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The Kitanemuk are an Indigenous people of California and were a tribal village of the Kawaiisu Nation.The Kawaiisu traditionally lived in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Antelope Valley area of the western Mojave Desert of southern California, United States which has historically has been within the territory of the Kawaiisu. Today some of these members people are enrolled in the federally recognized Tejon Indian Tribe of California.
The Kitanemuk, as a Kawaiisu village. traditionally spoke the a Uto-Aztecan language.Most experts contend that the Kitanemuk were not a separate tribal entity at all but were a group of Kawaiisu who were converted by missionaries to Christianity. As they converted, they gave up the Kawaiisu belief system and lost any ability to speak the local native language
Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) proposed a population of 1,770 for the Kitanemuk village.. Thomas C. Blackburn and Lowell John Bean (1978:564) estimated the Kitanemuk alone as 500-1,000.
As a village subset of the greater Kawaiisu Nation, their numbers were often understated. It is estimated by current tribal records that the total number of eligible Kawaiisu members is close to 100,000.
The Kawaiisu were first contacted by the Franciscan missionary-explorer Francisco Garcés in 1769.[1] Some Kawaiisu were recruited and relocated for the Spanish missions of Mission San Fernando Rey de España in the San Fernando Valley, Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in the San Gabriel Valley, and perhaps Mission San Buenaventura at the coast in Ventura County.
In 1840, a smallpox epidemic hit the Kawaiisu.[1] Beginning in the 1850s, they were associated with the reservations at Fort Tejon and Tule River. By 1917, some lived on Tejon Ranch and other lived on the Tule River Reservation,[1] located in Tulare County, California.
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