Kumeyaay Timeline
Follow the Timeline from creation to present day, seeing how the Kumeyaay have survived and overcome the challenges of the ages to thrive today. Kumeyaay.com gives special thanks to Mike Connolly of the Campo Tribe, and Nancy Carol Carter of the University of San Diego for their invaluable input in this section.
Pre-Contact Period Timeline
???? Creation
12000 BC - 5000 BC Paleo-Indian (San Dieguito)
5000 BC - 1000 AD Milling Stone (La Jollan)
1000 - 1769 Pottery (Yuman)
1492 Columbus landed in Caribbean
1542 The Portuguese land at present-day Point Loma in San Diego and claim the territory
1602 1602 Sebastian Vizcaino, a wealthy merchant - sailing from Acapulco to San Diego lands to explore. He bestows the name "San Diego"
1754 - 1763 French/Indian War fought against British colonists
1769 Father Junipero Serra arrives - The Indians, he observes in a letter, treat the new arrivals with "good will"
1775 Continental Congress formed
1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence
1769 - 1821 Mission Period
Spanish Incursion
1770 Father Serra contemplates abandoning the mission after one year of futile effort--not one Indian in San Diego has been converted to the faith
1775 Kumeyaay attack Mission one month after completion
1776 The American colonies declare independence from Great Britain
1777 The San Diego mission is re-established to be completed 1784
1798 First U.S. citizens reach San Diego by walking from Baja California (where they had been put off a ship - presumably for some unacceptable behavior)
1804 Lewis & Clark explore pacific northwest
1810 Mexicans begin their war for independence against Spain
1812 Mexican government makes grants of unoccupied lands in California
1820 Spanish Revolution
Mexican
1821 Treaty of Cordoba marks the beginning of Mexican Independence - Large land grants in the San Diego given to Mexican supporters
1824 Mexican Constitution of 1824 -- equality of all citizens, including Indians
1825 British & Russians settle boundaries in North America (Alaska)
1826 Skirmish between Indians and Mexican troops in San Diego kills 28 Kumeyaay
1827 Smallpox epidemic sweeps through California Indian population, followed by a Malaria epidemic in 1832
1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion
1832 Black Hawk War
1833 Slavery abolished in British empire
1835 The Mexican military abandons the Presidio at San Diego
1837 Indian raid kills members of the Ybarra family of San Ysidro rancho
1838 Cherokee relocated to Oklahoma - Trail of tears
1844 US annexes Texas & acquires Oregon
1846 U.S. - Mexico relations deteriorate into war
1847 U.S. - Mexico hostilities end with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; United States pledges in the treaty to respect Indian land rights
American
1848 Mexico defeated by USA - Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty
1850 California becomes a state
1851 Indian revolt against Warner Ranch - Defeated, after burning the ranch house and stage station; Indians resist efforts of sheriff to collect taxes
1852 "Garra Revolt" ends with the arrest of its Antonio Garra - executed after being found guilty of treason, murder, and theft in the aftermath of organizing Warner's Ranch area Indians
1859 Indian property awarded to settlers in Rancho Land Grants
1860 Lincoln elected president
Common School act excludes Indians from California public schools
1861 Civil War begins
1862 San Diego City Council orders the sheriff to remove "the Indian rancheria" one-half mile from any town residence
1869 The San Francisco Alta newspaper reports that 22,000 California Indians have died in less than 20 years from disease and deprivation
1870 Gold discovered in Julian, Ca. - Reservation in area cancelled
1875 President Grant gives executive order, setting aside Indian land allowing the establishment of reservations for the Santa Ysabel, Pala, Sycuan, La Jolla, Rincon, Viejas, and Capitan Grande bands
1877 Severe San Diego drought results in attacks on Indians holding water resources
1885 California Southern Railroad gives San Diego its first rail connection with the East and population booms to 40,000 within two years
1891 La Jolla and Cuyapaipe Reservations established
1893 Campo Indian Reservation established - Pauma and Yuima Reservation at the foothills of Mount Palomar; Rincon Reservation officially established
Sovereignty
1900 Total Indian population in California drops to about 16,500 (11,800 of this number are considered "landless")
1901-1903 Additional funds set aside to purchase more acreage for reservations
1911 New Mexico and Arizona are admitted as states, the last new states to be admitted to the union until 1959
1912 A small reservation is created for San Diego's Jamul Band of Mission Indians
1914 World War I breaks out in Europe
1920 Prohibition goes into effect; sales of coffee, soft drinks, and ice cream floats skyrocket.
1924 Citizenship Act of 1924 - Indians get citizenship. Women get right to vote (Indian women also) - However, Indians could not vote for local officials
1932 Kumeyaay forced off ancestral land on the San Diego River making way for the El Capitan Dam and its reservoir - The federal government helps to relocate the Barona Band to the present-day Barona Reservation
1934 Reservation established for the Viejas Band from their displacement by the reservoir
1942 President Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066, calling for the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans.
1944 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to his fourth term as president of the United States.
1945 World War II ends: the Allies celebrate victory over the Nazis on May 8th, and over Japan on August 14.
1952 Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected president. Richard Nixon serves as his vice-president.
1952 Indians get full right to vote. They are now able to vote for local politicians
1953 Public Law 280 authorized states unilaterally to assume jurisdiction over criminal and civil matters on reservations.
1958 Interstate Highway 8 opens in San Diego County, following ancient Indian trails through Mission Valley
1959 In January, Alaska becomes the 49th U.S. state, followed by Hawaii, the 50th, in August.
1962 The U.S. space program is on the rise; Marine Corps pilot John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.
1963 John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22nd in Dallas, Texas, and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson takes office.
1965 Civil Rights demonstrations increase despite arrests, and Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march in Selma, Alabama, as well as a march on Chicago's City Hall
1967 Vietnam conflict begins
1968 Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated. Democratic Senator Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles
1969 The La Jolla Band sues the cities of Escondido and Vista to recover water diverted from Reservation lands in 1895 and 1924
1969 The seizure of Alcatraz Island - Indians took over Alcatraz to bring public attention to Indian issues
1973 Wounded Knee, South Dakota was a militant stand off that served to focus attention of the injustice of Indian life
1974 Richard Nixon becomes the first United States president to resign from office
1975 The last American troops leave Vietnam
1976 The Health Clinic and Community Center is opened on the Sycuan Reservation, in cooperation with six other reservations
1978 American Indian Religious Freedom
1982 Anthony Pico is elected tribal chairman of the San Diego the Viejas Band and subsequently becomes a national voice in Native American affairs, particularly on the matter of Indian gaming
1983 Sycuan Indian Reservation opens a gaming center offering bingo games. In 1989, 1992 and 2000 the facility is expanded and new types of gaming offered
1984 Barona Band builds a bingo hall and initiates gaming on their reservation
1986 The space shuttle Challenger explodes after lift-off, generating national mourning
1988 Congress enacts the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to bring tribal gaming under a regulatory structure and to give state governments added control over the types of casino-style games allowed on reservations
1990 The act entitled the "Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act" was passed by the 101st Congress
1991 Viejas Reservation starts a gaming operation
1992 Native Cultures Institute begins organizing cross-border travel to reunite members of tribes split by international boundaries, including the Kumeyaay of San Diego and Baja, Mexico
1994 The Native American Environmental Protection Coalition (NAEPC) is founded in Southern California to share common concerns and bring a team effort to the protection, preservation, and restoration of the environment. NAEPC is headquartered in Valley Center (760) 751-8686
1996 A special California State Senate committee report concludes that Indians in California receive less consideration in state policy making than Indians in other states
1997 The Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee is formed, with representatives from 12 Kumeyaay bands in the San Diego area, to work with museums and universities in the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Committee contact is through the Barona tribal offices at (619) 443-6612
1998 A Kumeyaay Border Task Force works with federal immigration officials to secure the rights of Baja, Mexico, Indians to freely visit and interact with Kumeyaay in the U.S.
Kumeyaay
1999 Viejas tribal chairman Anthony Pico delivers the first "state of the tribe" public address, announcing that "tribes are governments and that (the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians) are not an extinct people or a stagnant culture"
2000 California voters end years of debate and legal battles over casino-style Indian gaming by enacting Proposition 1A, a constitutional amendment removing the legal impediment resulting in the overturn of Proposition 5 (a gaming initative enacted in 1998 but overturned by the California Supreme Court)
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The Sycuan Tribe is named as a contender in the multi-million dollar bidding war for naming rights to the planned San Diego Padre downtown ballpark
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The Barona Tribe opens the first Museum on a San Diego County Indian Reservation
2001 Casinos open for Campo, Pala, Pauma, Rincon and San Pasqual Tribes
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Kumeyaay.com launches Web site