The Sebastian Reservation: Multiple Peoples, One Fence

Fort Tejon was built in eighteen fifty-four. What most visitors to the state historic park do not know, because the interpretive program does not emphasize it, is that the Army post was built on the same land as a federal Indian reservation, and that the reservation came first. In eighteen fifty-three, the federal government established the Sebastian Indian Reservation on the Tejon land and began forcing multiple distinct peoples onto it.

The peoples gathered there were not a single tribe. They were several entirely separate nations whose territories happened to overlap in the surrounding region: the Kitanemuk, whose homeland was the Tehachapi Mountains and the Tejon Creek drainage; the Tataviam, from the Santa Clara River corridor just south; the Yokuts, from the western Central Valley; the Kawaiisu, from the Tehachapi Mountains; and elements of the Serrano, Chumash, and smaller groups identified in government records as Tejon Indians. These peoples shared a reservation but did not share a language, a ceremonial tradition, or a political structure.

Their traditional food sources were disrupted. Their leaders were drawn into a labor relationship with the cattle economy surrounding the reservation. They had not asked to be there.

The reservation lasted eleven years. In eighteen sixty-four, the Army abandoned Fort Tejon. The reservation was dissolved without treaty.

No federal recognition was extended to replace it for the Kitanemuk or Tataviam peoples. A private consortium established the Tejon Ranch on the same land in eighteen sixty-five and employed former reservation residents as vaqueros and domestic workers, a quasi-feudal arrangement that continued into the twentieth century. The descendant communities of those peoples, including the Kern Valley Indian Community and the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, continue to seek federal recognition today.

Interstate Five crosses their traditional territory for approximately sixty miles. There is no interpretive marker along the highway that acknowledges this.