The Past Is Passed On : After Years in Storage, Native American Artifacts Will Go on Display

For most of the past decade, thousands of Native American artifacts recovered from the Lost Village of Encino, one of the costliest archeological excavations in state history, have been sitting in an Orange County warehouse, freed of the earth after centuries, but collecting dust in obscurity.

However, the public soon will get its first chance to see the most significant pieces--stone tools, shell beadwork and arrowheads--when they are donated by a scientist to two San Fernando Valley museums, marking the resolution of a series of controversies that have embroiled Native Americans, archeologists and corporate developers since the 3,000-year-old village was accidentally unearthed in 1984.

The debates that have swirled around the finds have overshadowed their archeological importance, some scientists say.

“This was clearly a very important discovery for both the diversity and quantity of artifacts and also that so much of it was found intact,” said Mark Raab, director of the Center for Public Archeology at Cal State Northridge.

“But there hasn’t been an extensive publication on it” in peer-reviewed archeological journals, he noted, the key step in establishing scientific worth. “Neither the scientific community nor the public really know what’s there, so displaying some of them should help.”

Archeologist Nancy Whitney-Desautels says she hopes to deliver the first of the artifacts any day now, although arrangements with the museums have not been finalized.

The gift of about 10 pieces to the San Fernando and San Gabriel mission museums and the placement of other larger artifacts--probably at a state museum on Ventura Boulevard near the site of the find--comes after archeologist Whitney-Desautels had refused for years to hand over the pieces until she was paid for her work by the company that constructed an office building on the site.

But with the settlement of a $1-million lawsuit against the developers in 1989, and the completion of the cataloguing of most of the pieces, Whitney-Desautels said she is ready to part with the collection.

“I never intended to keep the artifacts, but a lot happened along the way,” she said. “It’s not really anybody’s fault. The village was a surprise and there wasn’t a lot of time to prepare for everything that was coming.”

Indeed, the recent history of the prehistoric village is a thoroughly modern story of cultural clashes, cost overruns and slow-growth politics.

At first, the discovery of the village was simply the solution to a decades-old archeological mystery. For years, archeologists had attempted to find the ruins of the large settlement described in a 1769 diary kept by a member of the expedition of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola.

It was clear that the village must have been somewhere in the vicinity of Los Encinos State Historical Park on Ventura Boulevard, where a spring that still flows today would have provided water.

But despite the efforts of several researchers, no sign of the settlement was found, earning it the nickname “the Lost Village of Encino.” Many archeologists feared that urbanization might have irretrievably buried the site under streets and buildings.

In July, 1984, a construction crew demolishing a defunct restaurant on the southeast corner of Balboa and Ventura boulevards came across a few artifacts--leading to discovery of increasing numbers of them, and then the skeletons of about 20 Native Americans.

Although more than 2 million tiny pieces of artifacts and bits of human and animal bone were found, only a few thousand of the larger items are of significance, Whitney-Desautels said.

Among those are mortars and pestles, milling stones, stone bowls and arrowheads. The presence of Native American shell beads and Spanish glass beads suggests that the two groups engaged in trading before the village was abandoned for unknown reasons sometime in the 19th Century.

During the dig, scientists also found the areas where villagers cooked, processed hides and made beads.

Complying with state law that requires such finds be examined and safeguarded by an archeologist, First Financial Group Inc., which was building an office complex on the site, hired Whitney-Desautels.

Originally, she and First Financial negotiated a fee of $10,000 to $20,000, but because the scope of the archeological work expanded, her excavations lasted nearly eight months and the price tag ballooned to $1.7 million.

First Financial balked, firing Whitney-Desautels after paying her about $600,000.

State law requires that real estate developers pay archeological excavation costs up to one-half of 1% of the site’s construction budget--rules that First Financial had followed. But Whitney-Desautels claimed that the developer had agreed to pay additional costs for the excavation and preservation of the artifacts and said she spent $350,000 of her own money to catalogue and preserve the pieces in the Newport Beach warehouse owned by her company, Scientific Resource Surveys.

In 1987, she filed a lawsuit against First Financial, seeking more than $1 million in damages.

Meanwhile, representatives of Native American groups were also squabbling.

Gabrielenos, Chumash and Fernandenos all claimed the village as the ancient dwelling place of their ancestors.

Fernandeno leaders maintained that they had inhabited the area for centuries. Chumash representatives cited reports by two consulting archeologists that found evidence of Chumash-style burials in the village.

But Whitney-Desautels said the artifacts were clearly the work of the Gabrielenos, and the state Native American Heritage Commission declared that the village had probably been inhabited by Gabrielenos.

Under state law, Native American remains belong to the groups representing descendants of the dead, as nearly as those can be determined. So, with the state commission backing them, the Gabrielenos won the right to reinter the bones, choosing the Los Encinos park, only a half-block from the excavation site.

On April 15, 1985, the park was closed to everyone else at dawn so a delegation of Gabrielenos could rebury the bones in a secret grave, its location known only to them.

The controversy also reached Sacramento that year, when former state Sen. Alan Robbins introduced legislation to set aside $11 million to buy land and build a museum to house the artifacts. But state-hired archeologists concluded that the collection was insufficiently valuable to warrant its own museum, and the bill stalled.

Robbins had to settle for a $195,000 appropriation to remodel the historic Garnier House in the Los Encinos park to house some of the artifacts.

In 1990, when a $35-million office building was planned for land across the street from the Lost Village site, an unusual alliance of Native Americans and slow-growth suburbanites opposed it, arguing that the area could contain additional artifacts and human remains.

After the developers, Katell Capretta Partners of Gardena, paid for an archeological survey--which found no significant artifacts--the city gave them the go-ahead to build.

With that battle ended, and large building complexes now covering the excavation on the southeastern corner of Balboa and Ventura boulevards, and the northeast corner as well, attention turned back to Whitney-Desautels.

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Although she had settled her lawsuit with First Financial in 1989--dividing ownership of the artifacts--the pieces remained in her company’s warehouse, still being catalogued.

It was not until this year that the work was completed.

Although it is unclear where the majority of the artifacts will be placed, many who have been involved in the protracted battle believe that the displays at the two museums will focus attention on the people who inhabited the area long ago--and still do.

“A lot of people think that there aren’t Indians in the San Fernando Valley anymore,” said Rudy Ortega, a Fernandeno leader. “But I have 12 children, 69 grandchildren and either 44 or 49 great-grandchildren. . . . Maybe by displaying these artifacts, we will remind people that we have been here a long time and plan to stay here.”