Chumash people

The Chumash are a Native American people of the central and southern California coast, from Morro Bay to Malibu and inland to Mount Pinos, including the Northern Channel Islands of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel. Archaeology gives them deep roots in the Santa Barbara Channel, and with the medieval warm period their society flourished: marine productivity soared between 950 and 1300, and before the mission era they lived in more than 150 independent villages speaking related languages. The name Chumash means bead maker, and shell-bead manufacture and trade were the economy's heart, carried in tomol plank canoes that also took swordfish and linked island, coastal and mainland groups. Basketry, rock art, herbalism and a star-calibrated ceremonial life filled out one of the densest hunter-gatherer societies on earth, set where marine upwelling, terrestrial game and tended landscapes met. Spanish missions from 1769 brought disease and forced labour that collapsed the villages, but Chumash descendants persist today as federally recognised bands and active cultural communities, and place names from Malibu to Ojai keep their language on the land.