by Chris Dixon
Today, San Clemente Island holds roughly seven thousand documented archaeological sites—a density greater than any comparably sized spot in North America—and they provide evidence of a Kinkipar society of apparently prosperous abundance. The Kinkipar subsisted on cactus fruit, acorns, pine nuts, wild cherries, gritty island tubers, and a turkey-size flightless duck that once swam between all the Channel Islands. But mostly, they were expert fishermen. They dove for white, pink, and red abalone and lobster and were highly skilled anglers who invented every manner of snare, trap, and line-based tackle—catching sheepshead (their primary finned staple), albacore, yellowtail, and shark. The swordfish was the most highly revered for its immense power and magic, and Kinkipar have been found buried alongside the very swords they earned in battles with the mighty creatures.
North of their island home, Kinkipar could hunt pygmy mammoths by paddling to the ancient island of Santarosae: This is what archaeologists call the single landmass that once connected Anacapa, Santa Cruz, and Santa Rosa Islands (southwest of Santa Barbara). Apparently, at some ancient juncture, a small posse of hungry wooly mammoths decided to snorkel five long miles from the mainland to Santarosae, where they established a colony. The pachyderms soon gobbled up most of the food, and scarce resources shrunk their progeny in size until they became a hardy subspecies. About six thousand years ago, the last of these tiny elephants were hunted to extinction.
The same fate eventually awaited the Kinkipar themselves, of course, once North America was discovered by Europeans, who brought disease, acquisitiveness, and war in their wake. In 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo became the first European known to have explored the coast of the Californias, and in his log he records meeting the locals on either San Clemente or Santa Catalina Island:
“They went with the boat on shore to see if there were people there; and as the boat came near, there issued a great quantity of Indians from among the bushes and grass, yelling and dancing and making signs that they should come ashore; and they saw that the women were ninning away; and from the boats they made signs that they should have no fear; and immediately they assumed confidence and laid on the ground their bows and arrows; and they launched a good canoe in the water, which held eight or ten Indians, and they came to the ships. They gave them beads and little presents, with which they were delighted.”
Through the rest of the sixteenth century, Spaniards plied the West Coast in galleons. In The History of California and the Southwest, Fray de Zarate Salmeron refers to the arrival of Sebastián Vizcaíno in 1602 to Avalon Harbor on Catalina Island, which the locals called Pimugna.
“The inhabitants of the island made great rejoicings over the arrival of the Spaniards. They are fishermen, using boats of boards; the prows and poops high and the middle very low. Some will hold more than twenty persons. There are many sea lions, which the Indians hunt for food; and with the tanned skins they all cover themselves, men and women, and it is their usual protection. The women are very handsome and decent. The children are white and ruddy, and very smiling. Of these Indians, many wished to come with the Spaniards; they are so loving as all this. From here follows a line of islands, straight and orderly, at four to six leagues from one to another…All have communication with one another, and also with the mainland.”
In 1910, author Charles Frederick Holder described a poignant archaeological dig in The Channel Islands of California: A Book for the Angler, Sportsman and Tourist:
“At San Clemente, one find I saw Mexican Joe carefully cut out of the damp sand from near a man’s skeleton, was a flute, made from the leg bone of a deer. The native had covered it with bits of beautiful pearl (abalone), fastening each piece on by asphaltum, the result being a rude mosaic. It was difficult to consider this aesthetic musician—whom we dug out carefully and sent to the Smithsonian—as very much of a savage. He was buried in the sand dune in a sitting position, his arms bound to his knees, on which rested his head, while in front, behind, on each side, and over him were flutes, each carefully placed, and bearing the beautiful abalone mosaic. Here rested some savage Mendelssohn of the Isles of Summer.”
However, by the early to mid-1800s, ruthless Alaskan fur traders had spread to most of the Channel Islands, decimating humans and wildlife with guns and disease. The work they left undone was finished by Catholic missionaries in what the California Indian nations call the Spanish Mission Holocaust. So complete was the erasure of Kinkipar’s ancient culture that no living record of a language, religion, or custom survived. Today, San Clemente Island is under protective stewardship of the U.S. Navy, and it’s largely off-limits to everyone but military personnel and scientists, who have been given vast, undisturbed tracts to study these ancient Californians.
From the top of San Clemente, on what we today call Mount Thirst, the early Kinkipar would have had a dazzling view of their world in all directions. And it could hardly have escaped their notice that a pair of small, low islands were visible due west at the horizon’s edge. The nearest of these would have appeared quite small, the farthest a bit more substantial. Neither was so far away as to be unreachable. The Kinkipar regularly paddled the thirty-two miles between Kinkipar and Harasa (Santa Catalina Island), and Kinkipar navigators would have reckoned that the smallest island was about that far out. The most distant island was perhaps forty miles out.
Any decision to set out for the islands would not have been made lightly. What, indeed, would have been gained by risking death and the loss of precious boats on such a journey? The Kinkipar had plenty to eat on their island and in the surrounding waters; besides, hunger would have almost certainly driven them to the mainland, not further out to sea. There were surely a bounty of otters and sea lions near their home, so perhaps the promise of more fur trading with their neighbors offered some motivation. Perhaps they hoped to find new islands to claim, on which to expand their society, but these islands would have been too far away for regular two-way passage, and they shimmered where the seas were most treacherous and violent. Pragmatic rationales would have likely paled before the known dangers, thus making the most compelling reasons almost assuredly emotional, or perhaps spiritual: The islands existed, and so it would have been impossible not to visit them, whether for pure adventure, to test one’s mettle, or simply to put a reassuring label on the unknown. They went because they were there.
At least, the Kinkipar already possessed the sacred craft to make such a voyage. They paddled high-sided boats called Tumol or Ti’at. These vessels linked island and mainland and were no less important to early Californians than the koa wood outrigger canoe was to ancestral Hawaiians. Ti’at ranged from eight to thirty feet in length and featured a steeply raked bowline that helped negotiate swells. They were built of planks of pine or highly revered logs of the mysterious, giant redwood, which washed down the coast from great rivers to the north. Wood was meticulously sawed, carved, and shaped into fitted sections with blades of obsidian, quartz, and bone, then sanded with sharkskin. The planks were then pieced together through drilled-out holes and sewn together with perhaps a mile of cordage wound from milkweed, yucca, and animal sinew. The wood was then sealed and cemented with yop, a pungent mixture of pine pitch and asphalt that washed onto beaches or was dug from natural deposits like those found along the shores of modern-day Carpenteria or the La Brea tar pits. The boats were stained with red ochre, inlaid with abalone and other jewels, blessed by a shaman, and put to sea.
A big Ti’at was propelled by as many as eight men who bore long, double-sided wood paddles. It could carry perhaps four thousand pounds of cargo. Considering the series of long, perfect point breaks and mellow longboard waves that stretch from Point Conception south to Trestles, it’s difficult to imagine that the best paddlers weren’t adept at surfriding—either for pleasure or survival. When the seasonal swells grew big, they still had to reach shore.
Choosing the correct time to go to Cortes Island would have been essential. A scouting mission would be too dangerous in the spring and summe
r, when raw northwesterly winds and steep, unpredictable chop were a constant threat. During autumn and early winter, the northwesterlies typically wound down, but smoky easterlies often blew in unpredictably from the mainland, sometimes ratcheting up to gale force. The least threatening window opened during the early winter. This was the time of year the gods hurled huge swells in from the north and west, but once you cleared the nearshore waves, they were easily navigated—provided the weather was fairly benign, and you knew what shoals and reefs lurked on the bottom.
As soon as the Kinkipar chief made a decision to allow a team of his men out to explore the outer islands, he would have asked the shaman to confer with the spirit and animal world. A tea of tolache, made from the flowers of jimsonweed, brought visions of hardship, success, or failure. The powerful deity Chungichnish (a known name of a shamanic Chumash God) was consulted, and a tribal dance held to curry his blessing. With clairvoyance granted by the tolache, the shaman asked the souls of islanders who disappeared at sea to weigh in on the perils ahead. The shaman ordered the party to carry one of the tribe’s wise, surly old ravens. Raven saw the whole world and would alert the mariners to dangers over the horizon. Porpoises were guardians of the world below. It was prudent to ask for their blessing as well. Prayers and offerings begged the winds to lie still and for the sun to shine.
In practical terms, it was a full day’s hard paddle to the first island. The journey called for two midsize boats, each manned with four of the island’s most able watermen—perhaps younger members of the canoe guild, fishermen, and an elder navigator. They would need baskets of fresh water (yop made an excellent, if pungent, waterproof lining), cordage, spare planks of redwood, and a load of dried abalone and vegetable-based provisions to augment fish and crustaceans they’d hook and spear. Since the Kinkipar never saw boats rowing to or from these islands, the chances of meeting people were slim to none. Still, should they encounter angry elephant seals or demons, prized swordfish spears were also loaded.
The islands were low-lying, so locating them from sea level would present some challenge, but Kinkipar understood celestial navigation and wayfinding across trackless water. Their route would be relatively easy because they could triangulate the first island against Sky Coyote and the Guardian (the North Star and Ursa Major). But they would also rely on an innate knowledge of the known velocity of the northerly flowing California countercurrent and the flight patterns of seabirds that followed straight-line courses toward their land-based roosts.
The scouting party departed Kinkipar at sunset on a calm evening. The men were all relentlessly strong paddlers thanks to endless exercise and a calcium-, protein-, and fluoride-rich diet of seafood. Lengthy exposure to cold water, ceaseless northerly winds, and California sunshine were manifesting in a pair of conditions West Coast surfers would immediately recognize: Bony exostoses were growing to close and protect ear canals, while fleshy pterygia spread from the inner edges of the eye toward the pupils. If these men lived long enough, they’d eventually be rendered deaf and blind.
The crews alternated sleeping and eating, while maintaining a steady two- to three-knot pace. By the time the moonless quilt of stars gave way to dawn, a silhouette of low ridgeline loomed in the distance, and the raven was released from his cage as a scout. Dolphins and sea lions regarded the men with fearless curiosity. The Ti’at finally squeaked onto the white sand of a small cove along the eastern shore of the smaller, closest island—today the submerged feature we call the Tanner Banks.
A hike to the top of a 75-foot-high ledge of hard, black rock revealed an atoll of strange and utter beauty. A long, low, and narrow ridgeline stretched to the northwest and southeast for a couple of miles, eventually bending into a broad oval. In the center lay a vast lagoon ringed with white sand and filled with thousands of squawking seabirds. Along its near shore, a small troupe of otters basked in the sun, bashing open clams with rocks.
A pair of narrow openings a mile distant allowed in a small surge of ocean and swell. At their edges, hundreds of elephant seals lounged and bickered on a narrow sandy beach. The highest of these rock hills rose at the south end of the lagoon, standing sentinel over a smaller lagoon perhaps five hundred yards across. At this lagoon’s curving entrance unwound a flawless, chest-high right-breaking wave with a thin, translucent lip. The wave was almost identical to the one that reeled across the cobblestone beach that mainland tribes then called Humaliwo, and which later Spanish destroyers would one day call Malibu.
The most telling aspect of this peculiar island, however, was that it was almost entirely devoid of vegetation and surely offered no fresh water. The western flank had been beaten considerably lower than the eastern, clearly the work of ferocious, scouring winds and even more destructive, gigantic surf. The western shoreline of Kinkipar did regular battle with furious waves, particularly in the wintertime. How high would those same swells rise out here?
The party hiked south to the highest overlook, a broad-based, rocky summit of roughly 150 feet. The land here was more substantial and in the pockets of sandy soil, familiar dry grasses and sage scrub clung precariously to life. The smaller lagoon below also held water of fantastic clarity. In the tidepools at its edge crawled a riot of sea stars, anemones, limpets, mussels, and enormous white abalone twenty or more years old.
A walk along the western ridgeline gave the men a better look at the entrance to the lagoon—to determine if a Ti’at might navigate inside. As they trekked above a narrow sandy beach, the men were amazed. No animal, not even the ducks, displayed an ounce of fear.
The lagoon’s waters were considerably warmer than the ocean. They swarmed with toothy sheepshead, seabass, and bright gold garibaldi, while huge halibut, stingray, and leatherback turtles stirred the sandy floor. Tiny shrimp rocketed away from disturbed stands of eelgrass and brown pelicans dive-bombed into a shimmering swarm of baitfish.
The southerly opening to the lagoon was the narrowest—fifty or so steps across, but aside from a rock outcropping in its center, it appeared free of obstacles. The opening, a five-minute walk to the north, however, appeared considerably wider and marginally deeper—an easy entry point for a Ti’at.
A glimmer of spray turned heads offshore. A trio of orca rocketed into the mouth of the lagoon. Ahead of them, a panicked great white shark. An angling orca rammed the shark broadside. Geysers of blood roiled the water’s surface. Should any men ever paddle into this lagoon, it would be best to stay in the boat.
It was agreed; this island was not terribly far from home. Were passages made during fair fall or winter weather, it presented an opportunity for hunting and fishing the likes of which simply did not exist on Kinkipar. The Gods had created an oceanic eden.
The team easily spotted the craggy rise of the next island from the hilltop above the lagoon. Its summit lay tantalizingly close, a paddle of five, maybe six hours. No need to leave just yet. A bundle of wood was fetched from a boat and a ball of yop helped bring it to a blaze—the first fire this island had ever seen. Sunset prayers and an offering of the largest abalone were made to Chungichnish. At nightfall, a star bearing was established, but in the rising moonlight it would be largely unnecessary. The men would sleep for several hours and then set off. Their fire was easily seen from the hills of Kinkipar. It was a good omen.
An hour after midnight, the Ti’at were slicing toward the unknown shore. Paddles trailed eerie swirls of phosphorescence, and the men silently pondered legends of sea demons and giant squid that could pull a canoe to the depths with the sweep of a tentacle. Just ahead a ghostly green tornado of schooling sardine appeared. Moments later, a giant shape exploded from the glow, casting a hissing wake over the bows of the Ti’at. A feeding humpback whale had nearly sunk them all. Perhaps the very God who created these tribes lived on the approaching island. Perhaps this was a warning.
There were subtle changes in air and water, marking new currents. A whisper of breeze put the slightest ripple on the surface, the light slaps pattered agai
nst the boats like rain. The ocean cooled suddenly and noticeably as they left the southerly countercurrent and crossed into the vast, swirling river that swept from north to south. They were now paddling downstream, at a combined pace of nearly five knots. A thin haze formed at the ocean’s surface as the shadowy peak of the next island began to obscure the stars on the horizon.
An hour later, a cold fog folded over the Ti’at like a burial shroud. Still, the elder navigator had a solid bead on the hilltop—yet a few miles distant. Simple, straight paddling would bring the party within earshot of breaking surf in an hour at sunrise. Yet five minutes on, all heard the crack of a breaking wave—a wave that shouldn’t exist in the open ocean. The air carried the dank scent of rotting kelp, and the swells seemed to suddenly come from several directions. They couldn’t see below, but clearly the water beneath them was unexpectedly shallow. In a bigger swell, perhaps dangerously so. They were above another island, this one already beaten just beneath the sea by the waves. To their west, the ocean dropped off to unknowable depths. Any swell of substantial size would career along this depthless seafloor with terrifying force. They were running over what we now know as the Cortes Bank’s northern plateau.
The navigator ordered the boats to swing around toward the east and follow what seemed to be the shoal’s deeper, kelp-free perimeter. The occasional cracks faded over their shoulders at roughly the same time another sound materialized in the fog—the low, steady rumble of surf breaking on a beach. The first hints of gray daylight offered little comfort, and the men dug with grim purpose.
The two boats passed a few strands of bull kelp and again found shoal water. Current led them along an undersea ridgeline that ran toward the sound of breaking waves. It was in the deeper expanse to the east that the Ti’at crossed a series of eddies that marked a sudden return to the warmer southerly countercurrent and the abrupt edge of the curtain of fog. A dark summit loomed dead ahead. They freed the raven and paddled beneath the rising sun.