Yaanga

The colonizers' dependency on Yaanga for forced labor is thought to be a reason for its ability to survive longer than most Indigenous villages in the region.

Yaanga (alternative spellings: Yangna or iyáangaʼ, written as "Yang-Na" in Spanish), was described in contemporary sources as being a Tongva word meaning "place of the poison oak.

"[3][4] The original exact site of Yaanga is unclear because the village was evicted, forcibly relocated, destroyed and is now covered by downtown Los Angeles.

One historian concludes that "it is highly unlikely that Yaanga would have been located east of the present course of Alameda Street (i.e. beneath Union Station) because these areas would have periodically scoured during flood stages of the Los Angeles River, and higher, drier ground could be found farther west.

[9] The river continued to flow westward to Ballona Flats for a ten year period which lasted until the great flood of spring 1825.

The now-empty riverbed of the ten year interregnum was utilized to form a northern passage by which the citizens could easily ford the river north of the juncture of the creek which still combines the drainages of Arroyo de Los Posas and Canada de Los Abilas within the broad valley north of present Boyle Heights.

The reason why pueblo inhabitants abandoned the first settlement site to the northwest may have been due to destruction and fear resulting from two great earthquakes that occurred ten days apart in December 1812.

[15] At the center of the village was a large sycamore tree referred to by the Spanish and later settlers as El Aliso, which is believed to have started growing in the late fifteenth century as part of an extensive riparian forest that "thrived alongside the Los Angeles River and the region's inland wetlands" until around 1825, following a large flood which destroyed most of the trees (although El Aliso went on to survive until 1891).

Father Juan Crespí recorded his first interaction with an expedition camp of Yaangavit on August 2: As soon as we arrived about eight heathen from a good village came to visit us; they live in this delightful place among the trees on the River.

[16] On August 3rd, 1769, Crespí reached the village and described his interaction as follows: As they drew near us they began to howl like Wolves; they greeted us and wished to give us seeds, but as we had nothing at hand in which to carry them we did not accept them.

[19] In 1781, tensions emerged between the founders of Los Angeles and the Franciscan padres at Mission San Gabriel over who would have control over newly converted Christian villagers.

[7] In the 1820s, immigrants from France came to Los Angeles in small numbers and settled around the Commercial and Alameda streets, close to the original village site of Yaanga.

However, in 1836, Los Angeles residents complained about Indians bathing in the local canal, which prompted the forced relocation of the regrouped Yaangavit to a new site on flood-prone land.

[7] German sailor and immigrant Juan Domingo [Johann Gröningen], who lived in Los Angeles, submitted petitions to evict the Yaangavit and obtain the land that was allotted to them.

"[7] However, in December 1845, Domingo purchased all of the land allotted to the villagers for $200, taking advantage of Pío Pico's need for additional monies and the general lack of respect for native title.

Under American occupation, elimination became a core principle of governance and was a point of agreement between Anglo-Americans and Mexican citizens in Los Angeles.

[13] In 1852, Hugo Reid identified the historical locations of several villages in the Los Angeles Basin area, including Yaanga, prior to Spanish, Mexican, and American colonization.

In 1859, in the wake of increasing criminalization and absorption into the city's burgeoning convict labor system, the county grand jury declared "stringent vagrant laws should be enacted and enforced compelling such persons ['Indians'] to obtain an honest livelihood or seek their old homes in the mountains."

This declaration ignored Reid's research, which stated that most Tongva villages, including Yaanga, "were located in the basin, along its rivers and on its shoreline, stretching from the deserts and to the sea."

A large sycamore tree, referred to as El Aliso by the Spanish , stood at the center of the village of Yaanga in the mid-18th century and was an important landmark for the Tongva . [ 1 ]
Archaeological remains associated with Yaanga were unearthed during the construction of Union Station. [ 5 ]
The El Aliso ' tree (pictured here in 1870) first sprouted in the late fifteenth century and by the mid-eighteenth century was located at the center of Yaanga. [ 1 ]
In 1845, Pío Pico , the last Mexican governor of California, accepted $200 from German resident Juan Domingo for the land which had been previously allotted to the Yaangavit in 1836. Domingo evicted the villagers, who were moved eastward across the Los Angeles River to what would be their final relocation site. [ 7 ]