By Bonnie Kane, Ridge Route Communities Museum Historian

On the premise that military events are often about freedom, the Independence Day program for 4th of July weekend at the Ridge Route Museum was about military events in these San Emigdio Mountains.

It has been passed down through storytellers that in the mid-1700s Mountain Chumash people from this area attempted to defend their lands from the encroaching Paiute people from the Tehachapi Mountains.

The Yokuts from the Central Valley joined the Mountain Chumash to assemble 7,500 men—that’s a lot of horses as well. They went to meet their enemy near the present Kern River.

Tecuya, the son of one of the leaders, later recalled that as the Paiutes numbered about 10,000, the Yokut-Chumash warriors found it best to drop back towards their village of Tashlipun at the mouth of San Emigdio Canyon, where they knew they could…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

(1) Battle of San Emigdio Canyon

(2) The priest being returned to the village

(3) Battle in the 1790s

(3 detail) Prisoners on horseback

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This is part of the July 9, 2021 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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