SANTA PAULA : Students Get a Glimpse of Chumash Life

Kylee McGee has never eaten the acorn gruel favored by Chumash Indians, but she knows how to make it.

Kylee, 8, and 20 other third- and fourth-grade students took turns Thursday using a mortar and pestle to grind acorns to a fine meal as part of the new hands-on exhibit at the Tumamait Discovery Center.

The center is the newest addition to the Ventura County Museum of History and Art in Ventura. Its hands-on exhibits give children a glimpse of what life was like for the Chumash, Ventura County’s earliest recorded inhabitants, officials said.

Besides grinding nuts into meal, the students from Mupu School in Santa Paula used tough, dry shark skin to sand the bark from elderberry sticks and rubbed holes in olivella shells with a stone.

The smooth sticks were used by Chumash children as whistles and toys, and the shells were looped to make necklaces, docents told the Mupu students during their tour of the center.

But grinding acorns was Kylee’s favorite activity.

“It was fun to mash it up,” she said.

The Discovery Center was created last summer to show how the Chumash used the natural materials found in abundance around them to perform everyday tasks, said Ed Robings, director of the museum.

It is designed specifically for children, with two large, colorful murals depicting scenes from Chumash life, and three child-height working counters. The outdoor center is shaded by an overhead screen and is tucked into a corner of a yard used to display antique farm equipment and other implements.

The center is named after Vincent Tumamait, a Chumash elder who was involved with programs for Chumash children, museum officials said. The Discovery Center will officially be dedicated Nov. 8 in a ceremony scheduled to include Tumamait’s descendants, officials said.

Docent Mary Edsell said the 20-minute stop at the center has become the most popular destination for schoolchildren touring the museum. It is one of the last stops in a 90-minute museum tour, she said.

Children are eager to try out the exhibit, she said.

“Adults get tired of someone yakking at them all the time, and I think children do too,” Edsell said. “This gives them a taste of how hard the Chumash had to work.”