Kumeyaay living in Baja offer glimpse into the past

• Posted By: Marc Martin
• Posted On: 11:10 p.m. | September 26, 2011

The Kumeyaay Indians were the first Indians the missionaries found when they reached Alta California in San Diego.

Like most local tribes, they were driven to near extinction. But in the isolated canyons of the Tijuana River watershed, high in the Baja peninsula, groups remained, relatively unbothered.

A number of them speak the language as their first language, they harvest acorns and pine nuts, hunt rattlesnake and small animals, collect grasses to weave baskets. They give the closest glimpse of what the Indians who populated Southern California before the Spanish arrived were like.

Read Joe Mozingo’s story