Palm Springs: Agua Caliente Cultural Museum

Entrance to the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum

Palm Springs has casinos in three locations called Agua Caliente, run by the indigenous people known as the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.  

Next door to the one in Palm Springs is the recently opened Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, giving visitors more insight in to this Indian band and how this land in Palm Springs is so important to them.

They occupied the land in the valley because there was a large lake there called Lake Cahuilla and they flourished there. But an earthquake caused this body of water to disappear.

Impressive 3-D video of the history of the area

Around the time of the gold rush in the late 1840s was when the Cahuilla Indians first encountered white people, who pushed the indigenous people into smaller and smaller tracts of land as the area became developed. 

Fast forward to today, the Agua Caliente band not only has casinos, but also hotels, land, businesses and banks.

A video of the faces of today show the Cahuilla have intermarried with non-Cahuilla, and they are all proud of their identity, wearing traditional garb and practicing their traditions.

In one of the earlier sections of the museum, an excavation of the land the museum sits on revealed numerous objects, some of which are on display, from shells to tools, and there are beautifully woven baskets too.

Another exhibition space showed the work of indigenous photographer Horace Poolaw (1906-1984), who was one of the first American-Indians to visually document his community in Oklahoma in black and white photographs.

Poolaw's portrait of his brother and buffalo head

"I do not want to be remembered for my pictures, but through my pictures I want my people to remember themselves," he once said.

Some feature his children in western or Indian clothing, others cultural events or striking contrasts -- one shows Horace's brother wearing his feather headdress and in front of him the head of a buffalo that he had killed. Another shows an American TV host posing with an Indian in full traditional garb.

Most impressive was a video projection of the history of the Indian band on a relief map that created animation, lots of information and clips that made the story much more rich and interesting as it moved over the three-dimensional map of the valley. Telling stories using the latest technology is impressive and memorable.

Agua Caliente Cultural Museum

140 North Indian Canyon Drive

Palm Springs

760 778 1079