The indigenous people of Baja California, from San Diego southward called themselves the Waikura. Baja California is one of the driest regions of Mexico.
European diseases and Spanish brutality quickly sent most of the Waikura to extinction. However, some of the tribes in what is now the Los Angeles and San Diego area of the State of California did not completely disappear until the California Gold Rush.
The Many Peoples of the South Atlantic Coast Series
by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner
In my second talking lunch with Dr. Piña Chan, we discussed Mesoamerican art. In my notes, I wrote that he believed that the indigenous people of Baja California were Polynesians and that Polynesians were one of five ethnic groups, who jointly created the so-called “Olmec Civilization. He had come to this conclusion after excavating the art of the Waikura and comparing it to Archaic Polynesian art.
In his 2025 book, The Countercurrents of Prehistory, Dr. Yates talks extensively about the role of Austronesians in spreading advanced cultural ideas in the Pacific Basin and Americas. Indeed, there are Austronesian-Samoan place names in the Savannah River Basin of Georgia.
Waikura means “Fresh water lacking” in Austronesian and many Polynesian languages.
“Kura” has an entirely different meaning elsewhere
However, in the Amazon Basin, Caribbean Basin and Southeastern United States, kura meant a tribe or ethnic group. That use of the word seems to have evolved from an Indo-European word meaning “to come together” or “to be related.”
And now you know!
What we don’t know is why archaeologists in the Southeastern United States have always refused to research the meanings of Native American tribal and place names prior to promoting their speculations about the past. For example, if they had bothered to translate the many Itza and Chontal Maya place names, there would have been no controversy concerning to the migrations of Mesoamerican peoples to North America.
The Americas Revealed 
Hey Cuz
“Wai” is used in Hawaiian language to mean water.
You find it used in conjunction with other words that indicate a place or usage.
I have been working quite extensively with numerous tribes in the west – NM, AZ, CA.
Keeps me busy and out of trouble!
Stay safe,
r
Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
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I wondered what had happened to you! Glad you are busy. I purchased state-of-the-art computer hardware and software with some of the income from working with the team of scientists. Now I have to learn how to use them. LOL
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Always a blessing to get an email notice from your blog, Richard and cannot thank you enough for the ongoing learning or knowledge shared with the rest of us or your community and honored to be a part of it! Georgia is full of secrets and one wonders if in part the way it functions in many ways, is tied to the kind of “hidden” knowledge of the information regarding ancient people or those tribal which lived here just a few centuries or more back. When one considers the state militarily, educationally, or for that matter, the various old world fraternal orders that set up show here having call over everything else, it has, like many places, simply become an extension of the cabal as it were. “One set of rules for me, one set of rules for thee.” Lots of elite thinkers, conscious or simply unconscious of their elitism as much title, money and other honors have been bestowed, seem very invested in keeping a hold over others in terms of shared knowledge. While that cannot always be explicitly identified, you can know it in their actions from small moments of blocking access to certain types or thinkers to sites or research or in the ways they publish books and create curriculum. But I’m just talking to the choir leader now!
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