The Cahuilla Indians, the original occupants of the Coachella Valley, lived for centuries in bands around Mount San Jacinto, in the San Gorgonio Pass, and across the Colorado Desert.
Today, much of Palm Springs is on land owned by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. Their heritage is still prominent—and is the subject of the beautiful new Agua Caliente Cultural Museum.
Juan Antonio was born near Mount San Antonio in 1783. His Cahuilla name, Cooswootna, translates as “He gets mad quickly.” He was a major chief of the Mountain Band of the Cahuilla from the 1840s to 1863, the year he died.
Anglo Americans did not encounter the Cahuilla until the 1840s. By 1846, Chief Juan Antonio had five Cahuilla clans—from the San Gorgonio Pass to the Colorado River—under his leadership. Held in high regard by white travelers and settlers, he was known as the Lion of the Cahuilla partly because of his stout figure and leonine features.
In some instances, he was reportedly quite cruel in dispensing justice, allegedly burying a murderer alive, and cropping the ears off two Indian youths caught stealing.
At one time, he traded with and hauled timber for Pauline Weaver, a white settler in the San Gorgonio Pass. With California still under Mexican rule, the chief and several Cahuilla were invited to an American Fourth of July barbecue at the Weaver ranch, witnessing what is said to be the first raising of the American flag in California.
With bows and arrows, he and a group of Mountain Cahuilla later helped guard the large Antonio Maria Lugo ranch, as well as the ranches of his family members and other San Bernardino colonists. They drove off Paiute marauders who were stealing cattle and horses from the ranchers.
Juan Antonio also helped a U.S. Army expedition defend an attack by Ute warriors. For his help, the expedition leader, Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, awarded him a set of military epaulets, which he wore regularly thereafter.
When the United States started to take over California, the Indigenous tribes were caught in the middle of the resulting Mexican-American War and didn’t know whom to support. Juan Antonio’s Cahuilla group joined forces with the Mexican and Spanish settlers and fought one battle against a group of Luiseño Indians who had allied with the U.S., killing many and capturing others. The prisoners in Juan Antonio’s custody were later killed as well. Lugo, the settler, reportedly chastised the Cahuilla chief for the apparent cruelty, but Juan Antonio reminded Lugo that had it been the other way around, every last Cahuilla would have been roasted alive.
Juan Antonio was also called upon by Lugo’s relative, José Maria Lugo, in 1851 to help track down Cupeño Chieftain Antonio Garra and his men. Garra had organized a revolt, protesting unfair taxation by the San Diego tax collector. Chief Juan Antonio and Lugo captured Garra, thwarting some of the Southern California tribes’ plan to attack Los Angeles. During the capture, Garra’s son, also named Antonio Garra, knifed Juan Antonio in the arm and in the side. The elder Garra was turned over to the Americans, found guilty of treason, blindfolded over an open grave and executed by a San Diego firing squad.
In 1852, Juan Antonio and other Indigenous leaders signed a treaty with the U.S. commissioner of Indian Affairs, which gave them exclusive use of land 40 miles long by 30 miles wide in the San Gorgonio Pass. But it was never ratified and, to the confusion of the tribes, was not fulfilled.
For years, Chief Juan Antonio helped Mormon settlers ward off marauders from San Bernardino, yet the Mormons still began settling on Cahuilla land without permission. They were also zealously trying to make the tribe members convert, which the Cahuilla did not appreciate.
The more confused the situation, the more both tribal members and white settlers looked to Juan Antonio for leadership. Despite the refusal of the federal government to ratify the treaty of 1852, Juan Antonio and 24 other Cahuilla leaders continued to work to secure Indian rights to land and water. On May 15, 1856, they sent a petition to the commissioner of Indian Affairs. It read: “Since the occupation of Californians and the Americans, white settlers have taken possession of a large portion of our best farming and grazing lands, diverting the water from our lands, depriving us of the means of irrigation. What we ask of the government is that certain public lands be set apart for our use exclusively (which lands we have long occupied and improved), and from which we may not be forced by white settlers.”(An audio version of this petition can be found in the new Agua Caliente Cultural Museum in downtown Palm Springs.)
Juan Antonio became an eloquent spokesman. This speech of his was printed in the San Bernardino Weekly Patriot on Dec. 7, 1861: “I am an American. My people are all Americans, although we are Indians. If we should hear of armed men in these mountains, we should come and tell you, and help you fight them. If bad men should come here to fight you, we should fight with you. This is our country, and it is yours. We are your friends; we want you to be ours.”
In 1862, a smallpox epidemic ravaged many throughout Southern California—and Juan Antonio became ill. Per custom, he tried sweat baths and plunges into icy water, and eventually dragged himself out of his hut in Saahatpa (northeast of San Timoteo Canyon), dying alone in early 1863. According to the Los Angeles Star on Feb. 28, 1863, he and the bodies of four tribal members who died of smallpox were not buried immediately, but shamefully left to the animals. It was an inhumane end to a powerful leader.
Before he died, Chief Juan Antonio had turned bitter toward the white man. He had listened to decades of promises, yet he watched as Indigenous lands were taken, and imported diseases ravaged his people, including ultimately himself. He regretted capturing Garra and lamented that he should have had his men join forces to aid Garra’s battle.
It wasn’t until 1876 that the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation was established in what is now Palm Springs by executive order from President Ulysses S. Grant.
Nearly a century after Chief Juan Antonio’s death, a 1956 archeological expedition discovered his body at Saahatpa. He was identified by his cherished gifted epaulets and reburied with military honors. Today, he’s remembered as one of the bravest, most loyal and intelligent Indigenous leaders in the history of California.
Sources for this article include Mukat’s People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California by Lowell Bean (University of California Press, 1972); The Cahuilla Indians by Harry C. James (Malki Museum, 1969); Palm Springs: First Hundred Years by Mayor Frank Bogert (Palm Springs Heritage Association, 1987); and The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California by Lowell Bean and Harry Lawton (Malki Museum Press, 1976).