Only a handful of Palm Spring inhabitants had ever seen a white man before the mid nineteenth century. Judge John Guthrie McCallum of San Francisco was the initial permanent white settler of Palm Springs, CA. The Agua Caliente Culture Museum is named after the original Cahuilla Indian inhabitants of Palm Springs and provides significant information on their culture and history. In the meantime, a detailed historical perspective is given in this summary.



The Cahuilla Indians have been living in central southern California for over 2000 years. Native American history says that when the Cahuilla people first moved to Coachella Valley; the modern day Lake Cahuilla was larger body but it dried up in the seventeenth century in the wake of one of the Colorado Rivers shifts.

The Agua Caliente identity is intricately linked to the hot mineral springs in the area since the springs were regarded as sacred in olden times. The name given to the region and its native inhabitants by early Spanish explores around 1800 was Agua Caliente is Spanish for hot water. The Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians used to set up their village around the springs in the winter months, moving to the cooler climate of the higher elevations of the canyons in the summer.

With the California Gold Rush in the 1850s, white miners began to encroach upon Cahuilla Territory, followed by ranchers, outlaws and Mormon colonists. The California Senates refusal to ratify an 1852 treaty that gave the Cahuilla people control of their lands exacerbated tensions and led Cahuilla tribal leaders to resort to attacks on approaching white settlers and U.S. troopers.

In the time of 1853, Lt. RS. William P. Blake, the hot mineral pool that was located in the desert was first found by this geologist, but the first USS. government survey of the land in the Palm Springs area took place 1866. It is believed that Palm Springs got its name from the surveyors' description of an area lying between two bunches of palm.

In 1877, to encourage the westward expansion of rail transportation, the Southern Pacific Railroad completed its railroad line through the desert all the way to the Pacific. In accordance with a Congressional decision, every odd section of one square mile of land for ten miles on either side of the railroad track became the property of the Southern Pacific railroad. The even-numbered sections was owned by the federal government.

About twenty years later, in 1896, the federal government gave the even-numbered sections of land to the original inhabitants of the area and the Agua Caliente Reservation was established. With a total area of 32,000 acres, it left the tribe with only a small portion of their traditional territories.

Ironically, the checkerboard pattern of the land originally allocated to the Agua Caliente people means that about 6,700 acres of the Reservation are today located within the city limits of modern day Palm Springs, making the Agua Caliente people the city's largest single landowner. Playing an important role in Palm Springs economy, operating such business enterprises as land leasing, hotel and casino operations, and banking is what the Agua Caliente people continue to do.

If you intend to make a visit to Palm Springs, be sure to stop by the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, centrally located in the town. The Museum traces the history of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians through the presentation of exhibitions, lectures, films, tours, traditional skills workshops and educational outreach programs for students in local schools. Not too long ago, the board of directors for the Museum started a fund raiser for building a new 110,000 sq. ft. Agua Caliente (literally translated, Hot Water) Cultural Museum.