Kizh
Kizh, or Kit’c (/kiːtʃ/ keetch), are the historically and ethnographically documented lineal descendants of the Mission Indians of San Gabriel, an Indigenous peoples of California.
[8] Kizh is derived from a reference by a Canadian ethnologist to one of the numerous villages in the Los Angeles Basin from records at Mission Viejas, Kizheriños (The People of the Willow Houses).
[2] In 1811, the priests of Mission San Gabriel recorded the Gabrieliňo language and at least three dialects including Fernadeño, Nicoleño, Cataleño.
[b] The name of Tongva [1] has been justifiably criticized by the Kizh Nation, who see it as coming into existence in 1905[18] from the accounts of one ethnographer, C. Hart Merriam.
[16][19] The word Tongva was coined by C. Hart Merriam in 1905[20] from a Gabrieleño woman named Mrs. James Rosemyre (née Narcisa Higuera), who lived around Fort Tejon, near Bakersfield.
"[26] As stated by Kizh Nation (Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians) tribal spokesperson Ernest Perez Teutimez Salas, Tongva gained notoriety in 1992 when the tribe was approached by non-Native people who expressed that in order to save a sacred spring in Santa Monica from a major development project and receive federal recognition that the tribe needed to use the name "Tongva."
"[16] E. Gary Stickel[27] observes that ethnologist John Peabody Harrington, who conducted extensive ethnographic work among the Southern California tribes, wrote in his notes (presently housed at the Smithsonian Institution archives) that the word tongva refers to where the Gabrieleño people ground their seeds on rocks, and that the noun must be accompanied by a positional prefix.
According to Andrew Salas, the name Kizh (pronounced Keech), sometimes spelled Kij, comes from the first construction of Mission San Gabriel in 1771.
The people of the surrounding villages who were used as slave laborers to construct the mission referred to themselves as "Kizh" and the Spanish hispanicized the term as "Kichireños," as noted by ethnographer J.P. Harrington's consultant Raimundo Yorba.
Further notable scholars who used Kizh throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries include George Bell (in 1856), Robert Gordon Latham (in 1860), Lewis H. Morgan (in 1868), Albert Samuel Gatschet (in 1877),[32] Hubert Howe Bancroft (in 1883), Daniel G. Briton (in 1891), David Prescott Barrows (in 1900), and A. L. Kroeber (in 1907).
The words are unknown as tribal designations among these Indians themselves, and precisely this point constitutes the objections to them.”[24] It's important to remember that in 1811, the priests of Mission San Gabriel recorded 7 languages.
The act of 1968 stated that the Secretary of the Interior would distribute an equal share of the award to the individuals on the judgment roll “regardless of group affiliation.
