Comicranga Explained

Comicranga was a coastal Tongva village located at what is now the area of Santa Monica, California.^{[1] [2]} It is most notable as the home village in the early 19th century of Bartolomea, better known as Victoria Reid after her second marriage. She was a respected Indigenous woman in Mexican California, who was among the few indigenous people to receive a land grant. As a young widow, she married Scottish immigrant Hugo Reid, who became a naturalized Mexican citizen.^[3] The village is referred in various records and spellings to as Comigranga, Comicraibit, Comicrabit, and possibly Coronababit.^[4]

History

Indigenous

The village was established in the coastal region of western Tovaangar.^[5] As a coastal village, the usage of te'aats may have been important to the village's people.^{[6] [7] [8]} Villagers likely ate acorns, seeds, berries, small game, fish and shellfish. Shell mounds were also likely a part of the village.^{[9] [10]}

The people in the village was connected to the Chumash through marriage ties. The village was located near Guashna.

Mission San Gabriel

Following the Spanish establishment of Mission San Gabriel in 1771, the colonists gradually drew villagers away from surrounding settlements. They were brought to the mission for conversion to Christianity and to provide a labor force to work the mission grounds. Villagers worked in de facto slave conditions that third-party observers at Mission San Gabriel viewed with repulsion.^[11]

The earliest recorded baptisms of people being taken to Mission San Gabriel began in 1790. These baptisms reportedly peaked around 1803 and 1805, and then dropped off by 1819. This was around the same time that ranchers began to acquire land in the area of the village.

In 1812, it was recorded by Franciscan missionaries that a language dialect may have originated from the village which they referred to as "Kokomcar."

Many of the villagers died at the mission. There were a total of 7,854 baptisms (2,459 children) and 5,656 deaths (2,916 children) until secularization in 1834 at the mission, indicating a very high rate of death.^[12] Children died very young at the missions. One missionary at Mission San Gabriel reported that three out of every four children born died before reaching the age of two.^[13]

The mission period ended with the passage of the Mexican secularization act in 1833 by the First Mexican Republic. Secularization at Mission San Gabriel occurring shortly after.

Victoria Bartolomea Reid

See main article: Victoria Reid. Bartolomea was born at Comicranga between 1808 and 1810 as the daughter of the chief of the village and his wife.^[14] Missionaries took her from the village and her parents at the age of six, for conversion to Christianity at Mission San Gabriel. There she lived with other girls, single women and widows in a guarded dormitory.^[15] After an approved marriage to an indio chosen by the Franciscan fathers, she and her husband were granted a small portion of land. This passed to her at his death, and she was notable for receiving a larger land grant, Rancho Huerta de Cuati, in the Mexican era for her service to the mission.^[16]

References

1. Web site: City of Arcadia, CA . 2023-01-08 . www.arcadiaca.gov . en.
2. Book: Reassessing revitalization movements: perspectives from North America and the Pacific Islands . 2004 . University of Nebraska Press . Michael Eugene Harkin, American Anthropological Association. Meeting . 0-585-49966-7 . Lincoln . 51 . 54669648.
3. Book: Raquel Casas, Maria . Latina legacies : identity, biography, and community . 2005 . Oxford University Press . Vicki Ruíz, Virginia Sánchez Korrol . 978-0-19-803502-2 . New York . 19-38 . 61330208.
4. Web site: July 2003 . At the Base of the Bluff . 24.
5. Web site: Greene . Sean . Curwen . Thomas . Mapping the Tongva villages of L.A.'s past . 2022-12-07 . www.latimes.com . en.
6. Book: L. Frank . First families : a photographic history of California Indians . 2007 . Heyday Books . Kim Hogeland . 978-1-59714-013-3 . Berkeley, Calif. . 108 . 76901815.
7. Allan Sekula . Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen . 2004 . Interview with Allan Sekula: Los Angeles, California, October 26, 2002 . International Labor and Working-Class History . 66 . 162 . 0147-5479 . 27672963.
8. Book: Lepowsky, Maria . The restless anthropologist : new fieldsites, new visions . 2012 . The University of Chicago Press . 978-0-226-30497-7 . Chicago . 60-61 . 780446639.
9. Book: Early Costa Mesa . 2009 . Arcadia Pub . Costa Mesa Historical Society . 978-0-7385-6976-5 . Charleston, SC . 7 . 276818569.
10. Book: California Coastal Commission . California coastal resource guide . 1987 . University of California Press . Madge Caughman, Joanne S. Ginsberg . 0-520-06186-1 . 1st . Berkeley . 320 . 16005763.
11. Book: Street, Richard Steven . Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913 . Stanford University Press . 2004 . 9780804738804 . 39 . "a clerk with the Jedediah Smith fur-trapping party spent considerable time observing his San Gabriel mission surroundings. He soon found himself unable to tolerate the site of the natives working in the nearby vineyards and fields. 'They are kept in great fear, and for the least offense they are corrected,' he confided in his diary. 'They are... complete slaves in every sense of the word.'".
12. Book: Guinn, James Miller . History of the State of California and Biographical Record to Oakland and Environs: Also Containing Biographies of Well-known Citizens of the Past and Present . 1907 . Historic Record Company . 56-66 . en . Digitized eBook.
13. Singleton . Heather Valdez . 2004 . Surviving Urbanization: The Gabrieleno, 1850–1928 . Wíčazo Ša Review . 19 . 2 . 49–59 . 10.1353/wic.2004.0026 . 1409498 . JSTOR . 161847670.
14. Book: A passage in time : the archaeology and history of the Santa Susana Pass State Historical Park, California . 2006 . Statistical Research . Richard Ciolek-Torrello . 1-879442-89-2 . Tucson . 65 . 70910964.
15. Web site: City of Arcadia, CA . 2023-01-08 . www.arcadiaca.gov . en.
16. Book: Raquel Casas, Maria . Latina legacies : identity, biography, and community . 2005 . Oxford University Press . Vicki Ruíz, Virginia Sánchez Korrol . 978-0-19-803502-2 . New York . 19-32 . 61330208.