Settlement Patterns
Under Construction
Except for those groups who territories lay within exceptionally well watered ecological zones, rich with food resources, and thus could established semi-sedentary and sedentary village sites, most of the people of the Desert Interior region followed the age-old Archaic subsistence pattern of movement from either day to day, or season to season, or year to year in the quest for food. Consequently, many of the Desert Interior groups did not own or defend territories or recognize any particular piece of ground as home. Rather, small kin-based groups ciruclated freely across the landscape, moving to take advantage of resources where and when they became available. It was the abudance and distribution of preferred resources that determined these movements. However, there were exceptions to this pattern. For example, the Kupa, Cahuilla, some Serrano and Eastern Mono groups occupied permanent villages year round, with members leaving the village for a few hours every few days to collect wild plants (for food, industrial purposes, medicine, etc.) and hunt game animals. The only time when the majority of a village's population was absent was during the annual acorn or piñon or mesquite bean collecting activities, or for collecting hunting activities, such as rabbit drives or antelope surrounds.
Among the more mobile groups, camps were moved frequently from late spring to early fall as seeds and other plant foods were most abundant and widely distributed during that time. Generally, the amount of time spent at any one food procurement site was small, and consequently these camps were relatively impermanent and not elaborately furnished: a makeshift brush windbreak provided shelter for sleeping, eating, and food preparation. And because the camp members were nearly always on the move during the spring-into-fall gathering season, the amount of gathering and hunting tools and other equipment was limited to what could be transported easily: digging sticks, burden baskets, kitchen utensils (sometime including grinding and pounding tools, although these were frequently left behind since they were somewhat bulky and heavy), perhaps the tools and raw materials for repairing clothes and equipment, and various baskets. Most of this equipment fitted neatly into one or two conical carrying baskets; the reamining items were transported in net carrying bags.
By early fall, most families had selected a nut-gathering camp location affording access to the most productive nut groves, oak groves for people living in the Tehachapi Mountains, piñon pine groves for people living in, or adjacent to, the ranges of the Colorado Desert, as well as the mountains lying west and east of the Owens Valley. Usually such groves were selected early in the spring so that seeds, roots, and other foods could be stored near these nut groves, since they, along with the stored nuts, would serve as the only reliable sources of winter food.
Because winter camps were occupied for longer periods, and during the most incliment time of the year, structures tended to be more elaborate and substantial than summer camp ones. Houses varied in form and size depending upon the materials at hand and the size of the groups occupying them. In some regions, the most typical house were conical lodges of piñon logs or domed pole and brush wikiups, but oval gabled houses with lengthwise ridgepole were also built. Winter camps also generally included a sweathouse.
For more detailed information on settlement patterns for specific groups, choose from the following:
Eastern Mono | Kawaiisu | Chemehuevi | Serrano | Kitanemuk
Tataviam | Vanyume | Cahuilla | Kupa | Tipai
Eastern Mono -
Kawaiisu -
Chemehuevi -
Serrano - Most village-hamlets were in the foothills, although a few were out on the desert floor near permanent water sources. In fact, it was the availability of water on a year-round basis which was, to a large extent, the determining factor in the nature, duration, and distribution for all Serrano village-hamlets. Individual family dwellings were usually circular, domed structures built of will frames covered with tule thatching. These homes were occupied by a husband and wife (or wives), their unmarried children (if females), usually married children (if males), sometimes the man's parents, and occasionally a widowed aunt or uncle.
The house served primarily as a sleeping area with most daily, routine household activities taking place either out in the open or under the shade of aramada , a wall-less structure with a roof of thatched willow poles supported by posts placed vertically in the ground.
In addition to family houses and ramadas , most villages had a large ceremonial house where the lineage leader lived. The ceremonial house was the religious center for each lineage or for a group of related lineages. Other village structures included granaries and sweathouses. Sweathouses were large, circular, semisubterranean, earth-covered structures supported by willow-pole frames and thatching, and were used by men, women, and children.
Kitanemuk - Very little is known concerning Kitanemuk settlement patterns, but they probably differed little from that of their neighbors to the north, the Kawaiisu of the Tehachapi Mountains and the Yokuts-speakers of the southern San Joaquin Valley. In 1776 the Spanish explorer Francisco Garcés briefly visited a Kitanemuk settlement and he described the people there as living in a communal tule house, similar to that of the lake Yokuts, but square instead of rectangular. From his description it seems that the Kitanemuk house consisted of a framework of poles covered with tules mats and consisted of individual family rooms, each with its own door and fireplace, surrounding a court. The court had entrances on two sides only, at each of which a sentinel was posed at night.
Tataviam - Very little is known concerning Tataviam settlement patterns. On the basis of archaeological and ethnohistorical information it appears that villages varied in size from large centers with perhaps 200 people to small settlements containing 10 - 15 people. The two or three large villages were maximally dispersed in relationship to one another; very small villages were adjacent to these larger villages, while intermediate-size villages of 20 -60 people were dispersed in between the major centers.
Vanyume - Almost nothing is known concerning Kitanemuk settlement patterns. However, given that the bulk of their territory lay within the Mohave Desert, it is likely that most villages were small, perhaps home to no more than 20 - 30 people, and residents shifted from village site to village site during the course of the year to take advantage of seasonally available resources.
Cahuilla - Villages were usually situated in canyons or on alluival fans near adequate sources of water and food materials. The area immediately surrounding the village was owned in common by the lineage, while other lands were divided into tracts owned by clans (political-ritual-corporate units - each clan composed of 3-10 lineages), families, and individuals. Numerous sacred sites marked off by petroglyphs and pictographs were associated with each lineage village.
Movement out of permanent villages was for specific purposes such as hunting, gathering, trade, ritual, or social visiting. Houses and other structures in a village were situated to take advantage of water sources and ensure privacy. The largest number of people left for the greatest amount of time during the acorn-collecting season, when most village members moved for several weeks to acorn groves.
Dwellings varied in size from brush shelters to dome-shaped or rectangular houses, 15-20 feet long depending on the individual family's needs. Rectangular ceremonial houses were also built and used for rituals, curing, and recreational activities. A communal men's sweathouse and several granaries were also located within the village, clustered around the ceremonial house or homes.
Kupa (or Cupeño) - Kupa settlement patterns and houses were, in many respects, similar to those of the Cahuilla, except that whereas there were several dozen permanent Cahuilla villages, the Kupa possessed only two: Kupa, located near a hot springs, and Wilakal. Kupa was the larger and was occupied during the nineteenth century by four Kupa clans and one affiliated Cahuilla clan. Wilakal was occupied by two clans, one of possible Cahuilla and the other of Ipai origin.
Clans occupied specific territories with the most productive canyons, oak groves, cactus patches, and seed-bearning areas owned by the clans. However, all intervening territories were free to everyone, and hunting for deer, rabbits, quail, pigeons, etc., and gathering was permissible on any territory by the members of all clans. The people at kupa, however, excluded those from wilakal, as well as neighboring Cahuilla, Luiseño, and Tipai groups, and thewe groups in turn excluded all others from their territories.
Tipai - The Tipai were a semi-nomadic people made up of at least 15+ patrilineal, named clans, some hostile to one another. Each clan occupied a territory, with most of the clan's villages being temporary campsites occupied on a seaonal basis. Camp sites were selected for access to water, drainage, boulder outcrops or other natural protection from weather and ambush, and abundant flora and fauna of that ecological niche. When someone died in camp, that person's house was burned and that particular house site was avoided in the future for fear of ghost-caused illness.
Structures varied according to locality, need, choice, and raw materials. A summer village needed only a windbread, trees, or a cave tronted with rocks. Mountain oak groves often had substantial shelters and platform-supported, covered granaries for storing acorns. In winter, villages were located at lower elevations in well sheltered areas with each cluster of dwellings scattered to ensure privacy and advantageous use of the landscape.
Some dwellings resembled hemispherical baskets turned upside down, framed with saplings, covered with brush thatch (and sometimes earth), and usually placed over a slightly sunken floor. Other dwellings were rectangular into shape, built around a framework consisting of a gable and upright supports, and covered with grass mats. In the mountains, some Tipai wintered in large caves or bark-roofed, pine slab houses.
In large villages, village-owed ceremonial structures were built. Clans that jointly havested agave or piñon nuts had a rock-supported brush fence dance circle or a rectangular, flat-roofed, brush shelter, sometimes walled.
For additional information on the Desert
Interior Region,
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To comment on this page please send email to Chuck Smith at crsmith@cabrillo.cc.ca.us.
Page last updated: 23 August 1999