Tongva
 | This article's lead section may be too long. (May 2026) |
 Narcisa Higuera, photographed in 1905, was one of the last fluent Tongva speakers. An informant for ethnographer C. Hart Merriam, she was cited as the source of the widely used endonym Tongva.[1] | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 3,900+ self-identified descendants | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 United States ( California) | |
| Languages | |
| English, Spanish, formerly Tongva | |
| Religion | |
| Indigenous religion, Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Serrano, Kitanemuk, Tataviam, Vanyume |
The Tongva (/ˈtɒŋvə/ TONG-və) are an indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately 4,000 square miles (10,000 km2).[1][2] In the precolonial era, the people lived in as many as 100 villages and primarily identified by their village rather than by a pan-tribal name.[3] During colonization, the Spanish referred to these people as Gabrieleño and Fernandeño,[a] names derived from the Spanish missions built on their land: Mission San Gabriel Arcángel and Mission San Fernando Rey de España.[b] Tongva is the most widely circulated endonym among the people, used by Narcisa Higuera in 1905 to refer to inhabitants in the vicinity of Mission San Gabriel.[4] Some people who identify as direct lineal descendants[5] of the people advocate the use of their ancestral name Kizh as an endonym.[6]
The Tongva, along with neighboring groups such as the Chumash, played an important role in the region's cultural and economic dynamics at the time of the European encounter. They had developed an extensive trade network through te'aats (plank-built boats). Their food and material culture was based on an Indigenous worldview that positioned humans as one strand in a web of life (as expressed in their creation stories).[7][1][2][8] Over time, different communities came to speak distinct dialects of the Tongva language, part of the Takic subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan language family. There may have been five or more such languages (three on the southernmost Channel Islands and at least two on the mainland).[1]
European contact was first made in 1542 by Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who was greeted at Santa Catalina by people in a canoe. The following day, Cabrillo and his men entered a large bay on the mainland, which they named Baya de los Fumos ("Bay of Smokes") because of the many smoke fires they saw there. Indigenous peoples smoked their fish to preserve it. This is commonly believed to be San Pedro Bay, near present-day San Pedro.[9]
The Gaspar de Portolá land expedition in 1769 resulted in the founding of Mission San Gabriel by Catholic missionary Junipero Serra in 1771. Under the mission system, the Spanish initiated an era of forced relocation and virtual enslavement of the peoples to secure their labor. In addition, the Native Americans were exposed to the Old World diseases endemic among the colonists.[10] As they lacked any acquired immunity, the Native Americans suffered epidemics with high mortality, leading to the rapid collapse of Tongva society and lifeways.[11]
They retaliated by way of resistance and rebellions, including an unsuccessful rebellion in 1785 by Nicolás José and the female chief