Toypurina

 

 

TOYPURINA

(1760 – 1799)

Toypurina was of the Tongva Tribe near what is now known as the Los Angeles Basin area. As a young child she reveled in the native ways of her tribe, the Kumi-Vit, who had lived in the same area for hundreds of years and knew each rock and tree that was in their midst. An exceptionally bright child, she not only learned to dance, laugh, grow food, harvest, and to weave, but it is also said that she had supernatural powers.

In 1769, when Toypurina was nine years old, what is known as the Mission Period was taking root in San Diego. The Spanish were setting out to colonize the Pacific Coast region into NEW SPAIN before other Europeans could seize the area. As part of the colonization process, it was the practice of the New Spaniards to convert the Native Indians to Christianity, both as a way of subduing any resistance as well as a means of gaining workers. Missions were built which were fortified with presidios, arms, and military personnel. The Natives were threatened, cajoled, and bribed into conversion to the religion of the Spanish invaders who behaved as if the land belonged to them and that the indigenous people were their property.

In 1771, when Toypurina was 11, the Mission Period’s forces moved north of SanDiego and near her Tribal grounds of Jachivit.The Mission San Gabriel Arcangel was the fourth of twenty-one missions that would be built between 1769-1833 between San Diego and San Francisco.

What Toypurina saw happening to her people caused her much distress. The diseases that were annihilating the tribesmen in astonishing numbers, the abuses and rapes carried on against her people, and the forced labor, all made a deep impression on the young native who knew of a much freer life before the arrival of the Spaniards. There had been a beheading of a chief who struggled against the soldiers when they raped his wife. The Chief’s head was put on a pole as a way to keep the Natives in line.

Toypurina was a highly intelligent person, evidenced by the fact that she was not only a Shaman, but also a medicine woman of great skill. By the time Toypurina was 21 years old she was able to speak the dozens of dialects of the nearby tribes.

Nicolas Jose’ was the third adult male baptized by the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel. In 1778-79 he was appointed the mission’s first alcalde, which is Spanish for the double role of mayor and judge. Jose’s dual allegiance to the mission and to his tribe eventually split apart, and in 1785 he asked the very wise Toypurina to help him overthrow the Mission San Gabriel Archangel.

Toypurina had grown increasingly angry at the Padre’s and with all those at the mission for trespassing on the land of her forefathers. At age 25, she decided that she could endure no more. She would free her people. When Jose’ spoke of banding together for a revolt, Toypurina organized six of the surrounding tribes together with the intent of killing off all those at the mission, soldiers and Padre’s alike.

On the night of October 25^th, the war party advanced on the mission only to find that the mission had been warned of the uprising, and all of the invaders were arrested. Governor Don Pedro Fages found Toypurina and Jose’ guilty of being the leaders of the attack.

Though it can only be speculated as to why, during the trial for the uprising Toypurina said that she wanted to become a Christian.

After her baptism into Catholicism, she was given the name Regina (Queen) Josepha by Padre Miguel Sanchez. Toypurina was then sent to the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, (Carmel), for her own safety.

As to why such an intelligent woman, who must have known the futility of her actions against the armed missions, would undertake such a role, we are left only to credit her high sense of obligation. An obligation not only to her people, but to the sacred, the natural world with which the Native people took great care to live in harmony. Given Toypurina’s high station among her people, she was looked to for solving problems. During the trial, when Toypurina was asked why she led the attack, she answered “I hate the Padres and all of you, for living here on my native soil…for trespassing upon the land of my forefathers and despoiling our tribal domains.” It can thus be assumed that though Toypurina knew of the ineffectuality of the attack on the mission, she was bound by honor to lead it.

Two years after her transfer to San Carlos Toypurina married Manuel Montero, a Spanish soldier, and the couple was given land from the governor. It is here, near Carmel, where they raised their three children together; Cesario, Juana de Dios, and Maria Clemintina. Toypurina died in 1799 at the age of 39 and to this day she is known as the only woman in Alta California to have led a revolt.

(A mural in L.A. of a native Tonga woman.)

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