What is the name of the Indians who lived on the Island and what happened to them?
Native Americans who lived in the Los Angeles area and the Southern Channel Islands (including Santa Catalina Island) spoke a language distinct from their neighbors to the North and South of them. They have come to be known as the Gabrielino, because many of those who survived European diseases and the disruption on their normal trade patterns and culture went to the Mission San Gabriel in Los Angeles, some forcibly and some willingly. The most recent radiocarbon dating indicates human habitation of the Island for approximately 7,000 years before present. Other Channel Islands have found even earlier dates. The Native Americans who lived here at the time the Spanish found them called Catalina Island “Pemú’nga” (most current spelling based on linguistic research of scholars; there are no fluent speakers of the Gabrielino language). We’re not sure when the last native Gabrielino went to the missions, but the missions’ baptismal records show Islander baptisms until the 1820s. Today one ma
