Alume

Alume (Acjachemen: "raising the head in looking upward")^[1][2] was a large Acjachemen village located at the foot of Santiago Peak, upstream from the village of Putiidhem ,within what is now O'Neill Regional Park near the Trabuco Adobe, which was built in 1810 as an outpost of Mission San Juan Capistrano. The village was also recorded as Alaugna and as El Trabuco in San Juan Capistrano mission records, and is also referred to as Alauna, Aluna, and Alona.^[3][4][5] The village was also acknowledged by the Payómkawichum.^[1]

Trabuco Adobe, Rancho Santa Margarita (Nov 1967). Photo courtesy Orange County Archives.

History

 

A map of a Acjachemen villages. The village is recorded here as Alume.

On July 24-25th 1769, the Portolá expedition passed by the village.^[6] Juan Crespí noted that "there is a stream in this hollow [Trabuco Creek] with the finest and purest running water we have come upon so far," further writing "we made camp close to a village of the most tractable and friendly heathens we have seen upon the whole way; as soon as we arrived they all came over weaponless to our camp... and have stayed almost the whole day long with us."^[7]

60 people from the village were baptized as part of the colonial project Christian conversion of Indigenous peoples at Spanish missions in California between 1777 and 1787.^[3][8]

Tecla María Huinauhuegen of Zoucche Tecla María Huinauhuegen, who was the seventh person baptized at San Juan Capistrano when she was fourteen years old in April 1779 was the daughter of a man named Chaquel. In 1780, she would go on to marry José Ygnacio Paichi of Tobani from Doheny Beach in August. Only one child of this couple would go on to reach adulthood.^[9] This was common during the mission period as a result of colonialism, where, for example, a missionary during this period recorded that three out of four children died at Mission San Gabriel before reaching the age of two.^[10] This child was recorded as Manuel Romano in San Juan Capistrano mission records, who married Antonina Ayanequit of the village of Alauna in 1801.^[9]

In 1810, the Trabuco Adobe was constructed near the village site as an outpost of San Juan Capistrano.^[7] Similar to other Acjachemen villages, Alume likely became depleted by the expansion of Mission San Juan Capistrano. In 1810, the mission already had a native or "neophyte" population of 1,136. By 1833 over 4,317 native people (1,689 adults and 2,628 children), largely from surrounding Acjachemen villages, had been baptized at the mission. That same year it was recorded that 3,158 had died in that same period, indicating the disastrous effects of the mission system on native people's lives.^[11]

See also

Native American villages in Orange County, California:

• Acjacheme
• Ahunx
• Genga
• Hutukgna
• Lupukngna
• Moyongna
• Pajbenga
• Piwiva
• Puhú
• Putiidhem
• Totpavit

References

1. Kroeber, Alfred Louis (1957). Ethnographic Interpretations. University of California Press. p. 287.
2. O'Neil, Stephen; Evans, Nancy H. (1980). "Notes on Historical Juaneno Villages and Geographical Features". UC Merced Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. 2 (2): 226–232.
3. Merriam, C Hart (1968). Heizer, Robert F. (ed.). University of California Archaeological Survey (PDF). Berkeley: University of California Archaeological Research Facility. p. 123.
4. Greene, Sean; Curwen, Thomas. "Mapping the Tongva villages of L.A.'s past". www.latimes.com. Retrieved 2022-12-10.
5. Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Volume 48. University of California Press. 1971. p. 108.
6. Orange County Water District Smith Basin Improvement Project (PDF). 2020. p. 362.
7. Brigandi, Phil (2013). Orange County chronicles. Charleston. ISBN 978-1-62584-588-7. OCLC 914181947.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
8. Koerper, Henry; Mason, Roger; Peterson, Mark (2002). Catalysts to complexity : late Holocene societies of the California coast. Jon Erlandson, Terry L. Jones, Jeanne E. Arnold, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. pp. 64–66, 79. ISBN 978-1-938770-67-8. OCLC 745176510.
9. Johnson, John R.; O'Neil, Stephen (2001). "Descendants of Native Communities in the Vicinity of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton An Ethnohistoric Study of Luiseño and Juaneño Cultural Affiliation".
10. Singleton, Heather Valdez (2004). "Surviving Urbanization: The Gabrieleno, 1850-1928". Wíčazo Ša Review. 19 (2): 49–59. doi:10.1353/wic.2004.0026. JSTOR 1409498. S2CID 161847670 – via JSTOR.
11. Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico. Volume III, N to S. Frederick Webb Hodge. Scituate, MA: Digital Scanning. 2003. pp. 445–446. ISBN 978-1-58218-755-6. OCLC 647873186.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)