Julian Final - History of San Diego and the Kumeyaay

I knew next to nothing about Nativity during the first six years of my life, during which I lived in San Antonio, Texas. It wasn't until I moved with my mom to Southern California - San Diego, specifically - that I learned anything substantive about Native people, and their history.

San Diego is classically Californian in the same respects as in the case of this area: politically founded on Spanish colonialism, a trait of heritage reflected aesthetically and in the names of the main streets which line the surrounding land. I understood from my mom that the "Mission" word which was ubiquitous amid the mountainous area we first moved to referred to Catholic missionaries, who, besides just settling peacefully and attempting to spread their faith, as the tactlessly euphemistic, popular narrative would have it, slaughtered the Native community almost entirely and left a hellish life to lead for the few remaining. I don't have a major blood linear relationship to Nativity, but even at this first exposure to the injustices of colonialism through this dark history, I felt a sense of loss and deep disconcert.

Mine and my mom's favorite place to explore and exercise was Mission Trails, full of rugged paths through the legislatively preserved landscape in which pre-contact Kumeyaay life flourished. Alongside streams were lined long, flat rocks, and on some of their edges were ovular indentures where ingredients were ground hundreds and thousands of years ago:

(This isn't the exact spot, but it's very close in appearance)

Even then, I felt a sense of connection to this physical manifestation of history, which both magnified my sense of the tragedy at hand, and led me to take a closer look at the history of the Kumeyaay and the settlement of San Diego for this final.

Most of what I found was predictably horrific, like ethnic cleansing motivated by conquest and spoil-seeking, covered by religious doctrine conjured by the Catholic missionaries. This contributed to wiping out the Kumeyaay population, alongside the California Gold Rush.

Some of what I learned was more moralizing. The Kumeyaay acted with conviction to protect themselves from the settlers. As one disgruntled Spanish colonizer remarked, "Indeed this tribe, which among those discovered is the most numerous, is also the most restless, stubborn, haughty, warlike, and hostile toward us, absolutely opposed to all rational subjection and full of the spirit of independence," as if that were an insult (kumeyaay.info). "Resistance to the Spanish Franciscans was organized by village chiefs and influential shamans and this resistance was expressed through attacks on both the Spanish soldiers and the Franciscan missionaries," with one particularly damaging revolt occuring one Spanish community in 1775 (netroots). As San Diego History reports, in spite of several nefariously misleading narratives, "When the Kumeyaay’s actions are seen through a rationalistic lens, the sacking of Mission San Diego represents a reasonable and pragmatic solution to the problem of Spanish intrusion."

Eventually the Spanish would deplete almost all the remaining Native populace. They then fell to Mexican reign, before the land was politically transferred once again, this time to the Americans, as an outcome of the Mexican-American war. I've known the tragic ending to this story since I was a kid, but I still value the experience of learning more about the story of the place I consider my truest home, and the people who more rightfully call it theirs.