Gary Stickel, an expert in cultural resources, observes that ethnologist John Peabody Harrington, who conducted extensive ethnographic work among the Southern California tribes, wrote in his notes (presently housed at the Smithsonian Institution archives) that the word "tongva" refers to where the Gabrieleño people ground their seeds on rocks, and that the noun must be accompanied by a positional prefix.Stickel writes that the term "tongva" has been used mistakenly to refer to the tribe "when, according to Harrington, it refers to what archaeologists call a 'bedrock mortar', which is a rock outcrop with holes in it created by Indians pounding pestles into them to process acorns and other plant products."