The religion of the Luiseño Indians of southern California / by Constance Goddard Du Bois.

  • Du Bois, Constance Goddard.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The religion of the Luiseño Indians of southern California / by Constance Goddard Du Bois. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    71 the majority of their customs, arts, and beliefs. The terms Diegueno and Luiseno originally referred to the Indians of San Diego and San Luis Eey missions, irrespective of their native affiliations; but they have come to be the customary names of tribes, or more exactly, of two groups of people each speaking a common dialect. Miss DuBois introduces her aeeount of the religion of the Luiseno with a discussion of the beliefs and practices centering about the divine being Chungichnish, the central figure in Luiseno religious worship. Under the name of Chinigchinich this charac- ter has furnished the title for the missionary Boscana’s account of the closely related neighboring Indians of mission San Juan Capistrano, by far the most illuminating and valuable account of the Indians of California that the world owes to the mission period. Miss DuBois’s Luiseno informants state that the Chu- ngichnish worship came to them from the coast and from the north; and that they in turn transmitted it to the Diegueno. There seems every reason for believing this statement; and although it is necessarily uncertain to what extent any uncor- roborated tradition of an uncivilized people can be accepted as historically true, the interest and value of such traditions is clearly as great to those who may be skeptically inclined on gen- eral grounds, as to those who, for good reasons in particular cases, take them more nearly at face value. Miss DuBois account of Luiseno symbolism, as embodied es- pecially in the wanawut or rope-figure, and in the ground-paint- ing, is of special interest on account of the slight development of symbolic religious expression heretofore discovered among the California Indians. It is significant that the Luiseno ground- paintings are of a comparatively simple geometrical character, recalling basketry patterns, and that they indicate the existence of objects rather than that they attempt to picture their form, or supposed appearance, even in a conventional style of representa- tion. It seems uncertain whether these paintings are to be re- garded as historically the result of the same cultural influences that gave a similar form of expression to the Pueblo and Navaho Indians. The geographically intervening Yunian tribes on the Colorado river show no trace of any equivalent practice.
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