San Diego’s Reputation As A Place To Get Well May Have Started With The Cupa Indians

Speaker 1: 00:00 For thousands of years. San Diego has drawn people searching for health and wellness as part of our California dream collaboration. KPBS is Amica. Sherma has traced the history of health seekers coming to southern California today. She explores how a couple of pools of water lured the Koopa Indians to eastern San Diego. Speaker 2: 00:24 I see our home. Then Eric Ortega is a member of the Palla Indian mission band of Indians and a descendant of the Koopa Indians. He walks through Warner springs in San Diego County. On a recent afternoon, Speaker 3: 00:37 my grandmother lived in one of those houses. My grandfather lived in those houses Speaker 2: 00:41 and just east of those homes are two large pools of fresh water, one hot one cold or take us standing yards away from the water. Now part of our resort under construction says practicality and spirituality drew his ancestors here possibly as far back as 4,000 years ago. Speaker 3: 01:01 The water was the healing. We believed that it cleaned our bodies and our souls took out a lot of the negativity. If you've had a hard day of hunting or gathering, you come in, you soak in a hot springs. Speaker 2: 01:12 He says, the water touched every aspect at Kupa society, Speaker 3: 01:16 our whole culture, a lot of our religious events where we're Dunkin with a water sprinkling, where the water was a big part for us daily life. Speaker 2: 01:25 When the stage coaches caring American settlers started traveling through the area in the 1850s the Indians commercialized the hot springs. Speaker 3: 01:34 We would do their laundry, washed her clothes, we would let them bathe, let them drink water, feed them, and then they would pay us and beyond their way. Speaker 2: 01:42 Soon. Some Americans who were sick and had moved to the region to heal her talk that those hot springs just might be v remedy. Speaker 3: 01:50 The claims that were made in the 19th century with the hot mineral waters could cure just about anything. If you believe the promoters, I mean cancer, tuberculosis, all kinds of diseases. Speaker 2: 02:02 Historian Phil Briganti says, asked the fame of the hot springs grew, the property became highly coveted. The land was deeded out to a man named Jonathan Trumbull Warner in the 1840s but the Indians continued to live there. Speaker 3: 02:14 Eventually the folks who own the Warner ranch led primarily by a man named John Downey, who was a former governor of California. They decided they wanted access among other things to the springs there, and so they instituted a lawsuit treating the Indians as if they were trespassers. The lawsuit Speaker 2: 02:33 prevailed in 1903 the Koopa Indians were kicked off the land. Some 200 men, women and children were marched to the Palo reservation on a three day journey for Gandy said the Pachangas Indians who had been evicted from their land decades earlier came to offer support. Speaker 3: 02:50 They brought a steered barbecue. They brought oranges for the kids, and this, this amazing moment of these two Indian groups together. One has survived Speaker 2: 03:00 the removal and the other who's in the midst of it, can't hardly imagine what was said around the campfires that night or take a head talk to a woman who was 11 at the time the tribe was evicted. She said they were crying. They were highly devastating to our people, not Pella chairman, Robert Smith. He says descendants of the Coupas still want the hot springs. In 2013 a bankruptcy judge rejected the Taliban's bid for the property in favor of a bid from Pacific hospitality group, but Smith isn't giving up it's sacred ground by our own land bat by whatever it takes. We're going to do that. And joining me is KPBS investigative reporter Amica Sherman. Amit, the welcome. Thank you. It's good to be here. Now could you give us an idea of where Warner springs is located in San Diego County for people who aren't familiar with it. Speaker 2: 03:49 So Warner Springs is about 70 miles from here. So if you are going up the 78 and if you were to turn right, you'd end up in Julian. But if you turn left, you go onto the 79 and you head straight up to Warner springs. What is it about the hot springs that convinced so many settlers that the waters could heal them? Well, just water in general. I think we all know that all humans notice that that warm water tends to relieve stress in addition to the highest temperature of the springs. The minerals in the water are believed to have therapeutic properties. People believe that the sulfur in it acts as a detox and can actually improve skin conditions. And I think the bottom line is, is whether it was the Koopa Indians or the subsequent American settlers, people just felt better after they had spent time in the water. Speaker 2: 04:42 What's going on at the Warner Springs resort now? Is it primarily a health spa? Well, it's, it's not opened fully. Uh, Warner springs went into bankruptcy several years ago. The Palette Indians made a bid to buy the property back and I'm told that even though their bid was hire, a bankruptcy judge awarded the property to Pacific Hospitality Group, a local hotel group, which had bid lower but was willing to forgo title insurance. So right now, people can't go onto the property to get into the water. Until I made that this was the first in a three part series about San Diego's reputation through the years as a place for healing. What do you focus on tomorrow? Well, tomorrow we take a look at how San Diego developed that reputation that you just described as a place of healing for tuberculosis patients in the late 18 hundreds. The sea air, the warm climate and the beautiful natural landscape was said to play a big role in helping people with TB recuperate, even though it is a bacterial infection. Speaker 2: 05:50 Um, and, and, and people thought that the reason so many of these patients were healing was that they were coming from these very cramped, polluted, industrialized areas elsewhere in the country. And when they came here, a lot of sanitariums healing places opened up for them. And once they were there, well, they were clean and there was a lot of fresh air. They were given good food and they rested and many of them healed. But aside from tuberculosis patients, San Diego was thought to heal people with any kind of ailment, any kind of sick people came, people with asthma, people with rheumatism, they all flocked to San Diego to heal. Speaker 1: 06:30 What were some of the more outrageous claims that were made about San Diego as a cure all? Speaker 2: 06:36 Well, one of them was that nobody ever died in San Diego. Then that debt was death was actually seen as a remarkable event here, and this wasn't about San Diego specifically, but southern California in general, people thought that because the air was so fresh, primarily because of the ocean, it would give everyone or bestow upon everyone beautiful voices, and soon southern Californians were turned into its own race of people with melodic voices. Speaker 1: 07:09 You mentioned all of southern California. In fact, there were something of a rivalry between the health benefits of San Diego and La. Speaker 2: 07:17 That's right. So when when passengers, when travelers sick, travelers would come from elsewhere in the country, they'd take the train into Los Angeles and they would tell people in la, oh yeah, we're headed down to San Diego. La started thinking, wait a minute, what about Los Angeles? We've got an ocean year, we've got fresh air here. Why not stay here? So they started spreading rumors about San Diego and they would warn travelers, sick people not to go to San Diego because San Diego was rife with malaria and diptheria and pneumonia. And the Iconic Hotel del in Cora Nado they said had been quarantined over 100 times. So yeah, they were talking trash about San Diego. Typical, I think it extends until today. Speaker 1: 08:05 So do we still have a reputation like that? What I mean is, are people still coming here and hopes of regaining their Speaker 2: 08:13 health? They appear to be, I spoke with a real estate agent, uh, who said people who are looking to move to San Diego mentioned the healthy lifestyle here. The image is of people running along the beach doing yoga, meditating on the sand or, or people surfing. And you know, you really took it and ran with it. He said, people, you know, think that they're going to have a ton of access to fresh organic fruits and vegetables. I spoke to the folks out at the San Diego Tourism Authority and they said that visitors who come here, and they've done a lot of focus groups on this, but visitors who come here describe feeling instantly better, feeling instantly rejuvenated as soon as they go outside from the airport at Lindbergh field. Speaker 1: 08:54 Well, you can hear the second and third installment of Amica Sherma's California dream report. That's tomorrow and Wednesday here on midday edition. Amika thank you. Hope you're feeling well. Speaker 2: 09:06 I am.