ascend into the heavens, located west of Santa Barbara.
This supernatural gateway was used by the souls of the Chumash dead, as their ascending place from which they left the earth, flew upward, and entered the Path of the Dead. The Spanish renamed it Point Conception... No specific Chumash explanation of the oriins of this place name has survived, yet the most convincing mythological data would suggest that this was the place where the soul prepares itself for its upcoming cleansing of physical body on the Path of the Dead" (glossary, page 51).
Kwan Xustu was a Chumash mythologist who narrated an important folk tale about the fate of souls drowned in the ocean. Xustu was from the Santa Barbara area, and as a coastal Chumash was familiar with the unique fate of person's who drowned in the sea and were cut off from reincarnation. The following quote is taken from The Swordfish Race (Anderson, 1997).
"Each of these dramatic narrative celebrates the heroics of a native spiritual leader who dared to venture out onto the ocean to rescue a drowned soul. The story of Coyote's adventures among the Swordfish clearly fits into this genre. The humor which characterizes the opening scenes of Xustu's narrative thus blends almost imperceptibly into a more somber conclusion. When queried by his Santa Barbara relatives, the recovered drowning victim described his captivity at the bottom of the ocean as like sleeping. Hawk's soul had left his body as in other forms of death, but his tragedy was that his soul was condemned to remain in the ocean. The waters of the sea dampened the fire of Hawk's soul, rendering him incapable of rising up into the heavens to journey on the Path of the Dead" (The Swordfish Race, page 26).
The Swordfish Race (book)