WARNER SPRINGS Postcard 1800s 1900s

This hand-colored antique postcard of Warner Springs in San Diego County was postmarked 1912. The picture documents turn-of-the-century California Indian living conditions in San Diego County.

The historical postcard is titled "Indian Camp, Warner Hot Springs, San Diego County, California."

ABOUT KUMEYAAY HISTORY

The turn-of-the-century Indigenous Kumeyaay peoples had been psychically and culturally decimated as a result of the European immigration, including the mission periods and the CALIFORNIA GENOCIDE.

In the 1910s, when this postcard was made, the surviving Kumeyaay Native American Indian people were seeking peace and refuge in the harsh San Diego mountain desert backcountry, the only remaining ancestral Kumeyaay tribal lands left for them.

PRE-CONTACT KUMEYAAY NATION, 1769, it is estimated the aboriginal California Indian population was over 150,000 strong — up until which time the Kumeyaay Nation was thriving in what became San Diego County and northern Baja California, Mexico — the Kumeyaay were living off the land in harmony with nature, developing their unique cultures over THOUSANDS of years, including their Yuman languages and vast knowledge of the land, indigenous plants and medicinal herbs.

By the time this postcard was published, 1910s, only around 1,000 Kumeyaay Indian people had survived in San Diego County.

Please see the KUMEYAAY.INFO CALIFORNIA INDIAN RESEARCH DEPARTMENT.