Luiseño

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Pablo Tac, who lived at Mission San Luis Rey in the 1820s and 1830s, made this drawing depicting two young men wearing skirts of twine and feathers with feather decorations on their heads, rattles in their hands, and (perhaps) painted decorations on their bodies.
Pablo Tac, who lived at Mission San Luis Rey in the 1820s and 1830s, made this drawing depicting two young men wearing skirts of twine and feathers with feather decorations on their heads, rattles in their hands, and (perhaps) painted decorations on their bodies.

The Luiseño are a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County, California to the northern part of San Diego County, California, and inland 30 miles. In the Luiseño language, Luiseño people call themselves Payomkowishum, meaning "People of the West."

The tribe was named Luiseño by the Spanish due to their proximity to the Mission San Luís Rey de Francia ("The Mission of Saint Louis King of France," known as the "King of the Missions"), which was founded on June 13, 1798 by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, located in what is now Oceanside, California, in northern San Diego County, in what was the First Military District.

The Luiseño language is in the Uto-Aztecan family of languages.

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[edit] Population

Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. (See Population of Native California.) Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:649, 883) put the 1770 population of the Luiseño (including the Juaneño) at 4,000-5,000. Frederic Noble Hicks (1963:73-74) estimated 7,500-8,000 inhabitants, and Raymond C. White (1963:117, 119) proposed 10,000.

Kroeber estimated the population of the Luiseño in 1910 as 500.

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[edit] References

  • Du Bois, Constance Goddard. 1904-1906. Mythology of the Mission Indians: The Mythology of the Luiseño and Diegueño Indians of Southern California. The Journal of the American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. XVII, No. LXVI. p. 185-8 [1904]; Vol. XIX. No. LXXII pp. 52-60 and LXXIII. pp. 145-64. [1906].
  • Hicks, Frederic Noble. 1963. Ecological Aspects of Aboriginal Culture in the Western Yuman Area. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.
  • Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C.
  • White, Raymond C. 1963. "Luiseño Social Organization". University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 48:91-194.
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