Flashy Palomino Yearling Colt

The Luiseño were the original inhabitants of what later would be called the San Jacinto Valley, having many villages with residents. In their own language, these people called themselves Payomkowishum (also spelled "Payomkawichum"), meaning People of the West. They are a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the sixteenth century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging fifty miles from what now is the southern part of Los Angeles County, California to the northern part of contemporary San Diego County, California, and their settlements extended inland for thirty miles. [ citation needed ] The tribe was named Luiseño by the Spanish due to their proximity to the Mission San Luís Rey de Francia ("The Mission of Saint Louis King of France," known as the "King of the Missions"), which was founded on June 13, 1798 by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, in what was the First Military District in what now is Oceanside, California, in northern San Diego County. [ citation needed ] The Anza Trail, one of the first European overland routes to California, named after Juan Bautista de Anza, 4 crossed the valley in the 1770s.