California was home to thousands of people before Spanish settlers arrived—around 350,000 across the whole state—and the Los Angeles Basin in particular was home to the Gabrieliño-Tongva people. The movements of the Tongva peoples set the stage for what would eventually become Los Angeles. Their footpath through the Sepulveda Basin was the original 405 freeway. The L.A. State Historic Park was formerly a fertile basin within a mile of Yaanga, the Tongva people’s largest known village in the area.
The Hahamog'na, a band of the Tongva peoples, settled along the Arroyo Seco river, which now comprises Northeast Los Angeles.
Their influence on the eventual metropolis of Los Angeles extends far beyond their choice of location, though; the forced labor and enslavement of Tongva peoples is what allowed Spanish settlers and missionaries to develop their reach in the first place. When the Spanish arrived in Southern California, they sought fertile land to produce the crops they were hoping to cultivate. This led them to the bountiful San Gabriel Valley (the San Gabriel Mission is credited as the first location of Spanish settlers in the area that became Los Angeles).
Craig Torres of the Tongva community, through UCLA’s Mapping Indigenous L.A. project, explains how, prior to Spanish arrival, the San Gabriel Valley consisted of a “concentric circle” of native communities, which the Spanish recognized and exploited—they subsumed inter-connected communities into the Mission system, which was easier for them than accessing isolated communities along the coast (the dual name of Gabrieliño-Tongva comes from forced assimilation at the hands of the San Gabriel missionaries).
I think that the Pechanga Blog owner should sue the above poster in court and stop them from posting on this blog. It is very annoying to the readers and to the ones being harmed by corrupt leaders.
ReplyDeleteThis blog was supposed to a place for the people to express their feelings on disenrollment issues and some jerk off shit like the above post.
Have information that can disprove the legitimate existence of the so called "tonga" as the the true representative peoples of the Los Angeles basin. Los Kicherenos, "The People of the Willow are the true people of this area. This claim was born in the early 90's and falsely created by people who have been proven to not be aboriginal to the area. Their ancestral lineage to the early times, in records kept to document the lives of those recognized by the San Gabriel Mission, has never been found. No money can buy them the federal recognition they are seeking. Their divisions as factions and "identity" theft only prove how dis-enrollment is the product of our conquest & continued historical trauma. The enemy lives within us. I am a Tigua (Ysleta Sur Pueblo)living on the land of The Kizh. Aho...to all my relation !!!!
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