TRIBE OF THE DAY : Acjachemen
The Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation are the original inhabitants of the lands that ultimately became the County of Orange, as well as parts of San Diego, Los Angeles, and Riverside Counties. Long before the Spanish arrived to build Mission San Juan Capistrano, the land of Orange County was home to the Acjachemen people. For thousands of years, the Acjachemen culture and way of life thrived because they understood their survival was interconnected with the natural world. The oak woodlands, valley meadows, river marshes and ocean were their supermarket, pharmacy, and hardware store. The Acjachemen viewed the land as something sacred that needed to be protected and carefully used to insure the livelihood of their people. Our ancestors provided the original manpower for the construction of some of the earliest key landmarks in Orange County, including the Mission San Juan Capistrano, where we get our
Juaneño name.
Present-day Orange, Northern San Diego County, Southern LA County, and Western Riverside County, is home to the Acjachemen people. Acjachemen believe they have lived there since the beginning of time. Archaeological evidence shows an Acjachemen presence there for over 10,000 years.
The Acjachemen resided in permanent, well-defined villages and seasonal camps. Village populations ranged from between 35 and 300 inhabitants, consisting of a single lineage in the smaller villages, and of a dominant clan joined with other families in the larger settlements. Each clan had its own resource territory and was "politically" independent; ties to other villages were maintained through economic, religious, and social networks in the immediate region.
Native leadership consisted of the clan chief, who conducted community rites and regulated ceremonial life in conjunction with the council of elders (puuplem), which was made up of lineage heads and ceremonial specialists in their own right. This body decided upon matters of the community, which were then carried out by the clan chief and those under him. While the placement of residential huts in a village was not regulated, the ceremonial enclosure (vanquesh) and the chief's home were most often centrally-located.
The Acjachemen had a patrilineal society and lived in groups with other relatives. These groups had established claims to places including the sites of their villages and resource areas. Marriages were usually arranged from outside villages establishing a social network of related peoples in the region. There was a well-developed political system including a hereditary chief. Religion was an important aspect of their society. Religious ceremonies included rites of passage at puberty and mourning rituals.
The highest concentration of Acjachemen villages was along the lower San Juan Creek. In 1775, Spanish colonists erected a cross on an Acjachemen religious site before retreating to San Diego due to a revolt at Mission San Diego. They returned one year later to begin constructing and converting the Acjachemen population. The majority of early converts were often children, who may have been brought by their parents in an attempt to "make alliances with missionaries, who not only possessed new knowledge and goods but also presented the threat of force." Spanish military presence ensured the continuation of the mission system.
In 1776, as Father Serra was approaching Acjachemen territory with a Spanish soldier and one "neophyte," a recently baptized Native who was a translator for Spanish authorities, a crowd of painted and well-armed [Acjachemen] Indians, some of whom put arrows to their bowstrings as though they intended to kill the Spanish intruders, surrounded Serra's group. The "neophyte" informed the Acjachemen that attacking would only result in further violence from the Spanish military. As a result, the Acjachemen desisted, aware of the serious threat that military retaliation represented. During the late eighteenth century, the mission economy had extended over the entire territory of the Acjachemen. The Spanish transformed the countryside into grazing lands for livestock and horticulture. Between 1790 and 1804, mission herds increased in size from 8,034 head to 26,814 head.
As European disease also began to decimate the rural population, the dominion and power of the Spanish missions over the Acjachemen further increased. By 1812, the mission was at the peak of its growth: 3,340 persons had been baptized at the mission, and 1,361 Juaneños resided in the mission compound. After 1812, the rate of Juaneños who died surpassed the amount of those who were baptized. By 1834, the Juaneño population had declined to about 800.
The Acjachemen resisted assimilation by practicing their cultural and religious ceremonies, performing sacred dances and healing rituals both in villages and within the mission compound. Missionaries attempted to prevent "indigenous forms of knowledge, authority, and power" from passing on to younger generations through placing recently baptized Indian children in monjerios or dormitories "away from their parents from the age of seven or so until their marriage." Native children and adults were punished for disobeying Spanish priests through confinement and lashings. The logic behind these harsh practices was "integral to Catholic belief and practice." Gerónimo Boscana, a missionary at San Juan between 1812 and 1822, admitted that, despite harsh treatment, attempts to convert Native people to Christian beliefs and traditions were largely unsuccessful.
Governor José María de Echeandía, the first Mexican governor of Alta California, issued a "Proclamation of Emancipation" (or "Prevenciónes de Emancipacion") on July 25, 1826, which freed Native people from San Diego Mission, Santa Barbara, and Monterey. When news of this spread to other missions it inspired widespread resistance to work and even open revolt. At San Juan, "the missionary stated that if the 956 neophytes residing at the mission in 1827 were 'kindly begged to go to work,' they would respond by saying simply that they were 'free.'" Following the Mexican secularization act of 1833, neophyte alcades requested that the community be granted the land surrounding the mission, which the Juaneños had irrigated and were now using to support themselves. However, while Juaneños claimed and were granted villages, there was "rarely" any legal title issued, meaning that the land was never formally ceded to them following emancipation, which they protested as others encroached upon their traditional territory. While rancho grants issued by the Mexican government on the lands of the San Juan mission were made in the early 1840s, Indians' rights to their village lands went unrecognized. Although the Juaneños were now "free," they were increasingly vulnerable to being forced to work on public projects if it was determined that they had reverted to a state of dependence on wild fruits or neglected planting crops and herding or otherwise failed to continue practicing Spanish-imposed methods of animal husbandry and horticulture. Because of a lack of formal recognition, most of the former Acjachemen territory was incorporated into Californio ranchos by 1841, when San Juan Mission was formed into a pueblo. The formation of the San Juan pueblo was a direct result of the actions of San Diego settlers, who petitioned the government in order to gain access to the lands of the mission territory. Prior to the formation of the pueblo, the one-hundred or so Juaneños living there were asked if they favored or opposed this change: seventy voted in favor, while thirty, mostly older, Juaneños opposed, possibly because they did not want to live among the Californios. The formation of the San Juan pueblo granted Californios and Juaneño families lots for houses, and suertes, or plots of land in which to plant crops.
(the source is from https://www.jbmian.com and this tribe was requested by @goose08)
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