Of Sacred Lands and Strip Malls by Loewe Ronald;

Author:Loewe, Ronald; [Loewe, Ronald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

The Academic Controversy

Where Is Puvungna, Anyway?

Puvungna is listed as a “native rancheria” on the mission registers at San Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano, but determining its actual location has been a source of controversy. As in the case of the Tongva/Gabrielino creation story, the primary historical source is Father Gerónimo Boscana’s Relación histórica de la creencia, usos, costumbres, y extravagancies de los Indios de esta Misión de S. Juan Capistrano, written around 1822. Here, Boscana mentions that Puvungna was located about eight leagues (or approximately twenty-one miles) northeast of Mission San Juan Capistrano. This would put the birthplace of Chinigchinich, or the site where he first appears, close to modern-day Lake Elsinore. However, because Boscana located Puvungna within the valley of Rancho de los Nietos—a land grant awarded to José Manuel Nieto in 1784 that is northwest of San Juan Capistrano—anthropologists and historians have long suspected that Boscana mistakenly wrote “northeast” instead of “northwest.” This point was made as early as 1918 by Jane Elizabeth Harnett, a Long Beach historian, and is worth quoting at length.

Now it is very evident that in describing the location of Sejet, Boscana has made a slight mistake, for, if it were on Rancho Los Nietos, it must have been northwest of San Juan Capistrano and not northeast as he declares. The point is rather important because he describes another Indian village, Pubuna [Puvungna] about which center all the legends of the San Juan [Capistrano] Indians concerning the origin of their god . . . as also being “distant from San Juan Capistrano, northeast about 8 leagues.” Now Hugo Reid, writing 22 years later, tells us that at that time, there still existed on Rancho Los Alamitos (one of the subdivisions of Rancho Los Nietos), an Indian Rancheria named Pubugna. In view, first of Father Boscana’s manifest error in stating the direction of Sejat; second, of the fact that Rancho Los Nietos was distant about eight leagues northwest (emphasis added) from San Juan [Capistrano], and, last, of the great similarity of the names Pubugna and Pubuna, it seems reasonable to believe that the two (Reid’s Pubugna and Boscana’s Pubuna) are identical, in which case we may claim for this vicinity [Long Beach] the most interesting of all Rancherias between the mountain and the sea. (quoted in Case 1927, 26–27)

In short, by combining the available linguistic, geographical, and historical information, Harnett not only makes a compelling case for Rancho Los Alamitos (one-half mile west of CSULB) as the site of Puvungna but reconciles what would otherwise be divergent accounts by the journalist Hugo Reid and Father Boscana.

Harnett’s view was corroborated by John Peabody Harrington in 1933, although it appears the latter was not aware of Harnett’s work since he claims to have “discovered” the location of Puvungna. Harrington, like Harnett, was compelled to correct Boscana’s error based on the fact that the Franciscan father had located Sejat (Puvungna) within the valley of Rancho de los Nietos. Harrington, however, provides two additional sources of evidence:

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