Harrington’s Kitanemuk notes, he noted that ipqoyik, the Kitanemuk name for El Pleito, came from ipqochr, meaning ’guatamote’ (Harrington 1986, Rl. 98, Fr. 672). José Juan Olivas, a Ventureño speaker, translated the Kitanemuk place-name as kawita’y; however, he admitted that he did not know whether this was its original designation in his language (Harrington 1986:Rl. 98, Fr. 424).
Harrington recorded two Chumashan place-names of Kamup in the interior region. Neither of these appears to be in the San Emidgio region where Kroeber had mapped the Yokuts version of this placename, Kamupau. The name means ’at the cave’ in Central Chumash languages, so the name Kamup likely referred to many cave places in the interior mountains.
Recent Ethnographic References
Applegate (1975), Brown (1967), King (1975), and McLendon and Johnson (1999) all map Tashlipun in San Emigdio Canyon. Horne (1982) and Johnson (1984) have discussed this ranchería as part of their ethnohistorical studies of Interior Chumash peoples. Robinson (2006) has synthesized ethnographic and ethnohistorical data pertaining to his study of rock art in the San Emigdio Mountains. Archaeological excavations at two sites in the vicinity of the old adobe ruins have demonstrated that these were occupied during the Mission Period (Bernard 2008).
