The Awaswas, also known as the Santa Cruz people, were a group of the Indigenous peoples of California in North America, with subgroups historically numbering about 600 to 1,400. Academic research suggests that their ancestors had lived within the Santa Cruz Mountains region for approximately 12,000 years. The Awaswas maintained regular trade networks with regional cultures before the Spanish colonists began settling in the area from the 18th century.
The Awaswas people were Ohlone, with linguistic and cultural ties to other Ohlone peoples in the region. "Ohlone" is a modern collective term for the peoples of the region; however, the term was not historically used by the indigenous populations themselves. They did not consider themselves to be a part of a larger tribe, such as the Hopi, Navajo, or Cheyenne, but instead functioned independently of one another.
For centuries, the Santa Cruz Mountains indigenous inhabitants experienced economic competition and military conflict with a series of colonizing newcomers. Centralized government and religious policies designed to foster language shift and cultural assimilation, as well as continued contact with the colonizers through trade, inter-marriage and other intercultural processes, have resulted in varying degrees of language death and loss of original cultural identity.
Awaswas speakers were formerly distributed over much of the northern Monterey Bay area, living along the Pacific Coast and the coastal mountain range of the Santa Cruz Mountains with territories between Point Año Nuevo and the Pajaro River in present-day Santa Cruz and San Mateo Counties.
Etymology
The term Awaswas is an exonym derived from the Mutsun language that may refer and translate to "north". It may have been used by the Mutsun to refer to the Awaswas, who lived to the north of them. Unfortunately, translations for villages in Awaswas territory are difficult to piece together, as very little of the Awaswas language is still in circulation or on record. Many of the names for Monterey Bay places come from Mutsun words.
The Awaswas spoke an Ohlone dialect that has some structural affiliation to San Francisco Bay Ohlone and some affiliation to Mutsun Ohlone. An analysis of Awaswas shows it to represent disparate dialects spoken by Natives who were apparently in the midst of language shift from a divergent form of San Francisco Bay to Mutsun. There is evidence that this grouping was more geographic than linguistic, and that the records of the 'Santa Cruz Costanoan' language in fact represent several diverse dialects. Awaswas Ohlone continues to be considered a separate language, but the degree to which it originally extended to the east of present-day Santa Cruz County is completely unknown.
Divisions
The Awaswas were six distinct tribes, and further branched into bands. They lived in territories marked by watersheds with ridgelines as boundaries.
Quiroste
The largest and most economically and politically powerful tribe of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Quiroste lived at the northern edge of the mountain range on the Pacific Coast from Bean Hollow south to Año Nuevo Creek, and inland to Butano Ridge. The Quiroste derived their political influence from controlling the production of Monterey chert arrowheads and Olivella snail shell beads, the latter being used as currency throughout Indigenous California.
Two known villages were Churmutcé (south of Oljons, present-day Pescadero) and Mitenne (west of Chipletac) at Whitehouse Creek. It was at Mitenne that the Portola Expedition first encountered the Awaswas on October 23, 1769. At the time of their first interactions with the Spanish, the chief of the Quiroste was Charquin. The Spanish renamed the people "San Rafael".
Cotoni
Just south of the Quiroste and north of the Uypi, the Cotoni lived along the Pacific Ocean, near present-day Davenport, likely including the inland ridge of Ben Lomond Mountain in the Bonny Doon area. They subsisted on shellfish from the coast and carried them to the hills, where their villages were located. Two known villages were Asar and Jlli. Achistaca (Mutsun: "Place of the Enemy/Competitor") An inland Cotoni group that lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains away from the coast. It is believed that they lived in the upper San Lorenzo River drainage near the present-day towns of Boulder Creek and Riverside Grove. They held kinship ties with the Cotoni, Sayanta, and Chaloctaca. The Spanish renamed the people "San Dionisio".