Possible pre-Columbian contact with Polynesians The Museum of Natural History at Santa Barbara is believed to have the largest collection of Chumash baskets. ArtifactsĪnthropologists eagerly sought Chumash baskets as prime examples of the craft, and two of the finest collections are at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris, France. Remains of a developed Chumash culture, including rock paintings (petroglyphs) apparently depicting the Chumash cosmology, can still be seen. Some settlements built plank boats called tomols, which facilitated the distribution of goods, and could even be used for whaling. They are one of the relatively few New World peoples who regularly navigated the ocean (the other was the Tongva, a neighboring tribe located to the South). The Chumash were hunter-gatherers and were adept at fishing. According to some reports, there are now some 5,000 people who identify themselves as Chumash. Cook at various times estimated the aboriginal Chumash as 8,000, 13,650, 20,400, and 18,500.īy 1900, their numbers had declined to just 200. Brown concluded that the population was not over 15,000. Kroeber thought that the 1770 population of the Chumash might have been about 10,000. Modern place names with Chumash origins include Malibu, Lompoc, Ojai, Point Mugu, Piru, Lake Castaic, and Simi Valley.Įstimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. They also occupied three of the Channel Islands Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel, the smaller island of Anacapa was unihabited.

The Chumash are a Native American tribe who historically inhabit mainly the southern coastal regions of California, in the vicinity of what is now Santa Barbara and Ventura, extending as far south as Malibu. Rafael, a Chumash who shared cultural knowledge with Anthropologists in the 1800s

Chumash casino bus oxnard