The young mother gave her sick child a natural remedy and soothed him to sleep. The other women in the village were making dinner and reminding children to do their chores. Santa Clarita Valley history comes alive when we imagine the people of the past walking the same hills and valleys that we do, but leading their lives in a different way. Little is known of the small group of Tataviam Indians who came here around A.D. 450, but the morsels of knowledge that we do have are enticing.

A group of Shoshone Indians began a very slow migration west 3,500 years ago to escape a drought in the Great Plains. Archeologists believe that a faction of this group settled in the Santa Clara River basin in 25 semi-permanent villages. Several hundred people lived in the larger villages, which were located in Piru, Newhall, and under what is now Castaic Lake. The mystery village of Chaguayabit was located either in Castaic Junction or underneath the I-5 at the Rye Canyon exit. Satellite groups of 10-60 people lived near the larger communities. Population estimates range from 500-1,500.

One of the reasons little is known about the Tataviam is because, while they were alive, no one thought to ask or record the story of their culture and their language. Most of our information comes from the early 1900s in the work of anthropologist John Harrington from the Smithsonian Institute. Less than a dozen Tataviam words and phrases were ever published. Books, however, have been written about the neighboring Chumash and it’s believed that the Tataviam may have had similar customs, because they shared the same general territory. During the Spanish Mission period the Tataviam intermarried and, while there are descendents who are still alive, the last full-blooded Tataviam, Juan Jose Fustero, died in 1921.

There is even a mystery about their name. The nearby Chumash Indians in an early instance of name-calling used the name “Alliklik,” which meant “grunters” or “stammerers” to make fun of the Tataviam language. It was determined that the name was derogatory in the 1970s and that a more appropriate name was Tataviam, which means “dwellers of the sunny slope.”

You have to wonder if they came to this valley because of early public relations information about business opportunities. The area was a crossroads for trade.

“There was flint from the mountains, shells from the beach, herbs that only grow in the valleys, fish from the coast,” said Pat Saletore, executive director of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society. Heat resistant steatite was only available on Santa Catalina Island and often tribes would have craftsmen of renown whose products were available for trade. Juan Jose Fustero’s mother, Sinforosa, was known for her baskets, and a sample of her work can be seen at the Saugus Train Station Museum at the Historical Society site next to Hart Park.

The men and women had clearly defined roles. “The men did the hunting, dragging back of a deer, defense — the heavy stuff. The women did the everyday grunt work, and it was grunt work to fix the food,” commented Saletore. Of course, the women also had the responsibility for the children and keeping them safe from the inherent dangers that came from living with nature.

They followed the water and would either live near springs in the mountains or the Santa Clara River, which was considerably different than the river we see today. When Spanish explorers, Father Juan Crespi and Don Gaspar de Portola, came to the Santa Clarita Valley in 1769 they had to ford the river in the middle of August. The Tataviam lived off the land seemingly without causing any of their resources to become extinct.

A mainstay of their diet was a mush that they made with acorn meal. They would soak the acorns in a hole lined with leaves to leach out the tannins. Then the acorns would be ground by hand to become flour-like. Imagine the muscles that the women must have had just for this one task. While this might have been 80-90 percent of their diet, current thought is that it might have been a hardship diet, for those times when Mother Nature didn’t provide. Acorns would certainly be easy to store for either a rainy day or times of drought.

Their diet wasn’t completely bland. They ate seeds, berries, small animals, insects, and roasted yucca buds were a favorite. Plants provided everything from headache remedies to eyewash. Imagine how lovely a baby would smell with baby powder made from wild rose petals. Elderberry tea calmed a cough, pine pitch became glue, soap plant husks became brushes, and mugwort cured colic. The lovely sounding lemonadeberry and sugar bush fruit may have been pounded and dried in the sun to be eaten without cooking. California sagebrush kept your head cool when placed in your hat.

Their homes have been described as upside down baskets, but they also look like acorns. Called a wickiup, the frame was made from curved willow poles and covered in layered thatch that worked like shingles to keep the rain out. During the summer the sides could be raised to allow for cooling. Clearly housing prices weren’t what they are today because when a house became filled with too many bugs, it would be burned and a new one built.

One of the most important collections of Native American artifacts was discovered in 1884 by McCoy Pyle while deer hunting. “Bowers’ Cave” was located in a remote area near the Chiquita Canyon Landfill off Highway 126. It was named for the editor of the Ventura Free Press, Reverend Stephen Bowers, who paid the McCoys $1,500 for the treasures. He then sold the antiquities to museums around the world.

The artifacts included headdresses and capes made of condor and flicker feathers, crystals, obsidian knife blades, enormous baskets, and ceremonial scepters. The reason why the treasures were hidden in this remote cave was lost when the people who put it there died, but speculation is that the religious ceremonial symbols were hidden to preserve their faith during the mission period.

Another discovery was made by a bulldozer at the Hydraulic Research company construction site in Valencia. Human skeletal remains, cooking pots, carved animal bone and beads were discovered in a trench. It was determined by historians that it was either an ancient Tataviam burial ground or village according to a November 1968 company newsletter.

“You don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been,” Saletore noted. “History is being made as we speak.” How sad it would be if thousands of years from now current Santa Clarita residents wondered what our lives were like if no record was left.

Archeology allows us to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of the Tataviam whose peaceful footfalls passed through our hills and valley, but we will never have a complete record because those who knew their story are gone. The beauty of history is that 1,500 years later we can relate to that mother who rocked her sick child to sleep. If only we knew her name.

Thank you to the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society for the generous use of their materials and the articles on their website, www.scvhs.org, especially those by Leon Worden, Jerry Reynolds and Katalin Szabolcsi. A special thank you to John Boston, whose Santa Clarita Valley history class sparked this writer’s interest in the intriguing stories of this valley. His 2009 book, “Santa Clarita Valley,” written in conjunction with the SCV Historical Society, is available at the Saugus Train Station Museum.