CROSSROADS OF PAST; WORK SITES OFFER WINDOW TO ANCIENT INDIAN CULTURES.

Byline: Erin Gebroe Daily News Staff Writer

They arrived here in ancient time, traveling through the desert basin to build villages in land now marked by roller coasters, tract housing and rows of bustling shopping centers.

They called themselves Tataviam, ``Dwellers of the Sunny Slopes.''

As their former lands are developed, the life of the Santa Clarita Valley's first inhabitants more often is unearthed and disturbed.

``Sometimes in building highways along trails that have been here for thousands of years, we forget all the tragedy that traveled over this road,'' said Chumash descendant Alan Salazar, called upon recently to bless a highway, one where construction workers came across his ancestors' remains.

In fact, two of the Santa Clarita Valley's most recent moves toward modern man's progress - the expansion of Highway 126, officially celebrated Feb. 2, and the sprawling Newhall Ranch development - have drawn ire from some of the remaining Tataviam and Chumash people.

They say Americans continue to dishonor their tribes and ignore their history.

While workers were adding two lanes to Highway 126, they found human remains - the bodies of 45 American Indians buried 2,000 years ago, said Georgie Waugh, an archeologist with the state Department of Transportation.

Tataviam and Chumash descendants at the highway's opening celebration complained that moving the bones was severely traumatic.

Salazar, who blessed the highway in a ceremony organized by the state Department of Transportation, said the bones and artifacts should remind people of how Indians have been controlled and killed throughout American history.

Like Highway 126, the Newhall Ranch project, a 21,600-home community expected to win final approval March 23 from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, reminds the community that Castaic Junction was a central location for the Tataviam, who also lived in regions now known as Agua Dulce, Acton, Piru, Lake Elizabeth, Lake Hughes and Newhall.

Archeologists found artifacts and a burial site in eight different areas within the project boundaries, according to the environmental impact report.

The project, introduced by The Newhall Land and Farming Company, extends from Castaic Junction west to the Ventura County line and from San Martinez Canyon south to the crest of the Santa Susana Mountains.

A letter from California Indian Legal Services pleads with the county to conduct further studies on the cultural significance of the site before development begins.

``Any development over the site would be an insult to the Chumash and Fernandeno communities and a violation of the site's sanctity,'' the letter says. ``The loss of one's heritage, patrimony and ancestral relics is an irreparable harm.''

The Tataviam came to the area in 450 A.D., according to Paul Higgins, who gives presentations on the Tataviam in local elementary schools.

When they arrived, the Chumash were already here. Although the Chumash lived closer to the coast, they met some Tataviam, whom they could not understand because they spoke different languages.

As a result, Higgins said, the Chumash called the Tataviam Alliklik, or ``People Who Do Not Speak Clearly.''

Hunters and gatherers, the Tataviam ate acorns, yucca and seeds as well as deer, rabbits and birds.

``It was really easy for them to survive compared to the plains Indians that had to hunt buffalo,'' Higgins said.

The first known Spaniards came to the area in 1769, led by Don Gaspar de Portola, who was heading to Monterey.

``The (Indian) people met him and took care of him and fed him, but they didn't realize what would happen,'' said Paul Varela, executive director of the Chumash Interpretive Center in Thousand Oaks.

What would happen is the San Fernando Mission would be built in 1797, and the Indians would be given clothes, baptized and taught to work the fields.

Eventually, the mission grew enough to prompt construction in 1804 of an outpost called San Francisco Xavier, which sat on a bluff overlooking the junction of the Santa Clara River and Castaic Creek. It soon became an asistencia, to serve people who were too far from the San Fernando Mission.

The Asistencia de San Francisco Xavier was the first European settlement in the Castaic Junction area, according to the environmental studies for the Newhall Ranch project. Its buildings, however, no longer exist.

When the Newhall Ranch project is approved, Newhall Land plans to donate the 8-acre asistencia area to the Archaeological Conservancy, a national nonprofit organization that preserves archeological sites.

Once it takes over the property, the conservancy will erect a fence around it and organize a committee of local organizations to help manage the site, said the agency's Lynn Dunbar.

The conservancy will then invite researchers there.

``There's a real need for greater research on church records and other historical records,'' Dunbar said.

Excavation, however, will be avoided.

``The idea is to preserve (sites) until it becomes scientifically compelling to excavate them,'' Dunbar said.

Between 40,000 and 60,000 Chumash lived in the area at the height of the tribe's existence. The number of Tataviam is not known, said Varela of the Chumash Interpretive Center.

Today, he said, numbers have dwindled to about 1,800 Chumash and 300 Tataviam.

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photo, map

PHOTO An outpost of the San Fernando Mission was erected in 1810 near what is now Castaic Junction near Interstate 5 and Highway 126.

Map: Indian hot spots