1.5: Summary

During the course of millions of years, California evolved into a region of tremendous geographic and natural diversity. The many climates and natural ecosystems helped create the varied ways of life of its hundreds of thousands of first settlers—migrants whose speech derived from six linguistic groups and was expressed in more than 100 dialects. The lush plants and game that flourished in California sustained this large Indian population, who created innovative ways of nurturing their natural resources.

Despite the multiplicity of their origins and languages, the Indian peoples shared certain values, perhaps reflecting their common origin in prehistoric time. They all managed their natural environment to produce the maximum amount of food, whether by controlled burns, hunting, or scattering of wild seeds. Almost all of them developed techniques for harvesting and grinding acorns into a staple food, and they all traded with other groups. A rich oral tradition of myths, legends, and stories—especially about the character Coyote and the event of the flood—was common to all groups, as was the veneration of animal spirits. Complex ceremonies, songs, and rituals connected them to their natural environment. They all had shamans who organized their spiritual life, and many used jimsonweed or other psychotropic plants as part of their religion, as well as the temescal or sweathouse. Their complex patterns of lineage, relationship, and status, including class systems in some groups, and their relatively small villages, reflected the patterns of all the native peoples on the continent—with the exception of the metropolitan civilizations in central Mexico. Their peaceful and nonwarlike image has some element of truth to it, despite the bloody intertribal warfare that periodically existed. Outside of central Mexico, native peoples rarely engaged in wars of conquest and territorial aggrandizement. The first Californians were neither more nor less sophisticated or warlike than other peoples in North America before the arrival of the Europeans.

A review of some of the most populous indigenous groups in California illustrates their rich heritage and many accomplishments. Their ability to learn how to live with the incredible diversity and richness of California’s climate and geography and develop cultures that balanced human and natural resources is an important ideal that seems to be regaining value in the new millennium.

Modern anthropologists evaluate cultures on their own merits, not in terms of a universal model of development that favors European culture, such as the models used by 19th-century historians and positivist scholars. Ultimately, the California Indians must be understood on their own terms, not in comparison to other Indians or to European and American notions of civilization. In this regard, we must remind ourselves that the native cultures that existed prior to their contact with Europeans were neither better nor worse than those who would attempt to control them. Then, perhaps, we can better appreciate the true diversity of California’s past and how that diversity may shape the future.