Indigenous Landscapes

Sandy Rodriguez, artist. Study for the Mapa Fronteriza from the Codex Rodriguez-Mondragon. 23.5 x 40 inches, hand processed watercolor on amate paper. Courtesy of the artists. Image Credit J6 Creative. 2017.

Sandy Rodriguez, artist. Gold Sickness, Calafia and U.S. Immigrant Detention Facilities. 11 1/2 x 15 3/4 in, hand-processed watercolor and gold leaf on amate paper. Courtesy of the artist. Image credit Sammy's Camera. 2019.

Raised in San Diego, Tijuana, and Los Angeles, the artist and researcher Sandy Rodriguez (BFA, CalArts) investigates the methods and materials of painting across cultures and histories. Her Codex Rodríguez–Mondragón (2017-), made with hand-processed watercolor on sacred – once outlawed – amate paper, maps the ongoing cycles of violence on communities of color by blending historical and recent events.

The first peoples of California's borderlands mark their landscapes with story, song, and memory.

The Chumash, Tataviam, Cahuilla, Payomkawichum, Acjachemen, Ipai-Tipai, Kumeyaay, Quechan, and O’odham, are only a selection of the many groups of the region. The many bands, tribes, and nations of the Southern California Borderlands have endured the shifting boundaries of successive colonial powers.

Investigate the published historical accounts of the Spanish newcomers who traversed the landscape, like the memoir of Father Eusebio Francisco Kino’s experiences in the “Pimería Alta”--the lands that are currently California, Arizona, and Sonora.

Explore the overlapping hydrological and anthropological work of John Wesley Powell on the watersheds and Indigenous language families of California & the West.

Explore the resources linked below. What others can you find in the collections?

First Peoples

Resources in the Library of Congress relating to the first peoples of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands regions:

The Indians of Los Angeles County: Hugo Reid's letters of 1852.
Hugo Reid (1811-1852) left Scotland at the age of eighteen and settled in California in 1832. He married a woman of the Gabrielino tribe and became a rancher near the San Gabriel mission near Los Angeles. The Indians of Los Angeles County (1968) reprints letters first published in the Los Angeles Star in 1852. Reid's fortunes faltered with United States seizure of California, and he may have written the letters in hope of being named a federal Indian agent. They focus on the Native American tribes of Los Angeles County and the history of the San Fernando and San Gabriel missions.
Native Land Digital External
Resisting erasure: an external link to an ongoing mapping project of indigenous territories, languages and treaties.
Search for digitized resources related to Yuma Indians

Carol Highsmith, photographer. Petroglyphs at Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park, high above Santa Barbara, California. 2013. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Ofelia Zepeda reads and discusses B 'o E-a:g maṣ 'ab Him g Ju:kĭ/It is Going to Rain on. 2020. Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

Pow-wow of Indian chiefs at Yuma reservation. [between ca. 1920 and ca. 1930] Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Indian holdings, Library of Congress, 1978-1985 (mostly about Federal Cylinder Project). 1977-1992. Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

Carol Highsmith, photographer. Chumash indian mural in the city of Lompoc, California. 2012. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Constitution and By-laws of the Quechan Tribe of the Fort Yuma Reservation, California. Approved December 18, 1936. Law Library of Congress.

Historic American Buildings Survey. Fort Yuma Old Barracks, Yuma Indian Reservation, Winterhaven, Imperial County, CA. 1933. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

John Wesley Powell. Map of linguistic stocks of American Indians. 1890. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

Spanish Borderlands

Selection of Library of Congress resources relating to Alta California and Texas. During the Spanish period, this designation encompassed the lands of the present-day Borderlands.

Search for digitized resources related to Mission Churches

Dear Los Angeles by David Kipen (Editor, Narrated by); Tom Picasso (Narrated by); Jeanine Bartel (Narrated by); Richard Poe (Narrated by); Eva Kaminsky (Narrated by); Korey Jackson (Narrated by); Lynette Freeman (Narrated by); Luis Moreno (Narrated by)
Call Number: RZC 7081
ISBN: 9781980034070
Published/Created: 2019-06-06
David Kipen scoured the archives of libraries, historical societies, and private estates to assemble a kaleidoscopic view of Los Angeles from the Spanish missionary expeditions in the 1500s to the present day. These entries are arranged by date-- January 1 through December 31-- but are selected from more than three centuries of writing by those living in, or visiting, Los Angeles. Thus the entry for January 21, for example, will have an excerpt from Benjamin Hayes in 1850, F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1938, Charlton Heston in 1957, John Lennon in 1974, and a blogger in 2011. In the process, readers get a wonderful glimpse of life in this city through the ages. Profound, historical, whimsical, this rich mix of letters and diary entries marking each day of the year offers intimate flashes of life in Los Angeles over the past four centuries.

Carol Highsmith, photographer. Entrance to the Las Laguna de Anza wetlands in Nogales, a city on the Mexican border in the southeast corner of Arizona. 2018-03-17. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Carol Highsmith, photographer. The local Pimeria Alta History Museum in Nogales, Arizona, a small city on the border with the much larger city of the same name in Mexico. 2018-03-17. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Mission San Jose de Guadalupe, Mission & Washington Boulevards, Fremont, Alameda County, CA. ca. 1933. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Parisot, P. F. (Pierre Fourier), 1827-1903. The reminiscences of a Texas missionary. an Antonio, Tex.: Johnson Bros. Printing Co, 1899.

Truman, Benjamin Cummings, 1835-1916. Missions of California. [Los Angeles, M. Rieder, 1903]

Forbes, A. S. C., Mrs. California missions and landmarks and how to get there; a practical guide. Los Angeles, Official guide, 1903.

Hudson, William Henry. The famous missions of California. [New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1901]

Land and Waterscapes

The natural systems located in the Borderland’s 8 watersheds function across legal boundaries.

Discover selected resources related to John Wesley Powell
Powell was a 19th-century geologist and explorer of the American West

Paddling the John Wesley Powell Route : exploring the Green and Colorado Rivers by Mike Bezemek.
Call Number: GV776.G744
ISBN: 9781493034826
Published/Created: 2018

Carleton E. Watkins, photographer. Kern River. Cañon. Kern County Sierra Nevada Nevada California. 1888. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Man-made "river" in a desert "sea"--California's new river, the All-American Canal, nearing completion by the Bureau of Reclamation along the Mexican border, as seen from the air. California American Border Region Mexican. 1938. Library of Congre

Peter Goin, photographer. Entry point of the New River into the United States at Calexico and Mexicali, view toward west. Mexican American Border Region California New River Mexico, ca. 1987. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

“El Otro Lado” (The Other Side): Geographies, Boundaries, and Imaginations of Space

Caribbean, Iberian & Latin American Studies: Ask a Librarian