On April 11, 1769, the Spaniards did not look like conquerors. Entering San Diego Bay aboard the San Carlos and its sister ship, the San Antonio, they were weary, hungry and sick.

“When the ships pulled in, that’s what our ancestors saw -- just other humans, humans who were suffering from hunger and thirst,” said Erica Pinto, the Jamul Indian Village’s tribal chairwoman. “We welcomed them and we fed them.

“After that, everything started to go downhill for us.”

On Thursday, San Diego’s 250th anniversary commemorations began with ceremonies near the historic landing site, at the present-day Embarcadero Marina Park North. While many hail these long-ago soldiers, missionaries and settlers as the founders of California’s first permanent city, the region’s Indians have a different view.

“It’s not a founding,” said Stan Rodriguez, director of the Kumeyaay Community College and a member of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel. “It’s an encroachment.”

Many, noting that the Spaniards’ arrival marks the start of a lethal assault on their people and culture, are in no mood to celebrate. Others, while not ready to party, see the anniversary as a chance to expose non-Indians to the Kumeyaay’s long story, from tragic past to promising future.


“This is a great story to tell,” said Pinto, one of the speakers at Thursday’s ceremonies. “It is our story, it is our history, and we are not going anywhere.”

After many dark episodes, the tale of the local Kumeyaay, Luiseño and Cupeño nations seems to be entering a happier chapter.

“We are going through a renaissance of sorts now,” said John Elliott, a member of the Manzanita Band’s tribal council. “It’s a great time to be Kumeyaay.”


Resistance

While San Diego is now lauded for its salubrious climate, it was a deadly place in 1769. The first victims: ailing members of the Spanish expedition.

“More than 60 men died on the beach in a makeshift hospital tent near today’s Dead Man’s Point during the first few months,” wrote Iris Engstrand in “San Diego: California’s Cornerstone,” a standard history of the region.

Soon, though, the original inhabitants were falling. There was no Kumeyaay Census Bureau and thus no precise count of local Indians at the time of first contact. Estimates vary from 35,000 to 80,000. The Kumeyaay nation numbered more than half that total; less than 60 years after the Spaniards’ arrivals, missionaries counted a mere 1,711 Kumeyaay.

Bloodshed accounted for some losses, but not most. “Our people fought against the Spanish, our people fought against the Mexicans and when the Americans came there were skirmishes,” Rodriguez said. “But diseases took a big toll.”


European ailments killed many tribal members, whose immune systems had no resistance to the new germs. By bringing Indians into close contact with Europeans, the missions established by Father Junipero Serra acted as incubators for disease.

While historians debate whether missionaries physically brutalized Indians, there’s no question that the missions tried to eradicate the indigenous culture. Native languages and religions were banned, as was ceremonial dancing. It wasn’t long before violence erupted between Indians and the newcomers.

In 1775, a year after San Diego’s mission moved from the armed camp of the presidio to its current location in Mission Valley, Kumeyaay warriors struck, killing a priest and two others.

Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá as it appears today. It was moved, destroyed and rebuilt. (Martina Schimitschek/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)


Only a few months later, a Kumeyaay cook poisoned a priest, noted Richard Carrico, a lecturer in the Department of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University. At trial, the Indian explained that this was no random killing. The priest had repeatedly and severely whipped him.

The cook was acquitted.

When the Mexicans took control of Alta California in the 1820s, tensions continued. Between 1834 and 1837, Indians raided numerous San Diego ranchos. Alleged Kumeyaay ringleaders were captured, then executed and buried near the present-day site of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR).

After California achieved U.S. statehood in 1850, well-armed Americans warded off Kumeyaay warriors and even attacked peaceful Indians for sport. In 1876, Chatham and Turner Helms were tried for killing random Indians.


“They were found innocent by a jury of their peers,” Carrico said. “By which I mean white ranchers.”

Many agreed with Peter Burnett, the American state’s first governor. “That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races, until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected,” he proclaimed. “While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert.”

The solution? President Grant established San Diego’s first nine reservations. In time there would be 19, most planted on steep hillsides and arid tracts, land unsuited for agriculture, industry or much of anything.

Florence Shipek, the late authority on Southern California Indians, recorded one Kumeyaay woman’s reaction.


“They pushed us into the rocks,” she said.



Uninvited

As a Julian High School student in the 1980s, Theresa Gregor said, she “encountered racism. There were so many disparities between the kids who lived in Julian and those of us who lived on the reservation.”

One disparity: modern utilities. Some were absent from her family’s Santa Ysabel reservation home on Volcan Mountain.

“We had running water, but my parents did not get electricity in their home until about 2000,” said Gregor, now an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at California State University, Long Beach. “The lines didn’t go that far.”


The Kumeyaay were kept in the dark in other ways. From the late 19th century and through the early 20th century, Indian children across San Diego County were sent to boarding schools. “Being Indians,” Angela Elliott-Santos, tribal chairwoman for the Manzanita band, drily remarked, “our parents must be alcoholics.”

These schools banned Indian dialects and dress, chopped off the boys’ long hair and focused on instilling white cultural values.

“The boarding schools were essentially a continuation of the missions’ idea of civilizing the Indians,” said Ross Frank, associate professor of ethnic studies at UC San Diego. “This is part of the larger history of disrupting tribal ways of living, of fragmenting communities.”

These communities had ancient roots. Archeologists have unearthed evidence that the ancestors of today’s Kumeyaay were here 12,000 years ago, roaming from the mountains to the seashore, living on both sides of what is now the U.S.-Mexico border. That 19th century creation forced tribes to move, as did unfamiliar American concepts of real estate.


“After having such a beautiful homeland,” Elliott-Santos said, “we were all penned up in some of the worst land in the territory.”

Barred from land where they had traditionally hunted deer, the Manzanitans suffered from malnutrition. Some were reduced to living on wood rats. Many died. Elliott-Santos’ great-grandmother buried two daughters in the reservation’s parched earth, but refused to sink into despair.

“Instead, she had four more children,” Elliott-Santos said. “She had enough courage to say, ‘As bleak as it looks today, we have to survive.’ She’s the reason I’m here today.”

When San Diego’s civic leaders planned 200th anniversary celebrations, these stories were ignored.


“No Kumeyaay were included or contacted,” Elliott-Santos said.

Since then, though, tribes opened bingo halls which gradually morphed into casinos. Suddenly, the tribes had money, lifting members out of poverty and enabling the Kumeyaay to support a broad range of charities. At the same time, they gained a voice in local governmental affairs.

“Now,” said John Elliott, “we can come to these meetings and we have our own lawyers and accountants.”

The Jamul Casino’s gaming floor. (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union Tribune)


The Kumeyaay have casinos, thus money, and thus clout. Or is that too cynical?

Not to Pinto. “It’s the absolute truth,” she said.



‘Not easily reconciled’

In January, officials with the San Diego 250 Initiative met with the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association. They made a pitch: would Indian leaders assist in the planning and execution of this milestone?

Both Pinto and Elliott-Santos were among those agreeing to help, although with some hesitation.


“This is a little conflicted, bittersweet,” Pinto said. “But we just saw this as a perfect opportunity.”

It was a chance to gain San Diego County’s attention, to shine a light on shadowy aspects of local history. Yet grappling with this story can be difficult, even for Indians, because it necessarily questions the role of the missions and Serra.

“Some people feel if you criticize the colonialism and imperialism of Spain, they feel you are criticizing the Catholic Church,” said Michael Miskwish, a member of the Campo Band of Kumeyaay Indians. “And if you are Indian and a Catholic, that becomes very hard.”

The church has demonstrated some willingness to reconsider its role. In January, a symposium at Mission San Diego de Alcala featured historians with critical views of the mission system. And this month, the University of San Diego announced it will re-christen the Catholic university’s Serra Hall. The new name, Saints Tekakwitha and Serra Hall, honors Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be canonized.


“On our campus, we have been engaging in dialogue for many years about how we acknowledge the history and legacy of the local indigenous tribes, and recognize that our beautiful campus is built on their homelands,” said USD president James T. Harris III in a statement. “We also had numerous debates and conversations about the history and legacy of Saint Junipero Serra who was canonized by Pope Francis four years ago.

“The friction between these two dialogues is not easily reconciled, yet our university mission and vision requires us to lean into these discussions with open minds and compassionate hearts.”

USD’s Serra Hall, named for St. Junipero Serra, will be re-christened to also recognize Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint. (K.C. Alfred/San Diego Union-Tribune)

For some, this is too little, too late.


“I was a practicing Catholic until they canonized Father Junipero Serra,” said Gregor, the Long Beach State professor who grew up on the Santa Ysabel reservation. “I thought the church was trying to change and deal with its past when it canonized Tekakwitha. But when they canonized Serra, I had to step away.”

Yet many local Indians, even those who see the missions as agents of cultural oppression, remain faithful Catholics.

“You could have Catholics who find the faith important to them in the present and still understand and acknowledge the practices that the church used in the 18th century were genocidal in effect,” said UCSD’s Frank. “It’s clear that the present native communities, California Indian communities, have to contend with the past and the present.”



Charting a path

If this is a golden era for local tribes, it’s not heaven on earth.


“It’s important to remember that not every reservation has a casino,” said Stan Rodriguez, “and those reservations are still impoverished.” In fact, Census Burea data from 2015 found that nearly a quarter of the Native Americans living in San Diego’s East County had incomes below the poverty line, compared to the rate of 14.5 percent for all county residents.

There are some serious health challenges. Infant mortality rates among local Indians, for instance, are more than four times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic whites.

Preserving local Indian culture is another challenge. At Kumeyaay Community College in El Cajon, Rodriguez teaches the Kumeyaay language, a job for which he is almost uniquely qualified. He is one of an estimated 43 people fluent in this tongue.

Still, tribal activists are confident that life is improving. Sacramento recently passed legislation calling for California Indian input in the revised state history curriculum. More Indians attend college. Compared to the rest of the population, local Indians are less likely to die from cancer or due to suicide.


The tragedies of the past can be acknowledged but not changed. Perhaps for the first time in 250 years, though, local Indians argue they can chart their own path to a brighter tomorrow.

“The future is just going to get better,” said the Manzanita Band’s Elliott-Santos, “because we are going to make it better.”

