La Jolla’s origins as the “place of the caves” is the genesis for Kumeyaay culture. 

Most histories of La Jolla begin in the late 1800s with Frank Botsford, Ellen Browning Scripps and others who moved into the undeveloped area from other regions of the country or world.

A more thorough history, however, would rewind much farther to those who have always been here before roads, zip codes and modern commerce.

The Kumeyaay, San Diego’s coastal Indigenous people, have been here since before San Diego existed, before California and the United States existed.

“We have been here since time immemorial,” said Kumeyaay leader Stan Rodriguez. “Our creation story [originates] from the ocean.”

“The creator told us: ‘Stay here, take care of the land,’” said tribal elder Kenneth Meza. 

The land that the Kumeyaay claim is “Matlahuayl, the ‘place of the caves,’” Rodriguez said.

Historical hurdles

San Diego History Center

While current locals now understand why the State Marine Reserve in La Jolla is named Matlahuayl and that the Kumeyaay felt the sea caves were as distinctive to the area as they are now, not much else is known or emphasized about the Indigenous provenance of La Jolla.

Constructing a history of the Kumeyaay is challenging in part because “our life is told by stories, not in writing,” Meza said, which leads those wanting to learn La Jolla’s lineage to historians outside the tribe.

Relying on non-Native voices means piecing together a cursory narrative, as the La Jolla Historical Society’s book “Inside La Jolla” notes the “researched colonization of North America or attempts thereof go back less than 500 years.”

There is evidence, though very little of it, that the Kumeyaay “were in La Jolla for some 10,000 years,” according to the late, renowned La Jolla historian Pat Schaelchlin in her book “La Jolla: The Story of a Community,” and burial sites found within La Jolla date from 7,000 to 2,000 years ago. 

“These burials continue to be found by erosion and excavation all along the cliff edges of La Jolla,” Schaelchlin wrote.

But dating discoveries and “looking at a chronological history of the Native Americans here is [not] the right approach,” said La Jolla resident and Cupeño tribe member Kilma Lattin.

“It’s difficult to put a starting date on people who have always been here,” he said.

La Jolla’s predecessor: Matlahuayl

Tribal elder, Kenneth Meza

Despite a lack of recorded history, “there was proof that we lived here,” Meza said. 

Historical gatherings were held at and near where the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club stands today, due to fresh water sources nearby, Lattin said.

Early Kumeyaay people “played native games,” Meza said. “The kids would run around here, and the elders would go into the mountains to hunt and come back with the food.”

“That there was an Indian settlement at or near La Jolla in the early days there can be no doubt,” wrote  Howard Randolph in “La Jolla Year by Year:” “Many Indian metates, stone utensils and other relics have been found in the vicinity, and old Indians testified to such a village.”

Before colonization, “our people would come and harvest seaweed,” Rodriguez said. “We would go fishing [for] crabs, lobsters. … We had over 250 different types of foods that we would get from [La Jolla].”

“Our people have a strong connection to the ocean, mountains and the waterways of what we now call San Diego,” Kumeyaay elder Jesse Pinto said. “These lands and waters have provided food for our people, and have nourished our bodies from the beginning of time.”

Other original Kumeyaay village sites are now “under the Pacific Ocean,” Rodriguez said.

Inter-national La Jolla

Histories of San Diego’s coastal regions often also leave out how other regional Native American tribes interacted with the Kumeyaay to strengthen the economy. 

“Other tribes migrated through La Jolla,” Lattin said, noting the Cupeño and Luiseño people would travel west on the San Luis Rey River to Oceanside and then venture south to La Jolla.

The inland tribes (which also included the Cahuilla) would often use the region’s creeks and rivers, like the San Diego, San Dieguito and Tijuana, as “highways” to engage in “well established trade here,” he said, offering goods from the mountains and deserts to the Kumeyaay, who offered goods from the ocean.

Abalone meat and shells were valuable trade items, Rodriguez said. “The ocean was critical to trade.”

“It was a rich economy in that sense,” Lattin said, adding local tribes would intermarry as well to fortify family and economic bonds.

San Diego “discovered”

View of Presidio Hill near Old Town with Serra Cross seen in distance/San Diego History Center

Indigenous culture persisted when local Spanish encroachment began, through the Doctrine of Discovery that declared land “inhabited by non-Christians can be taken and the Native people can be subjugated,” Rodriguez said. 

When Juan Cabrillo Rodriguez arrived in what’s now San Diego Bay in 1542, the Kumeyaay fought back and Cabrillo left, Rodgriguez said.

Centuries later, Father Junipero Serra, a Spanish missionary, arrived and planted a cross on today’s Presidio Hill, founding Mission San Diego de Alcala in July 1769.

“Our people fought back,” Rodriguez said, adding the Kumeyaay set fire to the buildings.

Serra reorganized the structures – and infrastructure – and Spain held its claim over the coastal land.

The Spanish “twisted Matlahuayl [pronounced mat-oo-la-hooy] to ‘La Jolla,’ Rodriguez said.

There were resultant “waves of fighting,” he said, “but the Spaniards were patrolling the coast. That made it more and more difficult for our people to practice our coastal culture,” practices and traditions that have “gone dormant.”

Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821; in 1834 under Mexican rule, San Diego’s fewer than 450 residents were allowed to organize the Pueblo of San Diego with elected officials, including La Jolla.

California became a state within the U.S. in 1850.

Throughout the last 200 years, the Natives’ history has been inextricably intertwined – and abiding – within the changing of the guard from Spanish to Mexican to Americans.

There’s evidence in the 1820 of the Cupeño trading for abalone, still a rare commodity, said Cupeño tribal member Eric Ortega, who teaches the Cupeño language on the Pala reservation and leads tours of the cultural center.

“If you’re talking about Native American history, my Native American history,” Ortega said, “the Gold Rush [and] California’s being created is a small part of our history. Our history is way more vast than that.” 

Throughout it all, the Mission, Rancho and American periods of San Diego’s founding days, Indigenous life was “disrupted,” Schaelchlin wrote, with those whose claim to the land has no start date forced further inland and away from their native coast.

Further isolating the Indigenous, Indian Reservations were established in San Diego County in 1870, which Natives originally resisted, not wanting “to be pigeonholed,” Ortega said.

But as ranchers began slowly “encroaching on Indian Territory,” he said, the Native Americans after several years began to feel “it was best to establish lines and become a protected reservation.”

The gradual pushing back of the Kumeyaay from the coast further weakened their ability to maintain traditions, Rodriguez said. 

The Kumeyaay believe “when knowledge comes, it comes from the ocean … to the land,” he said, as access to the water and longstanding activities on the shore “reaffirms our connection with the ocean.” 

Coastal La Jolla “is a very sacred place for us,” Rodriguez said.

“Our people are alive and exist today because of how we cared for and lived off the lands that we are now standing on,” Pinto said during a land acknowledgement ceremony Oct. 5 at La Jolla Shores. 

Honoring endurance

The first La Jolla lot within the “Pueblo Lands” of the city of La Jolla sold in 1869: 80 acres for $100, according to Randolph.

The subsequent development of La Jolla into the thriving coastal community it is now is celebrated by many, from historians to the Indigenous residents who live here now.

The abundant contributions of Scripps “have been monumental toward the development of La Jolla,” Lattin said. “We can never take away from that. We have to honor that, because that’s where we live now.”

There also needs to be continued space for relating and revering the people who originally held and shaped the land on which La Jolla flourishes, Kumeyaay leaders said.