Eastern Pacific High Sea

The sea beside Lower California looks toward a peninsula whose human history reaches back at least eleven thousand years. Two broad groups shaped the early record: the Cochimí in the south and several Yuman-speaking peoples in the north, among them the Kiliwa, Paipai, Kumeyaay, Cocopa, and Quechan. Their ways of life varied with water and terrain. Cochimí hunter-gatherers in the Central Desert moved frequently, while a Cochimí community on Cedros Island developed a maritime economy oriented toward the sea. In the better-watered northwest, denser populations followed a more sedentary life, and the Cocopa and Quechan farmed the lower Colorado River floodplain. The peninsula therefore contained sharp contrasts between desert movement, island fishing, and river agriculture.

The coast and islands formed part of a connected world rather than an empty edge. Pacific winds and the cold California Current bring low fog to the shore, supporting succulent vegetation in otherwise dry country. Spanish exploration reached the peninsula in 1539, and later Jesuit missions began at Loreto in 1697. Those missions expanded over the following decades, while Francisco de Ulloa's coastal surveys had already made the peninsula legible to overseas navigators. The surrounding waters remain tied to these landscapes: they were routes to islands, accounts of marine food, and the marine horizon of communities adapted to desert, river, and coast alike.