CALIENTE REGION
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CALIENTE REGION – KAWAIISU VILLAGE GROUPS
By David D. Earle
Environment
Most of the Caliente region lies in the foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada, but it also includes a small portion of the Kern Lake plain. Elevations vary from 600 feet above sea level on the plain up to 4,500 feet at the upland boundary of year-round habitation to the east. Creeks run down into this region from upland valleys in three adjoining regions: Walker Basin Creek comes from the Havilah region to the northeast; Caliente Creek flows from the Loraine region to the east; and Tehachapi Creek flows in from the Tehachapi region to the southeast. On the southeast, 6,913-feet-high Bear Mountain overlooks the region and marks its boundary with the Tejon Creek region to the south.
Native vegetation was, for the most part, either grassland or oak-pine woodland; the grassland covered the Kern Lake plain and low foothills, while a woodland of blue oak, interior live oak, and gray pine covered most of the remaining two-thirds of the region. The more important creek courses were lined with riparian corridors of sycamore and cottonwood trees, while large canyon live oaks grew in shaded upland canyons. The upland portions of this territory included an even higher density of oak species.
Early Expedition References
There are no known expedition references for this area predating 1840.
Mission Register References
There are no known mission register references for this area.
1840-1900 Historical References
John C. Frémont, 1844. John C. Frémont’s expedition of exploration in 1844 traveled down the southern San Joaquin Valley and ascended Caliente and Tehachapi Creeks to cross the Tehachapi Valley. Upon entering the base of the Caliente drainage the group observed many tracks of Indians and horses, indicating the frequent use of the route to cross the Sierra. On April 13th, Frémont and his party camped at a spot on Caliente Creek somewhere between Bena and Caliente, perhaps at what would later be the old siding stop on the railroad at Ilmon. There they had a man on horseback ride into camp and greet them. He claimed to be a local Indian on furlough from a local mission, apparently San Fernando, come back to visit his people still living in the region. He noted that six Indians from a river far to the east (Mohaves from the Colorado) had just begun their return home after trading with his people. This man accompanied the expedition the next day as it passed the Caliente Creek turnoff and ascended to the Tehachapi Valley. At this point, some companions of this Indian briefly joined the expedition. Frémont did not note encounters with any native settlements along the creek drainage as he ascended to the Tehachapi region (Jackson and Spence 1970:666-670).
Williamson Railroad Survey 1853. In 1853, Lieut. Williamson led a railroad survey party down the San Joaquin Valley from San Francisco to survey possible railroad routes across the southern end of the Sierra Nevada. Various pass routes were surveyed, including that of the upper portion of Caliente and Tehachapi creeks. The line of survey actually ascended from the San Joaquin Valley floor by way of White Wolf Spring rather than Bena and lower Caliente Creek, but the Caliente area was surveyed. No mention was made of native settlement in the Caliente area (Williamson 1856:19).
Barras 1872. In 1872, a fiesta at a native rancheria at Aguacaliente, somewhere on Agua Caliente Creek, was described by a White visitor (Barras 1984:25-26). Barras noted the fiesta as taking place at Caliente, the railroad town northwest of Old Town Tehachapi that was founded in 1874. The fiesta was hosted by a chief identified as Captain Manuel. Some two hundred native people from "Tehatchipah, Fort Tejon, South Fork [Kern River Valley]" and elsewhere in Kern County attended. At this time, some native people were resident at what was referred to in the account as Fort Tejón but was actually the Tejón Ranch owned by Edward Beale. As noted in the information provided elsewhere for the Paris/Loraine-Piute-Walker Basin region, it is not at all clear that the rancheria where the fiesta was held was located at the historic-period community of Caliente. It may have been located upstream along upper Agua Caliente Creek.
In regard to the site of the hot spring or springs after which Caliente, Agua Caliente Creek, and the Agua Caliente Mining District were named, a comment is found in the California Journal of Mines and Geology of 1894, indicating that the mining district derived its name from "the hot springs situated on the Shipsey Ranch" (California State Mineralogist 1894:141). This property was operated in 1900 by Lizzie (Elizabeth) McGurck Scobie Shipsey and her son James Scobie, later a well-known local rancher in the Piute Mountain region and a friend to many Kawaiisu (Lewis Publishing Co. 1892:554, Bureau of the Census 1900: Twp. 1: Sheet 7A, Zigmond 1977:66). It was located on the upper end of Agua Caliente Creek. "Caliente Spring" was also shown on the 1876 Wheeler map of the Tehachapi region at the upper end of Caliente Creek near the site of the later Piute Post Office (Wheeler Survey 1876). It appears to have been an error on Kroeber’s part to associate the native place-names which he linked to the historic townsite of Caliente, with hot springs that he thought existed in its immediate vicinity.
Twentieth-Century Non-Ethnographic References
Kelsey Census 1905-1906. In 1905-1906, C. E. Kelsey carried out an official native census of non-reservation Indians in Kern County and elsewhere (Kelsey 1971). He recorded native households for the area or community of "Aguacaliente." However, those enumerated appear to have been living on Agua Caliente Creek upstream from the railroad town of Caliente, rather than in the Caliente area itself.
US Decennial Census 1910. This census lists Bob Roberts, a 41-year-old Kawaiisu family head, as having been born in Caliente, as were his parents. He was married to another "Paiute" (not a Kern River Indian or Tubalabal) born at Onyx, named Clara. Bob Roberts was better known as Bob Rabbit. He lived for many years in the northern Kelso Creek area and was a famous curer. He was also well-known as a Rain Doctor, a shamanic specialty for which the Kawaiisu were famed throughout southern California.
US Decennial Censuses 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920. The US Decennial Censuses for 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 do not indicate the continued presence of any Kawaiisu or other native population in the vicinity of Caliente after the 1890s. As of the mid-1870s, with the construction of the Southern Pacific rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles across the Tehachapi Mountains, Caliente had become an important railroad service point for repair of the mountain portion of the line and the watering of locomotives. First Chinese and later Mexican labor was employed by Southern Pacific. Native people in the area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worked as farm and ranch labor, and sometimes in mining. Railroad employment does not appear to have figured in the native economy.
Classic Ethnographic References
Harrington 1916. John P. Harrington carried out interviews at the Tejon Rancheria in 1916 with Kitanemuk-speaking consultants. He was given the Kitanemuk term for a place at Caliente—the name meaning "the flood is coming to carry us all away"—Hi’hi’nkeavea. Bena was referred to as witsilampea. White Wolf Spring was glossed as wahit atihpipea. An arroyo located ’beyond’ Caliente, from the direction of the Tejon Rancheria, that ran ’eastward’ toward the Piute Mountain country of the Kawaiisu (Agua Caliente Creek?) was called "to’ iirpea"—meaning "hiedra" (ivy). The term "osrit pavea," meaning agua caliente (hot spring), was applied, however, not to Caliente but to an open, flat valley somewhere off to the north of it in the direction of the Kern River. Harrington was also told about a giant being who inhaled people to suck out their bones and kill them, and who lived in holes in the rocks in the Caliente area. He was said to have had a giant walking stick made of a pine tree to which he tied the bones of his victims (Harrington 1986:III:Reel 98:Frs. 433, 667).
Kroeber 1925. Kroeber (1925: Plate 47) mapped the flat western portion of the Caliente region as territory of the Yawelmani Yokuts; he gave the Sierran portion of the region to the Kawaiisu and mapped Tumoyo at Caliente as a Kawaiisu village. He wrote, "The hot springs were called Hihinkiava by the Kitanemuk; Tumoyo or Shatnau ilak by the Yokuts" (Kroeber 1925:602). This is an interesting comment, as discussed farther below, since the "hot springs" or spring after which Caliente and Agua Caliente Creek were named appears to have been located many miles up-drainage.
Latta 1949, 1977. Latta identified the Caliente, Havilah, and Tehachapi regions as the homelands of the Kawaiisu: "This tribe occupied territory almost exactly opposite the Yowlumne. On Caliente Creek, where the town of Caliente is now located, was the Kawaiisu village of Tumayo" (Latta 1949:40).
Although Latta understood the core area of the Caliente region to have been Kawaiisu, he identified a Kitanemuk village, Ahtuse, at the White Wolf Ranch in the southern part of the region (Latta 1949:40).
Recent Ethnographic References
Zigmond 1980, 1986; Zigmond et al. 1991. Maurice Zigmond carried out fieldwork among the Kawaiisu in 1936-1940 and 1970-1974. Stephen Cappannari also undertook fieldwork among the Kawaiisu, in 1946-1947, and Zigmond was later provided with field notes from this research. Zigmond was assisted at one point by Charles Hockett in assembling linguistic data. He worked with Emma Williams, John and Louisa Marcus, Setimo Girado, Bob [Roberts] Rabbit, and Refugia Williams in the late 1930s. In the early 1970s, Bertha Goings, Lida and Clara Girado, and Andy Greene were principal consultants. A large number of Kawaiisu place-names were collected by Zigmond in the late 1930s and were incorporated into the dictionary he prepared with Curtis Booth and Pamela Munro, who had worked on the Kawaiisu language in the mid-1970s, principally with Lida Girado (Zigmond et al. 1991:177).
Places in the Caliente region mentioned by Zigmond include Po’omo’osik-eepiyaaka, recorded as a place near Bena, apparently on lower Caliente Creek. Zigmond recorded several versions of a story about the First People, one of which was called the "First Food and Population Problem" (Zigmond 1980:29-30). The First People were eating earth there, and ended up eating a whole mountain. They were said to have densely populated the area, like trees in a forest. Coyote expressed the need for a limit to population through death, and for consumption of food other that earth—otherwise the people would eat up the earth. A large hole in the landscape in the area is said to represent the place where the First People were eating the earth.
Several other references to the Bena area were also recorded. Ta-kaana-ka-di was a site south of Bena and east of Rockpile, meaning "piled up," while Vozipi-ina was a site on the river or creek below Bena (Zigmond et al. 1991:272, 297). Huwi na-vi-dawi-pi-dї was noted by Zigmond as the Kawaiisu name for Caliente (Zigmond et al. 1991:209). Frank Fenenga and Francis Riddell (n.d.) recorded a story about a female Kawaiisu rain shaman who lived southeast of the modern bridge in Caliente. Zigmond (1977:88) collected a related story about three native Koso women who had traveled by way of Kelso Canyon to visit a female Kawaiisu rain shaman who lived in Caliente. They provided her with baskets and beads in return for an undertaking to make it rain, which was said to have been successful.
