In addition, the Native Americans were exposed to the Old World diseases endemic among the colonists. Under the mission system, the Spanish initiated an era of forced relocation and virtual enslavement of the peoples to secure their labor. The Gaspar de Portolá land expedition in 1769 resulted in the founding of Mission San Gabriel by Christian missionary Junipero Serra in 1771. This is commonly believed to be San Pedro Bay, near present-day San Pedro. The indigenous people smoked their fish for preservation. The following day, Cabrillo and his men entered a large bay on the mainland, which they named Baya de los Fumos ('Bay of Smokes') because of the many smoke fires they saw there. Įuropean contact was first made in 1542 by Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who was greeted at Santa Catalina by the people in a canoe. There may have been five or more such languages (three on the southernmost Channel Islands and at least two on the mainland). Over time, different communities came to speak distinct dialects of the Tongva language, part of the Takic subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Their vibrant food and material culture was based on an Indigenous worldview that positioned humans as one strand in a web of life (as expressed in their creation stories). They had developed an extensive trade network through te'aats (plank-built boats). Īlong with the neighboring Chumash, the Tongva were the most influential people at the time of European encounter. Some people who identify as direct lineal descendants of the people advocate the use of their ancestral name Kizh as an endonym. Tongva is the most widely circulated endonym among the people, used by Narcisa Higuera in 1905 to refer to inhabitants in the vicinity of Mission San Gabriel. During colonization, the Spanish referred to these people as Gabrieleño and Fernandeño, names derived from the Spanish missions built on their land: Mission San Gabriel Arcángel and Mission San Fernando Rey de España.

In the precolonial era, the people lived in as many as 100 villages and primarily identified by their village rather than by a pan-tribal name.

The Tongva ( / ˈ t ɒ ŋ v ə/ TONG-və) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately 4,000 square miles (10,000 km 2). Hart Merriam, she was cited as the source of the widely used endonym Tongva. Narcisa Higuera, photographed in 1905, was one of the last fluent Tongva speakers.

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