Luiseño

Indigenous ethnic group of California, US

The Luiseño or Payómkawichum are an Indigenous people of California who, at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 mile (80 km) from the present day southern part of Los Angeles County to the northern part of San Diego County, and inland 30 mile (48 km). In the Luiseño language, the people call themselves Payómkawichum (also spelled Payómkowishum), meaning "People of the West." "the Payómkawichum began to be called San Luiseños, and later, just Luiseños by Spanish missionaries due to their proximity to this San Luis Rey mission. Today there are six federally recognized tribes of Luiseño bands based in southern California, all with reservations. Another organized band is not federally recognized.

The Payómkawichum were successful in utilizing a number of natural resources to provide food and clothing. They had a close relationship with their natural environment. They used many of the native plants, harvesting many kinds of seeds, berries, nuts, fruits, and vegetables for a varied and nutritious diet. The land also was inhabited by many different species of animals which the men hunted for game and skins. Hunters took antelopes, bobcats, deer, elk, foxes, mice, mountain lions, rabbits, wood rats, river otters, ground squirrels, and a wide variety of insects. The Luiseño used toxins leached from the California buckeye to stupefy fish in order to harvest them in mountain creeks. Estimates for the pre contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. In the 1920s, A. L. Kroeber put the 1770 population of the Luiseño (including the Juaneño) at 4,000–5,000; he estimated the population in 1910 as 500. The historian Raymond C. White proposed a historic population of 10,000 in his work of the 1960s. Pablo Tac, born in 1820, recorded, "perhaps from oral history and official records" that approximately five thousand people were living in Payómkawichum territory prior to the arrival of the Spanish.

The first Spanish missions were established in California in 1769. For nearly 30 years, Payómkawichum "who lived in the autonomous territories on the mesas and coastal valleys" in the western region of their traditional territory, "witnessed the constant incursion of caravans that moved north and south through their land on El Camino Real."

After the war, Payómkawichum leaders entered negotiations to sign the Treaty of Temecula and Treaty of San Luis Rey to protect their lands, but the treaties remained unratified. After the admission of the State of California, the state allowed White Americans to impose indentured servitude on Indigenous Californians under the Act for the Governance and Protection of Indians. In 1882, another round of reservations was permitted to be established under President Chester A. Arthur after the details of the Temecula eviction scheme were revealed. Boarding school programs were established to assimilate the Payómkawichum into subservience and American culture, whose children were enrolled into the Sherman Indian School in Riverside. The Pauma, Pala, and Rincon Bands sued for the right to enroll their children at local schools. Gems were discovered around the Pala Reservation in the 1890s, extracting pink tourmaline, pegmatite, and morganite beryl (the latter being the first discovery of the gem of its kind). Pink tourmaline quickly became the top export as Dowager Empress Cixi of the Qing dynasty spoke highly of the gem in 1902, which became the tribe's main export until 1911 when the Dowager died. The Payómkawichum were allowed to pursue gambling operations on their reservations after its legalization in the 1980s, which allowed them to establish several casinos in their reservations in the 2000s, including but not limited to the Pala Casino Resort and Spa (2000), Pechanga Resort & Casino (2002), and Harrah's Resort Southern California (2004). This newfound wealth also allowed the Pechanga Band to purchase the naming rights to the San Diego Sports Arena, now known as Pechanga Arena. During the October 2007 California wildfires, the Poomacha Fire ravaged the La Jolla Indian Reservation, destroying 92% of the reservation. State and federal agencies provided aid to rebuild the tribe's facilities and residents of the tribe were able to return to the reservation by the end of the next year.