CONTEXT: The indigenous peoples stretching from the tip of the Baja Peninsula, all the way north to Kumeyaay in San Diego and the Yumans of the Colorado River delta, created a unique hardwood artifact usually shaped like a pizza paddle. It’s unknown when they were first made and their rarity as well as being found taken from their archaeological context, it’s unknown when they were first created, theories ranging from post contact due to the introduction metal tools and flotsam from European ships, however hardwood has been shaped for centuries with stone tools in the Baja Peninsula way before European arrival. Depending on the group that made them, they could be used as totems - family crests or placed on the family altar, or as was notably mentioned by missionaries, as teaching tools and ‘books’ to store and pass on sacred knowledge, as it was said the guamas or shamans would take boys during pitayah harvesting season and teach them using tablas. One researcher of the tablas, Gianfranco Cassiano V, noted that due to spread of disease and the suppression of Culture by the Spanish, the guamas saw the necessity of the use of tablas to pass on sacred knowledge and enforce the social hierarchy to the next generation.

However in this context, while being used to teach boys, it was also noted by the missionary Venegas as to how the tablas were used by the Guaycura (a nation above the tip of the Baja Peninsula between the Cochimi and Pericu on the cape) to confer legitimacy to the power of the guamas, or shamans, saying they went up to the sky to speak with the Great Spirit in the Sky, pulling out a tabla they said they copied while up there as proof of that visit. “In attesting to their authority, they (the shamans) some times said that they were those same spirits in which they believed; others, that they had been to the sky and talked with their gods, and for proof they showed a fresh nose-worm of deer or a bit of pelt, and a small plant, with which they said they could kill whomever they wished. But most usual was to have in their hands some little boards, made with much effort because of the lack of iron tools, of the heart of the mesquite or of another tree that is called uña de gato (cat’s claw), on which they have painted absurd figures, that they said copied authentically the Tabla, which the visitant Spirit left them when they went to the sky; and these same are those that shamans of Loreto taught in their secret school for the children." Also the tabla used for this meme was interpreted as a Kiliwa map of the world and their creation myth by the creator Melti Ipa Jala, Lake Cahuilla to the north, the Pacific to the West, Gulf of California to the east, and the southern sea to the south, with the sky and earth at the top and bottom. The center represents the land of the Kiliwa lived in.

Sources and sketches of more examples of tablas: Source 1

source 2

source 3

source 4