Ramona resident and author Richard L. Carrico, instructor of American Indian History at San Diego State University, will be the visiting scholar for a lecture and book signing at the San Diego Archaeological Center from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 6.
The center is at 16666 San Pasqual Valley Road between Ramona and Escondido.
Carrico’s lecture will focus on the history and legacy of Native Americans in the San Pasqual Valley. The Ranchería of San Pasqual — or AhmukatkatL — once extended over much of what is now San Pasqual Valley. Occupied for more than 2,000 years by Ipai people, the settlement grew with the immigration of Mission Indians in 1835 when Mission San Diego was secularized.
As one of three Mexican era Pueblos, San Pasqual was an important village in San Diego’s early history.
During the ill-fated Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Mule Hill, San Pasqual villagers resisted Mexican overtures and aided the American soldiers. Both General Kearny and Commodore Stockton spoke highly of the villagers’ leader Panto and his people.
In 1870, San Pasqual was one of two reservations established for San Diego County Indians, only to be rescinded in 1871. Amidst an onslaught of ranchers, farmers, and squatters, the once thriving villagers of San Pasqual were driven at gunpoint to abandon their lush valley in 1878.
Most of the San Pasqual people resettled at either Mesa Grande or Santa Ysabel with a few families staking out claims to canyon lands above San Pasqual Valley. When a reservation was finally established for the people of San Pasqual in 1908, it was mislocated several miles to the north of San Pasqual near what is now Valley Center.
Carrico earned his graduate degree in history from the University of San Diego and his undergraduate degrees in history and anthropology from San Diego State University. He has taught in the Department of American Indian Studies at SDSU since 1985 and has also taught at Palomar, City, and Mesa community colleges and at the University of Guadalajara.
He recently completed a substantially revised edition of his award-winning “Strangers in a Stolen Land: The History of San Diego County Indians from Prehistory to the New Deal” published by Sunbelt Publications. His book will be available for signing and purchase at the end of his lecture.
This lecture is free for San Diego Archaeological Center members. Suggested donation for non-members is $5.
For more information, contact Annemarie Cox via email at cox@sandiego archaeology.org or by phone at 760-291-0370.
The San Diego Archaeological Center was created in 1993 to provide an archaeological curation location for the San Diego region. The center was the first nonprofit organization in the nation dedicated solely to curating and sharing archaeological collections with the public.