Reply to comment

The Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians has called the Temecula valley home for more than 10,000 years......According to tribal elders, life on earth began in this valley, called Exva Temeeku, the place where the sun, the earth, sky all met to create the people known as the Perchanga, or in there tongue, Temeekuyam.....10,000 years from now, tribal elders believe, that they will still be here, after all of us are gone, and that they will continue to share with the tribal youth as they do today the story of the tribe's creation.

The history of Pechanga begins with their ancestral home village of Temeeku.....Now burried under the Redhawk river, (where Margarita road cuts south through a bluff), the Temeeku Village was home to the Temeekuyam and a center for all Luiseño Tribal peoples.

The payomkowishum, or Luiseño People were nearly destroyed by first contact with Spanish Missionaries.....Illness's and the Missionaries insitance that all members of the tribe convert to Christianty or else die, took there toll on the local people....The Spanish took there lands and killed those that did not escape the Churchs wrath.....It was not untill the 1880's that the Perchanga lands were restored to the few survioirs by Executive Order of the President of the United States on June 27, 1882, affirming Pechanga Tribal sovereignty and there land rights.

At the turn of the century the Pechanga people began to petition the federal government for land that had also once belonged to them.....Indian Commissioner C.E. Kelsey, sought a remedy for the Pechanga's.....In 1907 Kelsey was instrumental in setting aside land exclusively for the Pechanga Band.....He did it by creating a reservation that comprised land in the valley to the east of present day Temecula, along the base of Mt Palamor....The land was put into trust under the U.S. Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, which still exists today.

Rumors of coming progress, new vineyards, more people and talk of legalized gaming on Indian reservations spurred renewed interest in the Pechanga lands....And remembering the past, Perchanga Tribal elders apprached several Califirnia Senators and Assemblymen and asked for something new....They asked for the land that was actually Federal land to be allowed to build Casinos on there property and they be allowed to run them....In 1988 the passage of the Southern California Indian Land Transfer (Public Law 100-581) Act adds an additional 303 acres along Pechanga's northern boundary. Today, the gross total land area of Pechanga reservation stands at 5,500 acres.

The following might sound like an ad for the Pechanga people, but it is an example of how one Indian Nation has evolved into a modern day gaint of commerece in the Inland Empire and the whole state of California....Instead of squandering away the millions of dollars of income taken in each month by the Pechanga Gaming Empire, the Tribal Elders long ago made the decision to make the land they live on and there peoples a better place for all....Today, the small tribe of Pechanga's employ more than 7,500 people making them one of the largest employers in the Inland Empire

The funds that the Pechanga raise from taxes, licensing, lottery and other sources enable them to provide services to their constituents, the net revenues from the Resort & Casino and other tribal enterprises are Pechanga government funds and also to the State of California after some bargining by our Governor....For the benefit of the people, the Pechanga Tribal Council and related tribal entities make decisions regarding the expenditures of our business proceeds.

With revenue from these tribal enterprises, the Pechanga;s are upgrading substandard roads, housing and their domestic water system, installing lines to connect with the regional wastewater treatment system in Temecula....They also provide for public safety at there businesses and on the reservation.....With funds seat aside by the Gaming Commison, the tribe continues to improve emergency services, including the fire department which means procuring modern fire fighting vehicles and equipment, and hiring fully trained and certified personnel.....Up intill the late 90's the tribe had to rely on CDF units located out by Lake Skinner, Units from Temecula and Riverside County Units dispatched out of Perris.

In June 2002, tribal citizens, invited dignitaries, the tribal council, the PDC and the members of the gaming commission, together with an excited crowd, opened the new Pechanga Resort & Casino.....A side note here, is that when I was working with Express Legal Services I was out at the then small Pechanga Casino almost on a weekly basis, getting legal work signed, services prepared and waiting for signatures from Tribal leaders for the New Casino Complex....I was very impressed by the over all skill of the tribal leaders, there lawyers and other council....They did an excellent job making sure that every possible dot was dashed and t was crossed before agreeing to procede with this muti billion dollar project.

the ghostpainter