United States The Chumash are a Native American people of the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what is now Kern, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south to Mt Pinos in the east.

[2][4] Modern place names with Chumash origins include Malibu, Nipomo, Lompoc, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Port Hueneme, Piru, Lake Castaic, Saticoy, Simi Valley, and Somis.

Archaeological research shows that the Chumash people have deep roots in the Santa Barbara Channel area and have lived along the southern California coast for millennia.

[6] Sites of the Millingstone Horizon date from 7000 to 4500 BC and show evidence of a subsistence system focused on the processing of seeds with metates and manos.

[7] During that time, people used bipointed bone objects and line to catch fish and began making beads from shells of the marine olive snail (Callianax biplicata).

[8] The name Chumash means "bead maker" or "seashell people" being that they originated near the Santa Barbara coast.

The Chumash tribes near the coast benefited most with the "close juxtaposition of a variety of marine and terrestrial habitats, intensive upwelling in coastal waters, and intentional burning of the landscape made the Santa Barbara Channel region one of the most resource abundant places on the planet.

[11] The scorpion tree was significant to the Chumash, as shown in its arborglyph: a carving depicting a six-legged creature with a headdress including a crown and two spheres.

[13] The mild temperatures, save for winter, made gathering easy; during the cold months, the Chumash harvested what they could and supplemented their diets with stored foods.

[14] With coasts populated by masses of species of fish and land densely covered by trees and animals, the Chumash had a diverse array of food.

Abundant resources and a winter rarely harsh enough to cause concern meant the tribe lived a sedentary lifestyle in addition to a subsistence existence.

Villages in the three aforementioned areas contained remains of sea mammals, indicating that trade networks existed for moving materials throughout the Chumash territory.

[24] The Chumash advanced sewn-plank canoe design, used throughout Polynesia but unknown in North America except by those two tribes, is cited as the chief evidence for contact.

[31] Cabrillo died and was buried on San Miguel Island, but his men brought back a diary that contained the names and population counts for many Chumash villages, such as Mikiw.

Anthropologists, historians, and other scholars have long been interested in documenting the collision of cultures that accompanied the European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

They founded colonies, bringing in missionaries to begin evangelizing Native Americans in the region by forcing Chumash villages into numerous missions that emerged along the coast.

Mission La Purisima Concepción was founded along the inland route from Santa Barbara north to San Luis Obispo in 1789.

Beginning in the 1970s, neo-Chumash arose, tracing their lineage nearly completely from the descendants of Spanish colonists to the domain of the initial Chumash people.

[40] To promote sustainable agriculture and healthy diets, the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Environmental Office and Education Departments' after-school program planted a community garden, which provided vegetables to the Elder's Council, beginning in 2013.

[42] Chumash worldview is centered on the belief "that considers all things to be, in varying measure, alive, intelligent, dangerous, and sacred.

Chronological time is unimportant, though the past is divided into two sections: the universal flood that caused the First People to become the natural world and, thereafter the creation of human beings, the arrival of the Europeans, and the devastating consequences that followed.

Rock art and arborglyphs that have been found within Chumash sites are thought to have depicted Polaris (the North Star) and Ursa Major (the Big Dipper).

[53] Some scholars[54] have suggested the Chumash population may have declined substantially during a "protohistoric" period (1542–1769), when intermittent contacts with the crews of Spanish ships, including those of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's expedition, who wintered in the Santa Barbara Channel in AD 1542–43, brought disease and death.

This allowed the Chumash people to minimize the risk of food shortages in their tribe and were able to fall back on durable beads and their existing friends in other communities.

The mainland tribes would in return export seeds, acorns, bows and arrows, fur, skin, roots, and baskets to the island.

Fernando Librado (Chumash Elder) mentions that all the trade transactions took place on the mainland due to the location since it was between the island and the interior.

It has been suggested that exclusive control over stone quarries used to manufacture the drills needed in bead production could have played a role in the development of social complexity in Chumash society.

[63] The regional diversity present within the Chumash territory spawned an intricate trade system connecting the island, coastal, and mainland groups.

[70] During the time of Spanish colonialism, some diets of the Chumash people living on mission sites shifted to include European plants and animals.

A centuries-old oak tree in California is considered to have a Chumash arborglyph, a carving of a six-legged creature with a headdress including a crown and two spheres.