The Cahuilla Landscape: The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains

All over America, Indian names designate states and cities and streets. Indian legends told about rock formations and other features of the landscape enrich our sense of place. In the land that the Cahuilla Indians once populated, present-day people know of Tahquitz Peak in the San Jacinto Mountains, the cities of Cucamonga and Cabazon, amoung many others, and some know Tacheva Canyon. But the landscape is dominated more by spanish place names than Indian ones, and very few of us know the Indian legends, migration stories, and oral history associaed with the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains -- two ranges that provide some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world.

The Cahuilla Indians who inhabited this landscape until the arrival of the Spaniards ha a complex world view, an elaborate cosmology, a rich oral literature, and a sophisticated musical heritage. As one of the authors of this book has described elsewhere, these assets were associated with a political and socio-economic system that had enabled them to survive for hundred of years in a land that has provided a challenge for the Euro-Americans who have come relatively recently.

Bean, Vane, and Young have here presented one aspect of Cahuilla culture: the names they gave places. But they have not given just place names: they have told the stories that go with them -- stories of how the Cahuillas came to this land, and how their great leaders marked out the boundaries of each lineage's territory, of the monsters that lived in the mountains, and the water babies in hot springs. They have identified villages, and named the lineages who lived there, and describe some of the trails that linked one community to another.

Whether you hike their trails yourself, or travel by armchair, you will enjoy getting to know these mountains and their Indian past. Scholars will appreciate having the place name data organized and interpreted. Those who like puzzles will enjoy the hunt for place name variations -- would you have guessed the "invitca" and "Eng be cha" are the same words, interpreted by two different non-Indians trying to spell phonetically what a Cahuilla was saying?