LUISEO

group of Indians who spoke a Uto-Aztecan language and inhabited a large area south and east of Los Angeles and north of San Diego, Calif. They were named after the Spanish mission San Luis Rey de Francia. Although some Luiseo lived on the coast, where they fished and gathered mollusks, the great majority were hill people who gathered acorns and other seeds, fruits, and roots and hunted various game with bow and arrow or snares. In the warm climate the men wore nothing, and the women wore an apron front and back. They lived in villages of semi-subterranean earth-covered lodges. They were apparently organized in small groups of kinsmen clustered into clans or near clans, which had territorial, political, and economic functions; and there were parallel and closely related religious societies to which everyone belonged and which had both ceremonial and political functions. Several family groupings had chiefs, and in most areas there was apparently a chief of chiefs. The Luiseo were mystics; and their conception of a great, all-powerful, avenging god was uncommon for aboriginal North America. In deference to this god, Chingichnish, they held a series of initiation ceremonies for boys, some of which involved a drug made from the jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) which was drunk to inspire visions or dreams of the supernatural. Intoxication was central to this jimsonweed cult. Equally important were mourning ceremonies, a series of funerary observances and anniversary commemorations of the dead. Shamans, or medicine men, were important in curing disease. Over 1,000 Luiseo descendants remained in the late 20th century.