Finding God in L.A.

Not too many people can say they’ve found god near the 405. Fewer still will place the epiphany along the overpass-cluttered stretch between the 710 and the 605. And even fewer will know that he was born there, just to the west of the freeway in a quiet part of Long Beach.

Mind you, this is not Jehovah or Christ or any of our other well-known deities. This god, known as Wuyoot in older versions of Southern California Indian lore, was the great captain of the Tongva (Gabrielino) Indians. I discovered his origins in a tiny footnote to an obscure book. What caught my eye was that his birthplace was presumed to be smack dab in the middle of what used to be historic Rancho Los Alamitos, formerly owned by the Bixby family. Often, while whizzing past the unmarked border between L.A. and Orange counties, I’d noticed the Bixby Ranch Co., a modern glass building just northeast of the 405. I couldn’t help but wonder, was this the spot where the first god of Los Angeles was born? It was time for a pilgrimage.

When I got to the Bixby Ranch Co., however, I was informed, both in person and by brochure, that the place I sought was on the other side of the freeway and the other side of the county line. “That’s where all the controversy’s been,” said a woman at the reception desk.

“Controversy?” I asked.

“Sure,” she continued. “Why, every time they find a bone out here, they say it’s an Indian bone--even if it’s just a chicken bone. And it’s even worse over there on the old rancho.”

So I got in my car and drove “over there.” According to the Bixby brochure, the mesa of Rancho Los Alamitos was once “a sacred place, the birthplace of [the Tongva] god.” With the exception of the historically preserved ranch house and a bit of surrounding land, the mesa has since become a gated housing development, carefully protected from burglars, solicitors and pilgrims.

When I rolled up to the imposing gate, I was told by the guard that it was after hours and that I would not be able to “just drive around up there and get a feel for the land.” When I said that god had been born there and that I was on a religious pilgrimage, the guard coolly asked, “What god?” Before I could fully explain, she interrupted me to say that the protests about Indian land had happened about a mile away, on the Cal State Long Beach campus.

Protests? Clearly I needed to do some research--and soon amassed an impressive stack of newspaper clippings and Internet raves. I learned that the focus of all of this attention is Puvungna, the Tongva Indian village where not just Wuyoot but Chinigchinich (Wuyoot’s successor, who supplants him as chief lawgiver/god/cult-hero in later anthropological annals) was supposedly born. It is the “exact” location of this village that has caused all of the trouble.

Although there are at least nine neighboring locations identified by various anthropologists as likely sites for Puvungna, most of the controversy has been centered on the Cal State Long Beach campus. There, on a somewhat forlorn 22-acre lot, is the National Historic site known to archeologists and a whole lot of lawyers as CA-LAN 234 and 235.

But for the traffic on Bellflower Boulevard and the jets landing at Long Beach Airport, all was quiet at CA-LAN 234 and 235 until the university decided to turn what may have been a part of Puvungna into a strip mall. To a good number of anthropologists, archeologists and Indians, however, this was sacred ground. Hands off!

What’s more, there was physical evidence that something Tongvan had indeed transpired on the land. Kitchen middens, a few stone implements and a skeleton had been discovered. But the question remained: Was this truly sacred ground or simply an ancient trash heap with a dead body and a few bowls? Hard to say.

And that’s at the crux of one of the hottest controversies in modern anthropology. Without irrefutable physical evidence, can we be sure that any particular site was ever sacred?

“If you’re hoping to excavate a stone tablet welcoming you to Puvungna, birthplace of god, you’re not going to find it,” says anthropologist Eugene Ruyle of Cal State Long Beach.

You don’t need the stone tablet to know the truth, according to Lillian Robles, an 84-year-old woman of Juaneno Indian and European descent. To show her conviction, she pitched a tent on that ground in June 1993 and, for 15 days, refused to budge. “We know this is sacred land,” she said to journalists at the time. “We don’t need to prove it to them. We know it in our hearts.”

Due, in part, to Robles’ tent-pitching and other physical and legal challenges, Cal State Long Beach has yet to build its strip mall. And while there may not be irrefutable proof that CA-LAN 234 and 235 are sacred sites, perhaps that is not what’s needed.

A clever remark I once heard, about the questionable authorship of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey,” came to mind. It was suggested that whoever wrote these works had to have been Homer--or somebody very much like him. So it would seem for the birthplace of the Tongva gods in Southern California: If it wasn’t one site, then it was another very near and very much like the other.

Ultimately, however, the Tongva gods may have outsmarted any efforts to reason them out of existence. According to one legend, upon seeing the beautiful Frog-lady at a pond, Wuyoot literally swelled with romantic interest. When Frog-lady turned to lead him for a little tumble in the weeds, he saw that her backside was not quite as ample as he’d have liked. The dimensions of his attraction shrank. When Frog-lady saw this, she was so vexed that she vowed to kill him.

Eventually, she and her magic did just that. When Wuyoot died, however, he rose up to become moila, the moon--the same moon that continues to rise each night above Los Angeles. And though I suspect no physical evidence has yet been found on the moon to authenticate this story, I can’t help but look at both the moon and that stretch of the 405 with a slightly broader--dare I say, historically enriched--sense of place.