KTLA News: "Dedication of Suangna Indian Village Historic Site" (1972)

today while students of a bioecology class from Carson High School were digging for Indian artifacts at the site of an ancient Indian village dating back a thousand years dedication ceremonies were held marking the village and historic site Carson councilman Gilbert Smith is Chairman of the Carson Indian historical committee Mr Smith how did this come about well first of all a very a young man here in the city of Carson by the name of Mike Myers uh came to my office at the time that I served as mayor of Carson and he asked whether or not there would be a chance to preserve some of the history and culture of the Indian Community here in Carson and in turn he outlined the area in which he had recovered some artifacts we made contact with the land owners Watson industrial properties and from that nearly two years of work went into the project a Citizens committee was formed and many of the local Indian representatives were involved in the activity and today we're going to dedicate all of those efforts as well as the village today's ceremony marks the dedication of the site the artifacts found at this location will be on display at the new Carson library and at calate domingus Stan Chambers reporting from Carson those that have worked with me for this nearly two years e e Monument dedicated to Indians in Los Angeles County uh yes it is and we've done quite a bit of research uh to that extent that we have contacted the people within Los Angeles County and the county advisory committee on landmarks and we've been told that to the best of uh all the records they've been able to uh check there is no such there is no other Monument uh such as the one that is uh here in Carson what was the Indian village that was here in the early 1500s The Village was called sangna and the village was made up of a variety of Indian uh uh tribes uh they seem to have congregated in this general area from throughout the Southern California area a predominant uh Indian group that lived here was at the Chumash makeup however they did uh uh seemed to embody or at least the village did anyway a variety of Indian uh tribes and con quently the term sangna for the village is generally applied because it was not limited to one Indian tribe now we're on an original land grant is that true yes we are this uh Village was actually part of the Rancho Dominguez uh which uh Pedro fogus the governor of California in 1782 had granted to Juan Dominguez as part of the uh uh his land grant and uh it's commonly referred to as Rancho Dominguez or Dominguez Rancho and I understand that the uh Dominguez Rancho was still basically within the original family uh yes it is as a matter of fact uh the names uh Watson and Carson domingus D all referred to uh Heirs of the domingus family in turn their Holdings are pretty much held intact today Mrs Esther wood president of the Carson coordinating Council next Mrs felma stretz former president of the coordinating Council an active uh citizen here in our community and I don't know whether she is and I'd like to thank each and every one of you I know that in the past SE own recognition to those in the audience that are not on the program first from uh our city council I'd like to introduce