California State Parks has acquired funding to look for sacred Native American remains at a Chumash and Tongva Indian boundary near Malibu Creek. According to a State Parks official, an archeological study documented remains in the area in the 1920s.
By Kevin Connelly/ Special to The Malibu Times
It is famously known as the location of opulent coastal estates belonging to Hollywood megastars such as Mel Gibson and Leonardo DiCaprio, but the expanse of land along the Pacific Ocean now known as Malibu was once a prominent boundary of the Chumash and Tongva Indian tribes.
Jim Newland, supervisor of Cultural Resources at California State Parks, said an archeological study in the 1920s at an undisclosed area near Malibu Creek found sufficient artifacts at the location to declare it a sacred archeological site. Newland said State Parks began searching for some of these sacred remains-including a possible burial ground-in spring of this year and has acquired funding for testing in the near future to determine the presence of this sacred site.
“This was a fairly substantial [Native American] site,” Newland said. “Sacred items were found here 80 to 90 years ago and it is very likely that they still exist. This is one of the last true remnants of the Chumash Indians.”
In spite of the determination of State Parks to learn from the site, though, Newland said they did not plan to excavate. Preferring to error on the side of caution, he said. “We want to leave everything there in place. Once you excavate these [artifacts] you can never put them back in place. Our mission at State Parks is to preserve these resources.”
Newland said State Parks was also aware of other significant Native American sites in the area as well, but he could not reveal their exact locations in accordance with state law and in fear of looting.
According to the Web site www.santaynezchumash.org, the Chumash [meaning “bead maker” or “seashell people”] territory encompassed 7,000 square-miles that spanned from what is now Malibu to Paso Robles. The Chumash, according to the site, were hunters, gatherers and fishermen and lived in dome-shaped homes made of willow branches that supported up to 50 people at a time. The Web site www.tongva.com says the Tongva [meaning “people of the earth”] territory encompassed coastal lands from what is now Topanga Canyon to Laguna Beach.
Newland hopes to learn more about these tribes in the ensuing studies near Malibu Creek.
“You can learn a lot about a culture from what they leave behind,” he said. “You can even learn a lot from their trash.”