Bigots in Old California

In the late 1800s some Americans had a bigoted attitude toward Indians, and Mexicans too. A useful case study might well be the history of Juan Jose Warner and the Cupeno. If you look carefully at a road map of southern California you are likely to find the place name Warner Hot Springs. That place can be the geographic center of your study.


You may discovered that in California, as in much of the U.S., bigotry was often associated with greed. The kinder bigots of those days tended to think of Indians and Mexicans as many present day parents tend to think of their children. That is they thought of them as liabilities rather than as assets. A Mexican who knew her place could occasionally have some value, but Indians were generally unredeemable.
Other bigots were not so kind. Some even considered Indians and Mexicans to be vermin to be exterminated. Indians might be drowned or poisoned like gophers in a vegetable garden. Mexicans might be shot like a fox or bobcat in a hen-house. 


Don Juan Jose might have been a bigot, but he was certainly of a better sort than any mentioned here.


One may begin in a variety of times and places to explore the realities of these attitudes of closed-minded intolerance. I suggest that you begin in 1849 with the arrest of Juan Jose Warner. Warner was neither an Indian nor a Mexican. He had learned the ways of the "Dons," the ways of the "Californios" and he respected them. As a law abiding citizen of that time and place he had become naturalized as a Mexican citizen.


He came to occupy extensive lands in the far southern hills of California. He learned to live and work with  Indians in a mutually beneficial and somewhat respectful ways. He felt it natural and a source of pride to deal with fellow Californios as peers.


Google his name and check out the the history to see how a gentleman became 'vermin' in the land of the free. Or you could Search 'Cupeno.' To be correct one needs to remember the tilde over the 'n' in Cupeno.

Kuupangaxwichem

We don't even have an English name for these fellow Californians. We make do with a poor understanding of the Spanish interpretation of their name. If you call them Cupeno, pronounced with a tilde over the 'n,' you probably come as close as you reasonably can. They are a people who historically lived in the far southwest of California. Some of their neighbors have been called Cahuilla, Diegueno, Gabrielino, Juanino, and Luiseno ---- all names we learned from Spanish speakers.

Most Cupeno now know something of the headwaters of the San Lois Rey River. They were, and are, an amazingly numerically small people to have survived. They have survived. In 1909 people in our institutions still seemed to be trying to virtually kick them to death. At that time they were moved from Cupa to Pala. Today there are probably more Cupeno living among the Luiseno on the Pala reservation than in any other single place. Some also live on the Morongo and Los Coyotes reservations. Morongo is our pronunciation of a Spanish interpretation of an earlier peoples term. I have been told that an English translation of  'Morongo' is 'idiot leave.'

I have mentioned Cupa and Pala. You might be able to find Pala on a political road map of California. You may not find Cupa there. Since, say, 1920, where Cupa was, you may now find Warner Springs Ranch or Agua Caliente Village. I remember calling it Warner Hot Springs. It was, for a time, a place from which certain America Indians might withstand the Spanish and then others.

Now you may go to enjoy the waters at 'Cupa.' The last I heard was that those waters were controlled by certain Koreans. Also there might me heard there on certain dark nights, a blast from the shotgun of 'some crazy Indian.' It might be useful to know that in certain 'crazy Koreans' may be found genes astoundingly similar to certain genes found in peoples like Navajo and Apache. Maybe 'we' should talk.