by Ruth Alter, Archaeologist
The Kumeyaay were the first people to live extensively within and use the lands that became part of Mission Trails Regional Park. There are more than 30 Kumeyaay sites in the park, all overseen and protected by park staff.
As long as 1,000 years ago, the Kumeyaay established and lived in the village they called Senyaweche, a large portion of which now lies beneath the Carlton Oaks Golf Course and Santee housing tracts. The Mission padres likely conscripted villagers from Senyaweche to help build the Mission Dam. The village persisted well into the historic period, with its residents remaining until around 1900 to 1910, when American ranchers and farmers purchased the land. Even after this, a few Kumeyaay stayed on, working as ranch and farm hands.
Today, the Viejas band of Kumeyaay claims tribal territorial jurisdiction for the area. Traditional Kumeyaay villages followed a dispersed arrangement pattern. Unlike European villages, where houses clustered together frequently, Kumeyaay families preferred to live further apart. Often, brothers established houses near one another or their parents, although they followed no strict set pattern.
Some of the sites found in Mission Trails Regional Park represent Kumeyaay living areas. To the Kumeyaay of the past and traditional Kumeyaay of today, the land itself and all its features and resources were and are powerful living entities.
People were part of the natural world, and in exchange for receiving the benefits that the land, plants and animals provided, people had certain responsibilities toward them. People had to keep the land clean, which meant burning off the understory beneath the oaks each year. People had to kill large game animals respectfully, which entailed following prescribed rituals. In particular, people especially cared for water courses, keeping banks and riverbeds free of debris.
The Kumeyaay were able to manipulate resources to suit their needs. They dammed rivers to create bathing pools for themselves and as places for turtles and fish to live. Their annual burning off of brush attracted deer to specific areas, and they knew how to grow plants from seed or transplant them to desired locations.
The Kumeyaay likely altered the park’s natural landscape in the past through their intervention. The park and its surrounding areas would have provided a vast variety of materials for food, medicine, tools, clothing and shelter. People gathered acorns and grass seeds to pound into meal. They turned tule reeds, willow and juncus found along the San Diego River into rafts or house thatching, bark skirts for women and girls, and coiled or twined baskets. They used flat granite rocks as kitchen grinding surfaces and fashioned quartz into projectile points to tip arrows. They could even have fashioned clay dug from along the banks of the river into pottery storage jars, cooking pots or bowls. Whatever resources the area that is now the park provided found their way into knowing Kumeyaay hands.