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Agua Caliente Indian Canyons
Many centuries ago, the
ancestors of the Agua Caliente Cahuilla Indians came to this region
and settled in the Palm Springs area, starting extensive and complex
communities that included the Palm, Chino, Tahquitz, Murray and
Andreas Canyons with their stores of water and plants and animals
that were plentiful enough for these people to thrive. They began to
grow crops of corn, melons, squash, and beans, hunt the animals that
lived in the area and plants and seeds could be acquired for
medicines and foods; and basketweaving. These early ancestors left
many traces of their existence here there have been uncovered that
include dams, reservoirs, rock art, house pits and foundations,
trails and food processing areas. These Indians were hard working
and creative with a reputation for peace, integrity and
independence. The Palm Canyon is fifteen miles long and has been
declared one of the most beautiful places in western North America
with indigenous plants and animals that the Cahuilla people used so
expertly and the thriving Washingtonia filifera or California fan
palm trees; which are a marvelous contrast to the stark rocky gorges
and barren waste lands of the deserts. There is a medium grade paved
foot path that winds meanderingly into the canyon where you can
enjoy a serene picnic by streams or areas for meditating, hiking,
exploring or the inevitable horseback riding. There is a great
trading post located in the canyon where you can pick up maps,
books, jewelry, pottery, Indian art and artifacts, weavings, baskets
and conversational cultural lore. These various canyons are very
sacred to the Indians and also historically important to scientists
and others that love nature and the beauty it gives us. The
Caliente Cahuilla belong to a huge linguistic and cultural family of
Native Americans that has become known to ethnographers as:
uto-Aztecan stock; with the Shoshonean stock including other
aboriginal neighbors like the Moapa Pauites of southern Nevada, the
Pima all the way down into Mexico, the Chemehuevi that live along
the Colorado River, the Tohono O'otam (Papago) that live along the
south part of Arizona and northern Mexico and other groups. All of
these groups used the desert fan palm; a native palm tree that grows
prolifically, to make baskets, shelters, utensils and food in the
form of a mushy kind of gravy. The Caliente Cahuilla thought that
they would live on their lands forever, or until 1876, when the US
government came and gave them 32,000 acres of land to be their new
homeland; and to the Southern California Railroad, on both sides of
the tracks, 10 miles of the odd sections of the land hoping to get
them to build a railroad. 6700 acres of the Indian's large tract,
were within the Palm Springs city limits and the rest of the even
sections going out across the desert and mountains in an odd
checkerboard fashion. The canyons are listed in the National
Register of Historic Places, with the Palm and Andreas Canyons
contain the most and second most fan palms in the world, with Murray
being listed as the fourth. There is a Cahuilla Indian hot spring
underneath the Palm Springs Spa Hotel and Mineral Springs, which has
become famous throughout the world because of these springs.
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