Puvunga, Sacred indigenous site in Long Beach, United States.
Puvunga is an unmarked open parcel of dry, yellowed grass and bare light-brown dirt on the California State University, Long Beach campus, near the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden and a campus parking lot. Several tall trees with smooth pale grey-to-white trunks grow from the dirt, mostly on the left, with low materials and small markers scattered beneath them; a green field and more trees lie in the distance.
Puvunga was a large Tongva and Acjachemen village and regional trading center above the San Gabriel River wetlands. After Mission San Gabriel was founded in 1771, baptisms of Puvunga villagers were recorded between 1785 and 1805, and the village was likely depleted soon after. In 1844 Hugo Reid placed the village at Rancho Los Alamitos, and John Peabody Harrington recorded shell middens there in 1933. Trenching for the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden in 1974 led to listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
The name Puvunga can mean "the place of the gathering" or "in the ball", depending on the source. The site is the endpoint of an annual pilgrimage that starts at the village site of Panhe, now in San Onofre, and it hosts intertribal gatherings for the Tongva, Acjachemen and Chumash. Tongva narratives name it as the birthplace of Chinigchinix and home to Wiyot.
The site is an unmarked open parcel of dry grass and dirt beside a campus parking lot, near the Japanese Garden and a channelized creek. There are no signs or informational materials, so arrange any visit through the university. The ground is uneven and unpaved; the trees stand mainly on the left side of the parcel.
The site has no informational marker, so visitors often walk past it unknowingly. In 1972 campus workers found parts of an Indigenous cemetery at LAN-235, on the western edge of campus; the remains were placed in the CSULB archaeology laboratory. The Audubon Society has identified rare bird species on the land.
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