People
have been living on Santa Catalina Island for at least 7,000 years.
Archaeologists excavating on a limited scale at Little Harbor on
the seaward side of the Island for the past 40 years keep coming
up with earlier and earlier dates. They find evidence of increasingly
complex material cultures with a strong maritime adaptation. These
earlier groups of peoples exploited the rich resources of the sea--from
abalone and other mollusks, to small and large fish, and marine
mammals such as sea lions.
The
semi-arid Island offered limited plant resources, so the Islanders
traded sea products and, in later years, steatite for their other
needs. The Islanders made the 20-mile voyage to the mainland (and
to the other Channel Islands) in well-crafted plank canoes. Steatite
(an easily carvable rock that does not crack when put in the fire)
from Santa Catalina has been found in both mainland and Island sites
throughout Southern California.
Over
the millennia, as peoples migrated through California, different
groups of Native Americans would have made their homes on the Island.
For several thousand years before European contact, the Los Angeles
basin and the Southern Channel Islands (Santa Catalina, San Clemente,
and San Nicholas) appear to have been inhabited by peoples of linguistic
affinity--the Takic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Various
areas would have had their own dialects (more or less mutually unintelligible)
of the same language family and would have shared other cultural
traits.
The
material culture of these hunter-gatherer peoples would have varied
with the environment throughout the basin, but the maritime adaptations
on the Islands and the immediate coast had much in common. In fact,
the material culture on the Northern Channel Islands (Santa Cruz,
Santa Rosa, San Miguel) and adjacent mainland coast showed many
similarities as well, although the peoples were of a different linguistic
stock and physical type.
At
the time of first European contact, it is thought that the people
living on Santa Catalina Island called their island Pimu and themselves
Pimungans (or Pimuvit). They were excellent seamen and paddled their
plank canoes skillfully across the sometimes treacherous channel
to trade. After Spanish colonization, their apparently flourishing
population declined drastically with the introduction of new diseases
to which they had little immunity. As the mission system altered
the economic landscape of Southern California, the Pimungans' trade
and social networks were disrupted.
In
the aftermath of this enormous culture shock, their society could
no longer sustain itself. By the mid-1820s, the few Pimungans left
had migrated or were moved to the mainland. The Pimungans, along
with other Native American groups that were in the sphere of influence
of Mission San Gabriel, came to be referred to in the European community
as Gabrielinos. There are people living in the Southern California
area today who have Gabrielinos among their ancestors. Some are
actively involved in researching and preserving their traditional
culture.
The
Pimungans of Santa Catalina Island paddled out to greet the Spanish
galleon that bore the explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo to their
shores on October 7, 1542. Just 50 years after Columbus first sailed
into the Western Hemisphere, the Viceroy of New Spain (Mexico) had
authorized an expedition up the coast of California in search of
a passage to the Far East. The Pimungans were invited aboard ship
and gifts were exchanged. It is not known which cove the Spanish
ship anchored in. Cabrillo, of course, claimed the Island for the
King of Spain. The visit was duly noted in the ship's log and the
Island was given the name San Salvador, after Cabrillo's ship. Cabrillo
sailed on up the coast after about half a day.
Except
for the possible occasional sighting of the yearly Manila Galleon
sailing down the coast on its return to New Spain from The Philippines,
the Pimungans were left in peace until 1602. On November 24, the
eve of St. Catherine's Day, the ship of the second Spanish explorer,
Sebastian Viscaino, sighted the Island. Viscaino renamed it Santa
Catalina in honor of Saint Catherine. His party stayed a day or
two longer than Cabrillo and explored a bit on foot before sailing
on. An Augustinian friar with the expedition said the first Catholic
Mass on Santa Catalina. Relations with the Pimungans were amicable,
although the Islanders became distressed when the sailors shot some
Ravens, which held a special place in their world.
The Pimungans began to feel the Spanish influence shortly after
a series of Missions were built along the coast, starting in 1769,
when Spain began to fear the encroachment by the Russians and English.
No mission was built on the Island itself, but the Pimungans began
to have other visitors. A staunch believer in the prevailing Mercantilist
Theory, Spain did not allow its colonies to trade with foreigners.
However, sea otter were plentiful around the Channel Islands and
Russian and American sea otter hunters were eager to obtain their
pelts, which brought high prices in China. By 1805, Russian, American,
and Aleut otter hunters began appearing in Island waters in defiance
of the Spanish government. The Spaniards did not have enough ships
to patrol their territory, so the hunters were able to camp undetected
and hunt.
Yankee
and English merchant ships soon began to appear as well, having
sailed all the way around The Horn of South America laden with manufactured
goods. They knew that the government of New Spain did not keep the
California outposts well supplied and that the Friars and townspeople
would often trade leather and tallow and even otter pelts for manufactured
items although it was against the law.
When
New Spain revolted from its mother country and became Mexico in
1820, California became a province in the new country. The Mexican
government allowed trade with foreigners but levied a tariff on
all goods imported into the country. (As there was no property or
income tax at the time, this was their primary means of raising
revenue for running the government.) However, the Mexican government
still did not have enough ships to patrol the California coast.
Smugglers
would put part of their cargoes ashore at Santa Catalina and then
appear at the customs port to pay duty on the remaining cargo. They
would then receive permission to trade up and down the coast--which
they did, coming back to Catalina to replenish their stock with
undeclared goods. Several smugglers blatantly set up warehouses
on the Island and were admonished and fined by the Mexican authorities.
The trade was still leather and tallow (and otter skins while the
supply lasted) for manufactured goods. The leather and tallow was
taken back to the East Coast or England to be turned into manufactured
goods and perhaps journey around The Horn again.. By this time,
the surviving Pimungans had left the island.
Santa Catalina Island was awarded by Mexican Governor Pio Pico to
Thomas Robbins as a land grant in 1846, just four days before the
United States invaded California. Robbins was a naturalized Mexican
citizen who had been living in California for about 20 years and
had performed various services for the government, mainly as a ship
captain. Paying for services with land was customary, but ownership
was provisional. To maintain his title, the grantee had to use the
land. Robbins established a small rancho on the Island, but sold
it in 1850 to Jose Maria Covarrubias, just two years after California
became a part of the United States as the result of the Treaty of
Guadeloupe Hidalgo.
In
1849, the news of the discovery of gold brought people from all
over the world to California. The landowners in the former Mexican
province had been promised that under the new American government
they would retain title to their land grants, but they had to prove
ownership. Cases often took years to resolve before the Land Commission.
With title in doubt, squatters often moved onto land and laid claim
by virtue of possession. On Santa Catalina Island, various squatters
laid claim to different areas and began running sheep and cattle.
Several coves still bear the names of these early squatters--Ben
Weston Beach, Howlands Landing, Gallaghers Beach, Johnsons Landing.
At the same time, in Santa Barbara on the mainland, men were buying
and selling portions of the Island. The various sections were eventually
purchased by James Lick of San Francisco and his title was confirmed
by patent in 1867 (when it was finally decided that Robbins grant
was legal).
In
the meantime, Santa Catalina had had its own little mining flurry
as the digs in the northern part of the State began petering out.
Prospectors appeared on the Island in 1863 and actually found silver
in some quantity, mostly at the Island's west end. In January of
1864, a company of Union soldiers from Fort Drum in Wilmington arrived
on the Island to survey its resources and suitability as an Indian
reservation. Native Americans in the northern part of the State
were resisting encroachment on their lands and the commander of
the Army of the Pacific hoped to be able to remove them from their
homes and place them on the Island. The Secretary of the Interior,
who had jurisdiction over Indian Affairs, did not approve the proposal,
and the soldiers left the Island by September of the same year.
While
in residence, the Army had evicted all questionable squatters and
miners, leaving only those who were well established. When James
Lick asserted his ownership in 1867, he evicted all squatters and
miners who declined to enter into a lease agreement with him. For
the next 20 years, Santa Catalina Island was inhabited by sheep,
cattle, and a few herders. It was visited from time to time by fishermen,
often Chinese or Japanese, and the annual crews of sheep shearers.
As time passed, the lovely coves began to be dotted with tents in
the summertime as the more adventurous mainlanders sailed across
the channel to picnic on the shore and escape the heat of California's
inland valleys. Santa Catalina Island was developing into a vacation
destination.
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