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Chaawvenga, a place near San Pedro. Studies suggest that each community in the D7
Los Angeles project area had resources that overlapped and were shared during the year
with various other patriclans. Indeed, there was a strong emphasis on the importance of
sharing resources and an ethic of generosity that precluded exclusive use and enjoyment
as indecent. Reportedly, hoarding of food was so discouraged that highly desirable foods
such as large meat packages were given away by the hunter (Reid 1852:36 in McCawley
1996:111).
During ethnographic interviews with Gabrielinos, these villages and communities have
been recorded at places with access to drinking water, protection from inclement weather,
and at the intersection of resource “patches” or econiches with different major resources.
For example, a community might be situated at the interstices of a valley grassland and a
buckbrush shrubland. Valley grasslands covered much of central California, including the
middle of Gabrielino territory. Gabrielinos gathered various useful plants such as
needlegrass (Nassella spp.), bluegrass (Poa secunda subsp.), deergrass (Muhlenbergia
rigens), adobe-lily (Fritillaria pluriflora), white broadiaea (Triteleia hyacinthina),
clovers (Trifolium spp.), and fiddleneck (Amsinckia menziesii subsp.). Situating a
community where a grassland slopes into the hilly chaparral shrubland, Gabrielinos could
gather plants from a second vegetal community, including buckbrush (Ceanothus
cuneatus), nude buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum), scrub oak (Quercus dumosa), and
mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus betuloides). Bird hunting would have been ideal in the
grasslands while the shrubland supported deer in abundance.

Common to most foraging societies in the ethnographic record, in pre-colonial times the
semi-sedentary communities of food collectors may have moved in a bilocal residence
pattern, meaning that newlyweds reside near either the groom’s or the bride’s parents.
The decision is based on factors such as parents’ relative resources, birth order of the
newly married wife and husband, and relative abundance of local natural resources.
However, ethnographic sources state that the ideal residence pattern was patrilocal, or
that married couples resided with the groom’s parents (Kroeber 1976:633). In either case,
households consisted of both a main house (kiiy) and temporary camp shelters designed
for use during food collecting forays (grass-sided shelter mamahar kiiy; ramada
'atuukshe'; open sided earthen-stamped shelter orovaave kiiy). During the summer
('oroorevet), from about the spring through the fall solstices, families living near
grasslands collected a variety of roots, seeds, flowers, fruit, and leafy greens. In the
winter ('ochoocheve), from fall through spring solstices, families living near shrublands
collected nuts and acorns, yucca, and spent time hunting deer. Some prairie-based
communities headed toward the coast during the winter to gather shellfish, fish, and hunt
and scavenge sea mammals such as whale and elephant seal. Finally, communities
located along the coast during the summer went on temporary food collecting trips inland
during winter stormy or rainy seasons to collect tasty and abundant roots, tubers, corms,
and bulbs of plants such as cattail, lilies, and wild onions.

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Gabrieliño vocabulary is from P. Munro 2008(ms.) and McCawley 1996. Munro’s vocabulary is from J.
Harrington’s notes primarily. McCawley’s vocabulary is a compilation from J.P. Harrington, C. Hart
Merriam, Alexander Taylor, Oscar Loew, George Gibbs, Horatio Hale, H.W. Henshaw.

Caltrans D7 Region/Los Angeles County Ethnographic Consultation 15