TRAVEL TALES : PRESERVING THE CHUMASH CULTURE.

Byline: Susanne Hopkins Daily News Travel Editor

Gilbert Unzueta clambers up a wooden staircase, past thriving bushes of poison oak and chaparral, and bends down to step into a low rock shelter jutting from the Thousand Oaks hillside.

He points to a faded rust-colored figure on the wall.

``We call this the water spider,'' he says.

The ancient drawing created by American Indians thousands of years ago - perhaps as far back as 6000 B.C., as some in the area have been carbon dated, he says - is on display in this odd outcropping of rock on land housing the Chumash Interpretive Center at Oakbrook Regional Park in Thousand Oaks.

Unzueta, curator for the center, points out other, fainter images. ``The whole wall was probably all rock art,'' he says. ``But it's really weathered now.''

It is preserving such examples of their culture that compels Unzueta and other Chumash descendants to work at the center, which includes not only the pictographs sprinkled on cave walls and rocks, but a small museum of artifacts.

``The Chumash people are going to be extinct 50, 100 years from now,'' Unzueta says. ``Our bloodline is very thin. I'm one-quarter Chumash, my son is one-eighth. But the culture and their way of life has to remain. And the one way to do that is through the children.''

So, the center, built two years ago with the aid of a $1.2 million grant from Ventura County and run on donations, reaches out to children - about 5,000 find their way here each year, most via school field trips.

Unzueta leads youngsters - and, on the weekends, adults as well - on hikes back to the caves with their pictographs, telling old Chumash legends about the flora and fauna he spots along the way.

Other docents explain uses of the bone and rock tools exhibited in the museum and talk about the lifestyle of the Chumash, a peaceful people who lived not only on some of the Channel Islands off the coast of Ventura, but on a variety of terrain stretching from San Luis Obispo along the coast to Malibu, inland to the Thousand Oaks area and Encino, north to Valencia and east to Palmdale.

Colorful murals detailing the lives of Chumash in their various habitats decorate the museum walls. Keen-eyed youngsters can often spot the faces of their guides in the paintings. The artists - Bryan Butler, Dave Fontana and Kellie Collin - photographed Chumash in the area and painted them into the murals, says docent Beverly Folkes.

There are also animal skins for children to touch and study, a slide show about Chumash life, a small library for research, a life-size sculpture of a dream tomol (a Chumash plank canoe) at the entrance and an outdoor amphitheater where Chumash dances and storytelling often are featured.

The property also contains a burial ground with the remains of 118 people whose bodies were uncovered near Mugu Rock in the Oxnard area by a flood some years ago. And there are plans for a raptor rehabilitation and release center and a wildlife center (already, two mule deer named Lunch and Dinner, an emu, an ocelot, a raccoon and a skunk live in an enclosed area on the property).

If the museum exhibits offer visitors a chance to see how the Chumash lived, the outdoors offers a glimpse of where they lived. Surrounded by gentle hills, laced with a small, but steady creek and shaded with oak, willow, alder and elderberry trees, the area in northeastern Thousand Oaks was once home to a small community of about 30 Chumash, Unzueta says.

``We've found three house rings,'' he says, referring to remains of what might have been the foundations for Chumash living shelters. There is also a giant mortar where seeds and berries were ground and Unzueta says what might have been a birthing cave has also been located in the hills above the center. On the way to the rock shelter and the water spider, he also points out the rusty outline of a swordfish on the wall of a hollowed-out rock. There is other wall art in rock shelters tucked in the surrounding hills, he says.

Folkes finds the pictographs an eloquent testimony to the area's long-ago inhabitants.

``They had no written language,'' she says. ``Those pictographs are, to me, a way of them telling what happened to them that day. This was their way of leaving their message to us.''

How to find the center

Oakbrook Regional Park Chumash Interpretive Center is located at 3290 Lang Ranch Parkway, Thousand Oaks.

Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Guided walks to see the pictographs are at 11 a.m. Saturdays and a wildlife program is featured at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturdays.

Admission is $3 adults, $2 seniors, students with ID and children.

The center will hold a spring intertribal Powwow May 10-11, featuring drummers, dancers, wildlife shows and other events. Hours will be 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. May 10 and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 11. Wildlife shows will be held at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. both days. Cost is $5 for adults, $3 children.

Information: [phone].

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Photo: ``The Chumash people are going to be extinct 50, 100 years from now. Our bloodline is very thin. I'm one-quarter Chumash, my son is one-eighth,'' says Gilbert Unzueta, curator at the Chumash Interpretive Center.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News

Box: How to find the center (See Text)