Many Chumash in the early twenty-first century live in Santa Barbara, Ventura, and other southern California cities. It is only about 75 acres with a small, but growing, population. In the late 1990s the Chumash owned only Santa Ynez Reservation in Santa Ynez, California, located about 32 miles (52 kilometers) north of Santa Barbara and 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean. Their total territory at the time of European contact comprised about 7,000 square miles (18,130 square kilometers), ranging from San Luis Obispo to Malibu Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains outside Los Angeles. The Chumash used to occupy lands stretching along 200 miles (322 kilometers) of southern California coastline, plus four of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands: Anacapa, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz.

The Chumash are sometimes called the Santa Barbara Indians.

The people called themselves “the first people,” although many tribal elders today say that Chumash means “bead maker” or “seashell people.” The Spanish used the name “Chumash” to refer to every group of Native Americans living on these islands and along the southern coast of California. The name Chumash (pronounced CHOO-mash) may have come from the word the tribe used to refer to the inhabitants of one of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.

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