Homeland the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians

Village of Mapipinga 

Vasquez Rocks is located within the village of Mappinga and is the cherished homeland of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians. The landscape was carefully tended by generations of Tribal families, who received their source of energy from plants like Yucca stalks and acorns, and small animals, which were stored on site and cooked in rock-lined fire pits. Native villages were sovereign and operated within a community network of other villages that held their own territories and participated in far reaching trade, kinship, and ceremonial practices.

Spanish Mission Period

In 1797, Mission San Fernando Rey de España, the 17th Spanish mission, was established in the San Fernando Valley. Between 1802 and 1816, the Tataviam living in Mappinga were forcibly marched to the mission which became a site of cultural genocide that relied on the manual labor of enslaved Native Americans for agricultural output. Once baptized, the Tataviam were renamed to Fernandeño, and the once thriving Mapipinga lay empty for the first time in over 1,300 years.

Post-Mission Period: Mexican and American Rule

Despite Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, mission secularization of 1833, and the U.S. gaining control of California in 1848, little reprieve came to the Tataviam, now Fernandeños. They endured foreign-brought disease, a state and federally sponsored extermination, and exercised their governance without a land base. In 1845, Fernandeño leaders successfully negotiated for 18,000 acres of village Indian reservations under the Mexican regime, but later spent decades in American courts to protect those rights.

Activism and Cultural Preservation Into the Contemporary Era

By 1900, the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians were landless non-US citizen refugees on their own ancestral lands. They organized in private to avoid persecution, and in the 1970s, Fernandeño leader Rudy Ortega Sr. reinvigorated the Tribe's historic petitions for land to the U.S. government.

In spite of the intensive and long-term settler colonization, the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians has remained resilient. Today the Tribe continues to exercise its governance and establish entities that uplift the Native community in Los Angeles County. Every single part of the landscape was and continues to be of great importance to the Tribe, including the site of Mapipinga.

Countywide Land Acknowledgement

In recent years, the County has been active in both uplifting the histories of what is now known as Los Angeles County and prioritizing equity for communities countywide. The County is also committed to actively engaging in repairing relationships and restorative collaboration with Native communities.

The Countywide Land Acknowledgment, which was adopted by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (Board) in November 2022, is intended to center the First Peoples by highlighting their strength, resilience, and continued contribution to the greater Los Angeles County community. It makes clear that the First Peoples are still here, and they have not left their ancestral lands.

https://trails.lacounty.gov/NewsAndEvents/1240/native-peoples-of-vasquez-rocks