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POVUU'NGNA
A copious spring surrounded by a grove of cottonwoods once emerged brightly from the lower slope of the hill of Rancho Los Alamitos. As the water flowed across the sloughs, ponds, and marshlands of Alamitos Bay toward the coastal beaches two miles away and Pacific blue beyond, it stirred into greenness coarse grasses and rushes. At the source of this renewing spring stood a village.
This was Povuu'ngna, the sacred place of origin of the Tongva people, whose ancestral land spread over present-day Los Angeles County and a portion of Orange County, out to the islands of Santa Catalina, San Clemente, and San Nicolas. Here the deity Chinigchinich revealed his truths and taught the first people how to survive, and the Tongva gathered from far and wide at the village for customary greetings, trade, and the ceremonies required to ensure the future of the world. The ways of the Tongva influenced the traditional practices of neighboring tribes throughout Southern California. Today Povuu'ngna is the cherished home of the Tongva community, a place of beginnings and an ongoing pilgrimage site where people honor the ancestors and their ways and find meaning for the future.
Sometime around 1822, Father Geronimo Boscana, a Spanish missionary and an "ethnographer" long before there were such curiously defined people, was the first to record the extensive customs and beliefs of the Tongva, in his oft-cited work Chinigchinich. In the writings of Father Boscana, Povuu'ngna is the only village mentioned in two surviving versions of the Tongva creation story. One story comes from the inland Tongva; the other, as related by Boscana and told here, is from the coastal and island people:
An invisible and all-powerful being called Nocuma made the world, the sea, and all that is therein contained, such as animals, trees, plants, and fishes. In its form it was spherical, and rested upon his hands. But, being continually in motion, he resolved to secure the world by placing in its center a black rock called Tosaut, and it remained firm and secure as at the present time... Nocuma, having created all the things contained in the world. . .created the first Indian, out of the earth and called him Ejoni. Afterwards he created woman and gave her the...