The ancestors found uses for almost every type of plant and animal available - for food, clothing, medicine, baskets, canoes, and tools. The natural environment inspired art Chumash rock and cave art still exists today , beliefs, stories, ceremonies and songs. The rich history and lifeways of the Chumash people is preserved in those art forms, which were passed down to the children of each generation to today.
The Chumash are a maritime culture, known as hunters and gatherers. Our boats - canoes, called tomols - enabled abundant fishing and trade, traveling up and down the coast to other villages.
Tomols are usually constructed from redwood or pine logs. In the village there would usually be a temescal or sweat house. It is a closed building dug into the earth with a small door. In the middle a fire was built in order to create a hot atmosphere that would encourage sweating. Like other California Indians, the Chumash people would use the temescal like a sauna, to cleanse and refresh themselves. After spending time in the temescal, they would often bathe themselves in cold water.
The Chumash were very talented artists. Some of the most striking examples of their culture are the rock paintings, known as pictographs.
Many of these brightly-colored paintings were left on cliffs and in caverns in very mountainous and hard to reach locations, often near a spring or another source of running water, like a stream. Most Chumash pictographs are very abstract and made up of symbols, but sometimes they represent recognizable objects, like animals. A single rock could have hundreds of designs on it. There were certainly other encounters between Chumash and Spanish and other Europeans.
As time went on, the Spanish and Chumash began a close relationship of trade and work. In , however, during the Mexican period, there was a large revolt of Chumash people against the government because of difficult working conditions at the missions. The revolt eventually came to an end, but tensions lingered for many years.
His great desire was to attract the them to Christianity and build a mission in Chumash territory. He accomplished this at the end of his life in , with the founding of Mission San Buenaventura in the vicinity of a number of villages.
There were more missions established among the Chumash than among any other Native American group in California. By the early s, almost all of the Chumash had joined these missions.
Read more about native life at the Santa Ynez mission. These books have helped me understand more about the Chumash. Click on the link to find the book in Amazon. An introduction to the Chumash people. Damian Bacich, Ph. He founded the California Frontier Project to share the stories of California's roots. You can learn more about Damian here. Reach him at damian californiafrontier. Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content Skip to primary sidebar The Chumash are a widespread group of California native people who lived along the southern California coast and the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.
A chumash tomol canoe. Painting by W. Langdon Kihn. Wikimedia Commons. The Chumash garments included fur robes, kilts or aprons, and leggings. They wore one-piece moccasins with long tops that were wrapped about the calf, but went barefoot in the warmer weather.
The ceremonial crown-style headdresses of the Chumash consisted of a circular head roll that was made of bound tule and covered with fur. The central section of the headdress was made with a band of flicker feathers topped by feather plumes. Many Chumash people wore ear and nose ornaments as well as face and body paint, that was similar to the Mojave tribe.
The paint was made use of black and white coloring often applied in horizontal lines, as can be seen in the picture. The white color was obtained from chalk deposits and charcoal was easy to make resulting in distinctive white and black face and body painting. What did the Chumash tribe live in?
Grass Houses: The Chumash tribe of California lived in shelters of dome-shaped shelters called Grass Mat Houses as depicted in the picture at the top of this page. To build the grass houses, the Chumash men first created a circular willow framework. The size was about 7 - 10 feet in diameter and about 7 feet high - the chief's house was up to 35 feet across. After the grass had dried, the women weaved and sewed the rushes into rectangular mats about 2 feet wide.
The grass mats were sewn together with dogbane Indian hemp and tied to the willow frame. An opening in the roof created a smoke hole. The doors of the Chumash grass houses always faced towards the east and were built near water. What clothes did the women wear? The type of clothes worn by the Chumash women included aprons or skirts that covered the front and back made of shredded willow bark. Special clothes were strung with ornaments, tassels, shells and quills.
Twined tule slippers or moccasins covered their feet and in the winter they wore fur robes for warmth. What food did the Chumash tribe eat? The food that the Chumash tribe ate varied according to the natural resources of their location. Their food included staple diet of acorns which they ground into acorn meal to make soup, cakes and bread.
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