Jewelry and bodily adornment can reveal much more about a community than personal style or decoration. The materials people choose to wear, the ways objects are made, and the contexts in which they are used can communicate identity, social relationships, cultural traditions, and connections to place. Archaeologist Diana DiPaolo Loren argues that clothing and adornment function as a social medium because appearance can communicate information about an individual and their place within society (Loren). This perspective is especially useful when examining adornment among the Gabrielino-Tongva people of the Los Angeles Basin. At Kuruvungna, the Gabrielino-Tongva village associated with the natural springs in present-day West Los Angeles, historical evidence documents shell beads and body paint during the early period of Spanish contact. When considered alongside archaeological research and contemporary Tongva perspectives, these objects show that adornment was connected to broader relationships among people, place, exchange, and cultural identity.
Some of the earliest written evidence for adornment at Kuruvungna comes from the 1769 Portolá expedition. Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí recorded his observations while traveling through Indigenous communities in Southern California. According to an archaeological study published by the California Department of Transportation, Crespí described several Indigenous people at the village associated with Kuruvungna wearing body paint. He also recorded receiving a long string of beads made from white seashells and reddish material (California Department of Transportation). This account is significant because it places shell beads directly at Kuruvungna rather than requiring us to assume that objects documented elsewhere in Southern California were also present there.
At the same time, Crespí’s account has limitations. He was a Spanish missionary observing the Gabrielino-Tongva people as an outsider during the beginning of Spanish colonization. His journal can tell us what he believed he saw, but it cannot explain what the people of Kuruvungna thought about these objects themselves. We cannot know from his description what the body paint represented or exactly what significance the strand of beads held. For this reason, his account is useful evidence for the presence of adornment but should not be used to assign specific cultural meanings that are not supported by the historical record.
Archaeological research from other Gabrielino-Tongva communities provides more context. Seetha N. Reddy and John G. Douglass studied archaeological and historical evidence from the Ballona area of West Los Angeles and the greater Los Angeles Basin. Their research shows that Gabrielino-Tongva communities maintained Indigenous practices while adapting to
the major social and environmental changes brought by Spanish colonization (Reddy and Douglass 235–59). Shell beads are an important part of this archaeological record. Excavations in the Ballona area uncovered large numbers of shell beads, including Olivella beads, and some were discovered together in strands. These findings demonstrate the continued importance of shell beads within Gabrielino-Tongva communities during the Mission period (Reddy and Douglass).
The use of marine shells also reflects connections between Gabrielino-Tongva communities and the larger Southern California landscape. Kuruvungna is located inland from the Pacific Ocean, yet the beads described there in 1769 included marine shells. This suggests relationships extending beyond a single village. The City of Los Angeles’s First Peoples Historic Context Statement, which includes a historical narrative written by authors from Gabrielino/Tongva tribal communities, emphasizes that trade and exchange existed before Spanish colonization. It describes shell beads and other materials moving through Indigenous exchange networks and also reproduces Crespí’s description of a leader at Yaang’na carrying strings of shell beads in 1769 (First Peoples Historic Context Statement 39). Together, these accounts place the beads at Kuruvungna within a broader landscape of connected Gabrielino-Tongva communities.
It is important, however, not to assume that every shell bead serves the same purpose. Loren’s research emphasizes that bodily adornment gains meaning through its social and cultural context. Clothing and objects worn on the body can communicate identity and social relationships, but their meanings depend on the people who use them (Loren). A strand of shell beads might have been worn as adornment, exchanged, gifted, or connected to other cultural practices. The surviving evidence does not allow us to determine exactly what the beads recorded at Kuruvungna meant to the people who possessed them.
Colonization also introduced new materials into Gabrielino-Tongva communities. Rather than simply replacing Indigenous traditions, these materials could become part of changing cultural practices. Reddy and Douglass describe Mission-period Gabrielino-Tongva life as a process of both persistence and transformation, in which communities maintained Indigenous practices while responding to colonial institutions (235–59). Loren identifies a similar pattern elsewhere in colonial North America, where Native people combined introduced objects such as glass beads and buttons with locally produced materials such as shell beads. These choices show that Indigenous people were not simply passive recipients of European goods. They could select and reinterpret new materials within their own social and cultural lives (Loren).
The history of Gabrielino-Tongva adornment also continues into the present. The Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California Tribal Council highlights contemporary Tongva jeweler Cindy Dorame, whose work is inspired by her Tongva maritime ancestry. The Tribal Council connects her jewelry to ancestral traditions of making beads from shells and, later, using glass
beads (Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California Tribal Council). Contemporary artists such as Dorame demonstrate that Gabrielino-Tongva adornment should not be presented only as something found in archaeological sites or historical documents. Cultural expression continues to change and develop while maintaining connections to ancestral materials and traditions.
For an interpretation of Kuruvungna, these different forms of evidence should remain distinct. Historical records document shell beads and body paint at Kuruvungna itself. Archaeological research from the broader Los Angeles Basin helps explain the larger importance of shell beads within Gabrielino-Tongva communities, while contemporary Tongva perspectives demonstrate that cultural traditions continue in the present. An object documented at another Gabrielino-Tongva site should not automatically be assumed to have been used in exactly the same way at Kuruvungna.
Taken together, these sources show why adornment at Kuruvungna should be understood as more than decoration. Shell beads connect the village to a larger history involving marine resources, exchange networks, cultural traditions, colonial change, and contemporary cultural expression. Although we cannot recover every meaning that these objects held in the eighteenth century, they provide a way to understand relationships between people and place and between past and present. Rather than simply asking what Gabrielino-Tongva people wore, studying adornment encourages us to consider what these objects can teach us about the people, communities, and relationships surrounding Kuruvungna.
SOURCES
California Department of Transportation. Archaeological Context and Research Design for Native American Resources in the Los Angeles Basin: Caltrans Districts 7 and 12. California Department of Transportation, 2024.
City of Los Angeles, Department of City Planning. First Peoples Historic Context Statement: First Peoples in the Mission Period, Under Mexican Rule, and through Early Statehood, 1769–1930. Office of Historic Resources, 2024.
Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California Tribal Council. “Preserving Our Culture through the Arts.” Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California Tribal Council, www.gtioc.org
Loren, Diana DiPaolo. The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America. University Press of Florida, 2010.
Reddy, Seetha N., and John G. Douglass. “Native Californian Persistence and Transformation in the Colonial Los Angeles Basin, Southern California.” Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, vol. 38, no. 2, 2018, pp. 235–259. University of California eScholarship