The Temecula Massacre

The 1846 Temecula Massacre is among the deadliest conflicts tied to the Mexican-American War. In The Temecula Massacre: A Forgotten Battlefield Landscape of the Mexican-American War, authors Gary DuBois and Lisa Woodward unearth Temecula’s past to reveal a history that has been buried in time until now.

The sequence of events surrounding the Temecula Massacre illustrates a complex narrative of pre-statehood California. The Battle of San Pasqual is considered in the textbooks of United States and California history to be the bloodiest conflict of the War, with eighteen Americans killed. However, the loss of Native American lives during the Temecula Massacre, which occurred a few weeks after this battle, claimed four times that number. Further, in the aftermath, the bodies of the deceased were removed from where they were slaughtered and buried in a mass grave. The event and its people have since been overlooked in California annals.  

Today, the Temecula Indian Cemetery is one of the last visages of the disastrous tumult of 1846-1847 and is a case study of contemporary historic preservation efforts. It stands inside an irreplaceable landscape with dynamic histories that demonstrate the cultural complexities of Native California. The cemetery also brings a paramount sense of place to the earliest known people and their descendants. 

The living landscapes in this book contain stories that continue to be told and possess continued significance. Often the experiences of Native people are lost through history, and only by unraveling the many perspectives of the Temecula Massacre can this pivotal intersection of California and Tribal histories begin to be understood.

What’s included in this book:

• Timeline of events

• Glossary of 'Atáaxum (Luiseño) names and words with pronunciation provided using English phonetics

• Unknown Tribal testimonies and accounts

• Aerial and detailed maps depicting the battle grounds, troop movement, and surrounding landscape

• QR Code for accompanying documentary about the Temecula Massacre

 Gary is the Founding Director of the Pechanga Band of Indians, Cultural Resources Department and the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) for the Tribe. DuBois earned a Juris Doctorate from Washington University Law School. He is a scholar of Native American History, The American West, and Constitutional Law, and is a lecturer in these fields at California State University San Bernardino. DuBois clerked for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma Tribal Courts and was a Udall Fellow for the United States Senate Indian Affairs Committee. A veteran of the United States Army, DuBois served over fifteen years in the Army National Guard with active duty from 2004 to 2006 as an infantry squad leader. Gary DuBois is an enrolled citizen of the Pechanga Band of Indians.

Lisa is the Archivist for the Pechanga Band of Indians, Cultural Resources Department. She earned her doctoral degree in Native American Studies from University of California, Davis. As archivist, Woodward manages the Tribe’s collection of photographs, archival documents, ephemera, and sound recordings. While at Davis as an undergraduate and later graduate student, she assisted in developing the J.P. Harrington Database Project, which assisted in providing Tribal Communities access to John Harrington’s extensive collection of field notes on Native languages. She also actively conducts research for the Tribe in the areas of Cultural Resource Management and Collection