SANTIAGO CREEK REGION – MALAPWAN LOCAL BAND OR VILLAGE

By John Johnson

The Santiago Creek region lies in the southwest corner of Kern County and includes the town of Maricopa. The region’s western edge almost reaches the southeast corner of San Luis Obispo County. The native people of the area are known only from village names documented in mission records or remembered by early twentieth-century Yokuts descendants from neighboring regions. The original location of the ranchería can be placed with certainty on Santiago Creek. Nine baptisms of people affiliated with Malapwan were recorded at Missions San Buenaventura and Santa Bárbara between 1787 and 1819. To the northwest of Malapwan near Maricopa was Hoschiu; it may have been a border-area trading center where the local residents traded with the Buenavista Lake people. A village called Gapisau, alias Paleta, was mapped by Kroeber at Cienega Canyon, though he provided no discussion; it was probably the same place as Sqene’n, where a visiting missionary baptized four people on the way from Cuyama to Malapwan in 1806. However, Sqene’n was likely to have been just outside the Santiago Creek region at the eastern margin of the flat plain of the Cuyama Valley. The language of the people of the Santiago Creek region was not directly documented, but was likely the interior variant of Ventureño Chumash that Kroeber called Emigdiano.

Environment

The Santiago Creek region abuts the northwestern edge of the Mt Pinos uplands of the Transverse Range. Elevation varies from 800 feet on the flat Buena Vista Lake plain in the north up to 4,600 feet in the south, an elevation that defines the upper limits of the year-round habitat of the region itself. Adjacent uplands quickly rise above 5,000 feet. Cerro Noroeste, at 6,468 feet, is only three miles away to the east. Water in the region is limited to seasonal creeks with small watersheds. The largest watershed is that of Santiago Creek, which runs north from the San Emigdio Mountain vicinity. One of the creeks just outside the region was called Agua de la Paleta in the late nineteenth century, and the hills around it were known as the Paleta Hills. Native vegetation was primarily grassland, with a small area of pinyon pine woodland along the upland margins. Some blue oak and canyon live oak are found in the upper Santiago Creek watershed, and of special interest is a dense sand of canyon live oak in the Los Lobos Creek drainage in the southeastern part of the region.

Early Expedition References

Investigation of an Indian Attack in 1790. A detachment of soldiers from the Santa Bárbara presidio was attacked in San Emigdio Canyon in 1790. While most of the soldiers were away from camp, two soldiers left as guards were taken by surprise and killed. The subsequent investigation revealed that a war party had been composed mostly of men from Kashtiq and other rancherías in the San Emigdio Mountains along with a few Yokuts allies. The war leader of the group was said to have been a man named Tucachana from Malapwan, and it was at that ranchería that the war council had been held (Johnson 2007:91-93).

Zalvidea 1806. The Ruiz-Zalvidea party passed through the Santiago Creek region as part of their 1806 exploration of the southern San Joaquin Valley. They arrived in the region on July 24 from a campsite at Lisahua (Lishawato’w) at the eastern edge of the Green Canyon area:

Early in the morning we started out toward the east. At two leagues we came upon a salt marsh. … At four leagues we reached the village of Sgene [Sqene’n]. This village consists of 7 men, 16 women, and 3 children [he baptized three old people here]. … Seven leagues east of this village we encountered the village called Malapoa [Malapwan], which has 29 men, 22 women, and 8 children [he baptized one old person here]. … The territory covered today is arid, without herbage or trees. In the afternoon of this day I went out with the Lieutenant [Ruiz] and a few soldiers to a little settlement of Indians belonging to the village of Napolea, the settlement being three leagues from the village. There is a small spring one league from the village of Napolea and on the way from Napolea to the little settlement there are lands good for sowing groups. One can see mountains which have a few pine trees and in the near-by hills there is some pasturage… [He baptized six old people here.] A league away from this settlement one sees a range of mountains on which pine forests are growing [Zalvidea 1806 in Cook 1960:245].

Cook (1960) commented upon the locations of these places, as follows:

Malapoa is located by Gifford and Schenck (1926) as on Bitterwater Cr. It is identified by them with Hoschiu of the Yokuts tribe, Tulamni All the preceding villages were Tokya Chumash (see Kroeber, 1925, p. 47). Nopalea [sic] can have been on either Bitterwater or Santiago Cr. [Cook 1960:283].

The six-league distance that Fr. Zalvidea estimated between Sqene’n and Malapwan correlates well with the latter’s location being along Santiago Creek. His diary mentions that he celebrated Mass on July 25, which is Saint James’s Day, and this is certainly why the name Santiago (St. James) afterwards became associated with the creek. The text is confusing with regard to the "little settlement" of "Napolea," which appears to have been subsidiary of Malapwan. The fact that one could see pine trees nearby and "good pasturage" suggests a location within the San Emigdio Mountains. The site of "Napolea" was very likely at the potrero and spring along the middle part of Los Lobos Creek, the next canyon east of Santiago Creek; however, if this conclusion is accepted then the distance of three leagues given by Zalvidea was in reference to the round trip, rather than one way.

Portilla 1824. Following the Chumash uprising in February 1824, most of the neophytes from Mission Santa Bárbara, along with others from Santa Inés and La Purísima, fled to the San Joaquin Valley where they took refuge on an island called "Mitochea" in Buenavista Lake. In June 1824 Captain Pablo de la Portilla led an expedition to parlay with the fugitives in company with Fr. Vicente de Sarría, the missionary president, and Fr. Antonio Ripoll, the missionary of Mission Santa Bárbara. After coming to terms with the Indians and granting general amnesty, the expedition returned over the mountains back towards Santa Bárbara. On June 16, after leaving Mitochea, Portilla recorded the following:

We traveled across the plain some 4 leagues and entered a canyon called Santiago at the mouth of which is found the village of Malapica [sic], at present uninhabited. Here we camped for the night at the mouth of this canyon, which is 4 leagues long [Cook 1962:156].

After waiting another day at Malapwan to rest his horses and to allow families to catch up who had fallen behind, Portilla and the returning group then crossed the ridge into the upper Cuyama Valley before following the old trail up Santa Barbara Canyon that led the party back towards the coast.

Rodríguez 1828. In May 1828, while searching for runaway neophytes and stolen horses from Mission San Miguel, Sergeant Sebastián Rodríguez visited the Yokuts ranchería of Tulamniu on Buenavista Lake. He took the chief and his people hostage in an effort to force cooperation:

Among the prisoners was a young lad who said that in the mountains of Santa Barbara was a village which possessed horses and saddles although there were but few people. He offered to go and point it out to us. So as soon as night fell I set out with 15 men, and at dawn of May 30th, arrived at the village and captured everyone.

As soon as I told them to come out of their houses the chief handed me a document from the Father Minister of La Purísima which said that he had authorized the chief to recover horses belonging to that mission. Immediately I ordered 4 soldiers and 2 Indians to assemble these horses. They brought 20 animals . . . They had 8 saddles and 3 cow hides. I asked the chief where they had got the saddles and hides and he said that Patricio the alcalde of the said mission [Purísima] had provided them so that they might catch deer and take the deer hides to the mission. I asked him about the cow hides and he said they had been taken from the mission, but it was not to be credited that cattle escaping from Mission San Miguel should reach the Mountains of Santa Barbara near where this village is located.

I took away the horses, saddles and all other equipment for riding, and at about 8:00 o’clock in the morning [May 30] retired to Rancho San Emigdio [Cook 1962:186].

Although Rodríguez’s description is not specific enough to pinpoint Malpwan as the ranchería where he confiscated the livestock, its implied proximity to Rancho San Emigdio (Tashlipun) suggests that Malpwan could very well have been where this incident took place. If so, then this ranchería must have been reoccupied after Portilla’s visit four years earlier.

Mission Register References

Nine people from this region were baptized: six at San Buenaventura, 1787-1810; and three at Santa Bárbara, in 1800, 1818, and 1819. None of the six individuals baptized by Fr. José María Zalvidea in 1806 at "Malapoa" and "Napolea" was ever entered into the mission records. Of the nine baptisms that were recorded at San Buenaventura and Santa Bárbara, only three took place after Zalvidea’s visit, so very few of the 59 residents that he observed ever became affiliated with the missions.

The variant names for Malapwan recorded in baptismal registers were Malapuana (once at Santa Bárbara), Malapua (twice at Santa Bárbara), Malapuam (twice at San Buenaventura), and Matapuam (four instances, all at San Buenaventura). "San Juan de la Cruz" was bestowed as an alias name for this ranchería in 1787 when its first baptism was recorded, but this Spanish designation never took hold and disappears from the records after this date.

Intervillage Kinship Links. Only six of the nine individuals baptized from Malapwan had relatives from other rancherías. Two of these had half-siblings from Mat’ilxa near Ojai, one had a father from Malapwan and a mother from Mat’ilxa, one had a wife from Shnaxalyiwi on the upper Santa Ynez River, one was the mother of a woman from K’o’owshup (probably located in the Carrizo Plain region), and one was a nephew of the chief of Tsiwikon. In addition to these, one man from Wasna, later baptized at San Luis Obispo, had earlier been said to have been from "Malapuama" at the time his daughter was born to a K’o’owshup woman. One girl from Malapwan who had been baptized at San Buenaventura was later taken by her grandmother "to the Tulares" and subsequently died at Tashlipun in 1812.

Special Note. Among the contemporary members of Ventura’s Chumash community is one family that can trace its ancestry back through the mission records to a woman who was one of the first baptisms from Malapwan.

1840-1900 Historical References

No historical references are known to exist pertaining to rancherías in the Santiago Creek region.

Classic Ethnographic References

Kroeber (1925: Plate 47) divided the Santiago Creek region into a Yokuts area in the north and a Chumash area in the south; he mapped "Hoschiu" at Maricopa within the territory of the Tulamni Yokuts. He had nothing specific to say about the region or this village in his text. Gifford and Schenck (1926:22) linked Zalvidea’s "Malapoa" to Kroeber’s "Hoschiu" on Bitterwater Creek; however the certain identification of Malapwan with Santiago Creek indicates that it is a different place than Hoschiu.

None of J. P. Harrington’s Chumash or Kitanemuk consultants knew of Malapwan, although all knew of native place-names for La Paleta and San Emigdio in the regions just west and east of Santiago Creek. Because there is confusion about the original languages spoken in this region (e.g., Beeler and Klar 1977; Horne 1981:63-78), it is worthwhile reviewing some of the evidence that Harrington gathered pertaining to the area that we have called the Castro Canyon region. Zalvidea had just left this region when he arrived at Malapwan on Santiago Creek in 1806.

The Spanish place-name La Paleta appears to have referred to a broad, flat plain in the upper Cuyama Valley where today’s Highway 33 and Highway 166 come together. La Paleta was known as Sqene’n to the Ineseño, Kasxene’n to the Ventureño, and Ashikayik to the Kitanemuk (Applegate 1975; Harrington 1986:Rl. 98, Fr. 428, 432). In the Chumashan and Kitanemuk languages the name meant ’shoulder blade’ (as does "Paleta" in Spanish). José Juan Olivas, Harrington’s consultant on the Castec Ventureño language, expressed his opinion that "the La Paleta people surely talked V. [Ventureño]" (Harrington 1986:Rl. 98, Fr. 429); however, at another time he contradicted this assessment, as is indicated in this excerpt from Harrington’s notes: "When I asked [José Juan Olivas] about Cuyama, he said that that was Kuyam and that B. [Barbareño] or I. [Ineseño] extended back into that region, seeming to know most definitely that it was not V. [Ventureño]" (Horne 1981:72).

María Solares, Harrington’s Ineseño consultant, stated that what she called the La Paleta language "sounded almost like B. [Barbareño]" (Horne 1981:74). Whether the people of Malapwan spoke a dialect akin to this "La Paleta language" or to the interior dialect that Harrington called "Castec Ventureño" is conjectural based on available ethnographic data.

Recent Ethnographic References

Cook (1955:54) considered Zalvidea’s "Malapoa" to be within his Buenavista region (i.e., Tulamni Yokuts territory). In the absence of direct testimony from linguistic consultants, the name Malapwan is a best-guess of what the original Chumash pronunciation might have been based on the mission register sources (King 1975; McLendon and Johnson 1999).