View source for Puhú

{{Short description|Historical native American village in California, US}}
[[File:Santiago south.jpg|thumb|252x252px|The village was located in the area of [[Santiago Peak]] in the [[Santa Ana Mountains]].]]
'''Puhú''' (''Payómkawichum'': “its arrow place”) was a major residential village in the [[Santa Ana Mountains]] shared by the [[Tongva]], [[Acjachemen]], [[Payómkawichum]], and [[Serrano people|Serrano]] near [[Santiago Peak]]. The village resided approximately 600m above sea level in the upper areas of the [[Black Star Canyon]]. The village was at its height from the years 1220–1770. The village retained its multi-seasonal occupancy and economic and political systems up until its destruction and a [[Massacre|communal massacre]] in 1832.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last1=Tomczyk |first1=Weronika |last2=Acebo |first2=Nathan P. |date=2021-07-03 |title=Enduring Dimensions of Indigenous Foodways in the Southern Alta California Mountain Hinterlands |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1947461X.2021.1997515 |journal=California Archaeology |language=en |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=171–201 |doi=10.1080/1947461X.2021.1997515 |s2cid=244551127 |issn=1947-461X|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Oxendine |first=Joan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OR8aAQAAIAAJ |title=The Luiseño Village During the Late Prehistoric Era |publisher=University of California, Riverside |year=1987 |pages=140, 158}}</ref><ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last=Koerper |first=Henry Carl |title=The Natural and Social Sciences of Orange County |publisher=Natural History Foundation of Orange County |year=1988 |isbn=1879065010 |pages=115}}</ref>
The Puhú site is listed as a [[California Historical Landmark]] as the ''Black Star Canyon Indian Village Site'', registered in 1935 and named after the Black Star Coal Mining Company that operated in the area in the late nineteenth century. The village site is north of the town of [[Silverado, California|Silverado]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=BLACK STAR CANYON INDIAN VILLAGE SITE |url=https://www.parks.ca.gov/ |access-date=2022-12-06 |website=CA State Parks |language=en}}</ref>
== Village life ==
[[File:Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus).jpg|thumb|[[Mule deer]] were likely an important food source for the village.]]
Several archaeological excavations of Puhú were conducted from the 1930s onward and found that it featured "17 bedrock milling/[[rock art]] features surrounding a single mounded habitation [[midden]]."<ref name=":0" /> The nearby [[Tongva]] village of '''Pamajam''' was located near Puhú in a meadow in a small valley with a body of water and marsh, or ''cinega'', with a view of the [[Channel Islands (California)|Channel Islands]].<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":02" /><ref>{{Cite web |last1=Greene |first1=Sean |last2=Curwen |first2=Thomas |title=Mapping the Tongva villages of L.A.'s past |url=https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-tongva-map/ |access-date=2022-12-10 |website=www.latimes.com |language=en}}</ref> San Gabriel Mission records referred to Christian converts of this village as '''Pamaibit''', which was derived from the word ''pa'ajvar'', meaning "above."<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qh0QAQAAMAAJ |title=The Masterkey for Indian Lore and History, Volume 30 |publisher=Southwest Museum |year=1956 |pages=46}}</ref> This village was located near what is now referred to as [[Corona, California]].<ref>{{Cite journal |date=1999 |title=Hills for Everyone: Friends of the Wildlife Corridor |url=https://www.hillsforeveryone.org/PDFs/news/hfe-publications/newsletters/1999/fall-1999.pdf |journal=Hills for Everyone |volume=1 |pages=6}}</ref>
For meat supply, the village primarily subsisted on [[mule deer]]. Other animals, such as bears, ravens, and mountain lions were not consumed, likely because of their position as "animal ancestors/deities within [[Chinigchinix|Chinigchinich]] religion." Shell ornaments were likely an important crafting resource for the village. The village had trade connections with the [[San Joaquin Valley]], [[Great Basin]], and [[Colorado River]] regions.<ref name=":0" />
== Destruction ==
By 1810, the village was becoming closer to private ranch allotments, such as [[Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana]], given out by Spanish colonial authorities.<ref name=":0" />
After a claim that the village residents had stolen horses and other livestock (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs) for a period of several months to subsist on due to alleged food shortages in 1832, the village was massacred by American and Mexican fur trappers, led by [[William Wolfskill]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Terry |first=Stephenson |title=Shadows of Old Saddleback: From the Day of the Dons Down Through the Years when Pioneers Built Their Cabins Among the Oaks and Sycamores |publisher=Fine Arts Press |year=1948 |pages=105–106}}</ref>
In a recount of the event, it was claimed that "the Indians were very fond of horseflesh" and that they were "feasting on juicy horseflesh" at the time of the raid on the village. According to the account, only a few villagers survived the raid by escape.<ref name=":1" />
== Memorialization ==
[[File:American horses and horse breeding - a complete history of the horse from the remotest period in his history to date. The horseman's encyclopedia and standard authority on horses, embracing breeds, (14598300888).jpg|thumb|Authorities claimed that villagers were feasting on horse flesh, a common trope used by the [[Spanish Empire|Spanish]] in [[Alta California]] of native people.<ref name=":0" />]]
After a publication of the story in 1931, the story of the massacre became part of Orange County folklore and textual history.<ref>Acebo Nathan Patrick Barbara L Voss Ian Hodder Li Liu Lee M Panich Michael V Wilcox and Stanford University. 2020. “[https://www.worldcat.org/title/1157005570 Re-Assembling Radical Indigenous Autonomy in the Alta California Hinterlands : Survivance at Puhú.]” Dissertation Stanford University. Stanford University.</ref>
As a result, this memorialization urged interest in excavation of the area. From 1936 to 1937, the village site was poorly excavated by the [[Works Progress Administration]] (WPA), which took 200&nbsp;kg of artifacts from the site without cataloguing or analyzing them. The artifacts were spread throughout various museums, while others were cast off as too fragmented to preserve or study. The WPA mischaracterized the village as a small hunting and acorn-processing camp, rather than a large village.<ref name=":2">Acebo, Nathan P. 2021. “Survivance Storytelling in Archaeology.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas, edited by Lee M. Panich and Sara L. Gonzalez, 468–85. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429274251.</ref>
The narrative of the villagers [[Memorialization|memorialized]] has since been critiqued based on in-depth research, both in relation to the size of the village and the activities of the villagers.<ref name=":2" /> The claim that villagers were consuming horse flesh has been identified as a common trope promoted by Spanish colonial authorities, particularly in the [[Alta California]] region. Scientific analysis of the village's [[midden]] in 2021 found that no horse or European livestock remains were present.<ref name=":0" />
== See also ==
Native American villages in [[Orange County, California]]:
* [[Acjacheme]]
* [[Ahunx]]
* [[Alauna, California|Alauna]]
* [[Genga, California|Genga]]
* [[Hutuknga]]
* [[Lupukngna]]
* [[Moyongna]]
* [[Pajbenga]]
* [[Piwiva]]
* [[Putiidhem]]
* [[Totpavit]]
== References ==
<references />{{Tongva villages}}{{Indigenous peoples of California}}
{{Coord|33.8025|-117.6558|display=title}}
[[Category:Santa Ana Mountains]]
[[Category:California Historical Landmarks]]
[[Category:Former Native American populated places in California]]
[[Category:History of Orange County, California]]
[[Category:Tongva populated places]]
[[Category:Serrano populated places]]