California's Native Chumash People
by Maria Carlenius
The Chumash as they're known are actually a group of many tribes of native Californians who have lived along the Santa Barbara Channel coast, inland valleys, and the northern group of a small chain of islands appropriately named the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.
Although the Chumash have lived in this region continuously for at least the last 13,000 years, they're surprisingly not well known - but hopefully that will change soon. In fact, given the current popularity of so many indigenous therapies on the west coast of the U.S. as well as the thriving decades of the Cowboy and Indian movie and television genre in Hollywood, it's somewhat unusual that the Chumash have remained little known for so long. It's actually a result of their history, however, that their knowledge of so many indigenous therapies was almost completely destroyed.
Fortunately, some of their very rich history was recovered because of a few very determined individuals and institutions, and ultimately, because of the Chumash themselves.
Who are the Chumash?
You already know something about them. The name of the beach town home to the Gidget movies and television show, and that popular 1950's and early 1960's surfing sound - "Malibu" - comes from a Chumash language. Their ancient burials are still in the surf town to this day. The Chumash managed to reach impressive populations that stunned early European visitors and missionaries from the 1500's to the 1700's with grand totals of 10-25,000 people organized into interconnected coastal, valley and island villages. They had a complex system of chiefs, canoe guilds for producing their vessels, and experts in healing and magic who were called 'antap.
The Chumash were also one of only two Native North American groups who actually traveled the perilous waters of the open Pacific Ocean (or any ocean for that matter) in sewn plank canoes called tomols. In doing so they were able to add considerably to their diet by harpooning dolphins and fishing for other deep sea delectables.
All this was accomplished without ever domesticating any plants or animals. Their whole way of healing and subsistence incorporated plants, marine resources and terrestrial animals including hunted deer in their most unaltered forms. They were hunter-gatherer-fishers who created an interrelated series of coastal and island villages organized into a complex chiefdom - a great Natural Foods success story almost lost to history.
Secret Knowledge, Now Found
For the first time in this 13 millennia old story you too can use familiar plants from your own garden or seed supplier, common seaweeds, and other poultices and therapies just as a Chumash shamanistic healer, or 'antap, would. It takes herculean efforts to rediscover the kinds and amounts of knowledge that were lost by the dwindling of the Chumash from their heights of success down to the meager 3,750 descendants who remain today.
They were hurt by European diseases, contacts with conquering Spaniards, clashes with Mexican ranchers, and a devastating period of total relocation into California's Spanish missions between 1769 and 1832. Relocated Chumash began to practice agriculture and animal husbandry for the very first time at the Spanish missions, and they gradually lost nearly all of their traditional basketry, incredible canoe making skills, plant knowledge, host of languages, and everything else that set them apart.
The recovery efforts have finally really paid off though. The heroes working to reclaim this lost knowledge include institutions like the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH) who actively sought out living Chumash who could bring back the art of the sewn plank tomol making for the first time in the 1970's when a resurgence around the world of native cultural lifeways resulted in Chumash from several tribes being able to paddle out proudly once again into the open seas and around to each of the Channel islands, just like their forefathers.
The SBMNH is a fantastic storehouse of museum collections full of objects representing Chumash culture and online resources which can be easily searched by the public (www.sbnature.org).
There are also the efforts of the Western National Parks Association which runs the Channel Islands Park, a place for visitors to go see the actual ancient Chumash archaeological sites and walk along and near their ancient footpaths and burials. They've been interviewing Chumash healers and other experts about how specific plants were used in daily life for nutrition and medicine. To learn more about the most heavily used Chumash plant species visit www.wnpa.org/freepubs/CHIS/NativePlantGarden.pdf.
Then there are individual heroes starting with the prodigious work of John P. Harrington (1884-1961) whose intensive, forty year career of interviewing Chumash (and other California natives), recording native languages and knowledge about their plant usage created a whole field of scholarship that is still growing to this day.
Now there are the modern heroes like James D. Adams, Jr. a pharmacologist and toxicologist, and Cecelia Garcia, a Chumash healer who've published journal articles together that were originally part of a lecture series and are now available for the public. See the article "Chumash Healing" for a wealth of cures and therapies they've offered us. You'll also find a list of sources and suggested further reading.