Bird songs dont lie, p.3
Bird Songs Don't Lie, page 3
January 5, 2015
SCHOOL WITH A CONNECTION TO THE PAST
Morning breezes riffle through the American and Californian flags held upright by schoolchildren at Temecula’s Helen Hunt Jackson Elementary School.
Students assemble on the asphalt playground, sitting or kneeling on mats dragged out of classrooms for the purpose. Principal Brian Martes, casual in a zip-up sweatshirt, T-shirt, and running shoes, is at the microphone leading the kids in a coyote howl. The coyote is the school mascot.
In the background, chaparral hills punctuated by granite boulders, a landscape where real coyotes roam, occupy the horizon.
Three of my grandchildren attend Jackson elementary. No, I’m not one of those grandfathers who goes on and on about my grandkids’ exploits. Suffice it to say, I was there for the Coyote of the Month assembly and, yes, some awards were involved.
But more than that, I was struck by how different the approach to education is today compared with the fifties, when I went to school.
I went to parochial school, where classrooms were ruled by nuns in starched habits.
The nuns in my day were no-nonsense. I don’t ever remember an honoring ceremony like this one. And here’s what made it different: This assembly wasn’t to recognize the best speller, or who could add columns of numbers fastest, or who knew every state in the union.
This assembly was to honor acts of kindness.
Yes, kindness. I doubt kindness was on the radar in my school life in the fifties.
At this assembly, I saw teachers pleasantly conversing with students. After the assembly, I saw Principal Martes sit on the multipurpose-room steps and joke with each honoree, as the beaming student sat next to him.
The gentle approach may not work for every student, but for most, especially my grandchildren, it’s nurturing, and I applaud the school for it.
Here’s another thing about Helen Hunt Jackson Elementary School: It’s named after the woman who wrote the famous book Ramona.
And here’s something my grandkids don’t know: They are related to the woman Helen Hunt Jackson based her Ramona character on—Ramona Lubo.
Ramona Lubo was a Cahuilla woman who watched with her baby in her arms as Sam Temple shot her husband, Juan Diego, in the doorway of their house for stealing a horse. Some say he was shot twenty-two times, but it’s difficult to sort through truth and fabrication with the Ramona story.
Ramona was Paul Magee’s great-aunt. Paul Magee was my grandfather.
This was a relationship my mother was so proud of. She would regale gas station attendants, as they filled our tank, with tales of Ramona and how she was related.
She loved all things Ramona.
In 1928, the year my mother was born, Dolores del Río starred in a film about Ramona. It had an accompanying song called “Ramona” that became a million seller. My father learned the song and sang it for my mother on special occasions. She cried every time.
Once, we drove to Old Town San Diego so my mother could see the adobe where Ramona and Alessandro were said to have wed.
One birthday I bought my mother a leather-bound edition at a rare-book store.
There’s no time to go deeply into the Ramona story here, but someday I’ll write more about it.
It seems a quirk of fate that my grandkids go to a school connected to their blood. One day I’ll sit them down and try to explain it to them.
Who knows, they might get a kick out of it.
March 4, 2015
ROUNDUP AS IN DAYS OF OLD
Buick-sized boulders, high chaparral, and ancient oaks stud the hills and ravines of the Cahuilla Indian Reservation near Anza.
In a drought-thinned pasture about four hundred yards south of the Clarke family place, a half-dozen or so riders work their way behind the small herd of about sixty. They attempt to slowly move the cattle, in a tight group, toward the corral, where they’ll get vaccinated and where spring calves will get branded.
But it’s not so easy. Jittery and rebellious, animals break through gaps between riders, juking like halfbacks to head downfield. Cattle-wise quarter horses wheel in chase, hooves digging in, strides lengthening to turn the fleeing beef.
You can hear the yips and hollers of riders brandishing ropes, waving hats, hoping to enforce order. You can hear the cattle snorting and bellowing, unwilling to go meekly.
From folding chairs up near the house, Patsy Liera, seventy-five, and Virginia “Ginger” Liera, eighty, watch the cowboys with a smile. The sights and sounds are all too familiar. As little girls they watched their father and uncles and other local cowboys do the same. And once old enough, they too were atop horses chasing cattle.
“It was a fun way of life,” Virginia says.
For nearly a hundred years, the Clarke home has been the site of an annual roundup and branding. At one time there were probably a half-dozen Cahuilla families who raised cattle and had big roundups. While several families still raise cattle, the Clarke-Liera roundup is the last to operate on this scale.
“My dad did it. My grandfather did it. I’m not going to let it die with me,” Gerald Clarke says.
Gerald’s first cousin, Robert Liera, agrees. Family members share ownership of the herd, and the whole family contributes to the roundup. The night before, a pit is dug and bundles of beef and a couple of turkeys are thrown onto coals, covered, and left to cook overnight.
The kids and other family members all pitch in. Beans and stews and salads are made. Patsy herself made sixty tortillas Friday night.
Even weewish, a traditional but labor-intensive Indian staple made from acorn flour, is prepared. Gerald’s daughters helped shell and grind the acorns.
It takes some doing, but most of the cattle are eventually driven into the corral and the gate is closed.
A couple of runaways go “na-na-na” out in the pasture. “Yeah, they’re laughing now, but they’ll be first to go to market,” Clarke says. “Cows like that rile up the others.”
Cowboys, and one cowgirl, use their horses to separate out the adults, aiming them through a chute where Gerald jabs them with a big hypodermic full of medicines to keep them healthy.
When Clarke isn’t cowboying, he’s an artist and is head of the visual arts department at Idyllwild Arts Academy. When Robert Liera isn’t cowboying, he works helping to keep the Pauma casino running smoothly.
One by one, each calf is roped, then stretched out to get earmarked, inoculated, and branded. Branding irons are heated in a fire. And all twenty-five calves get their mark.
Family and friends help with the work. It takes some doing to drop a squalling calf on its side and hold it there while it gets doctored and branded.
But once the work is done, the feasting starts. The feed is part of the tradition, Patsy says. They put on a big spread back when she was little, too. Her uncle, John Lubo, would grow grapes and make wine. The wine flowed with dinner.
It’s always worrisome how the meat will turn out. But when the burlap is removed from the bundle, and the aluminum foil is slit open, sweet steam rises from the beef stewing in its own juices. And you know it’s gonna be good.
Prayers are offered, and a hundred or so people sit down to eat a meal that could have been served a hundred years ago.
June 8, 2015
WAITING ALL YEAR FOR THE RINCON FIESTA
Long and low, the Rincon Reservation Tribal Hall in northern San Diego County occupied a weedy lot just off the paved highway.
For most of the year, it was a bare-bones meeting hall, the place where people argued about water rights and complained about unfenced cattle roaming loose in backyard gardens.
It was old, arthritic, the roofline sagging like a swayback horse. But come fiesta time, the old hall perked up, stood taller, energized, ready to dance.
To prepare the grounds, men cut willows with machetes in the San Luis Rey River bottom for ramadas. They’d frame the ramadas with poles, and string up wire so lengths of willow could be woven in.
Some ramadas were used as poker dens, where people bet on busted flushes while draining whiskeys—a buck a shot. Most, however, served as restaurants.
Families equipped them with gas stoves where tamales were steamed and hamburger meat was fried, and frybread bubbled in oil. Tables and chairs were set up out front so diners could sit while eating tacos so lush the hamburger grease dribbled down wrists.
You haven’t lived until you’ve dived into a breakfast of chorizo and eggs, or a steaming bowl of menudo topped with diced onions and oregano, after a long fiesta night.
People waited all year for it. A fiesta fever grabbed hold. Teens couldn’t sit still at the dinner table. Women would appraise new dance moves in the mirror. Men thumbed through greenbacks socked away in top drawers. A man needed some cash in his pocket to bet on a peon game or to buy his best girl a beer and combo tortilla roll.
The night before fiesta, young bucks in old trucks with Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love” blasting on the eight-track would lean out of windows screaming, “Fiesta, fiesta, fiesta!” Young girls would start mentally assembling the right outfit, something to catch the eye, but something that wouldn’t show the dirt.
If nothing else, fiesta was dusty. And at fiesta, anything could happen. You just didn’t know.
The heart of fiesta was the dance. The hall had a wood floor worn smooth by countless boots doing the Rincon Stomp. The band played the front of the room. In the bar in back, Ed Arviso and Berkeley Calac would sell you beers—buck a beer. The ceiling was open and rock ’n’ roll bounced in the rafters.
There was a mandatory playlist. Every fiesta band had to know “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Knock on Wood,” and some Freddy Fender tunes like “I Love My Rancho Grande.” Lines of dancers would hook arms, corrido-style, and dance toward each other, and then veer off just before colliding. And people would laugh and holler after a near miss.
Fiesta was geared for all ages. They might play an old swing song so older folks could boogie-woogie. And many could do the Stroll. Two lines would form and couples would stroll down the middle.
Some of those couples had been strolling for many years. They’d look into each other’s eyes while dancing, and there was something long-lasting and romantic about it.
Today, the old hall is gone. The new grounds don’t have the same magic for me. Plus, I’m getting a little long in the tooth for fiesta.
July 13, 2015
SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN
Most Southern California Indians have no trouble believing in spirits. Many ceremonies and rituals exist to appease the dead—to keep them from mingling with the living.
In the old days, before houses got too expensive, homes would be purposely burned to the ground when someone died. With no home, with no belongings to come back for, the dead would be less likely to visit.
Burning of the Clothes, a ceremony held to this day, occurs for basically the same reason. Friends and family gather and sing mourning songs as items of clothing are brought out from closets and thrown onto a pyre. The leather coat worn to football games, the Levi’s jacket worn on deer hunts, favorite cowboy boots worn at fiesta dances. Same goes for women: Sunday dresses, comfy Uggs, the jewelry box her daddy gave her when she was a girl.
All go up in flames.
Before the arrival of missionaries, Southern California Indians often burned their dead. With no earthly body, there was even less reason for the dead to visit earth.
At the velorios (wakes), fabric—often black—is tacked over windows in the room where the casket awaits. The fabric keeps unwanted spirits out while the soul of the departed ascends to its final place in the firmament. In the old Indian way, souls become stars in the night sky, forever burning, forever watchful.
So you see, practically from infancy, the notion of spirits is culturally accepted.
I say these things as background, as a way to put the following story into context.
About seventy years ago, in the high backcountry of the Santa Ysabel Indian Reservation in San Diego County, Julio and Lena Guachino lived with their many kids in a remote log cabin away from everyone.
Santa Ysabel is a mountain reservation where the houses are isolated. Trees are a mix of oaks, conifers, and sycamores, and thick brush mixed with open grassy meadows covers the hillsides. Santa Ysabel is good deer country, good cattle country.
It was snowing that day, but Julio and Lena needed to drive to Ramona for staples. They loaded the kids into the car, except Ralph, who was maybe eleven, and Joe, who was maybe thirteen, both old enough to be home alone.
With snow falling, the brothers huddled around the wood stove, feeding it oak logs, trying to stay warm. The fire popped and snapped, but then they heard something else: someone walking outside. Sure, the footsteps in the snow were muffled, but the icy crunch was clearly audible.
Joe, the older brother, always quick to act, went for his dad’s deer rifle. Later in life he was known as the guy who’d rip off his shirt at the first sign of a fistfight. Even in his sixties, he was once umping a softball game on the La Jolla Reservation when a young gun got into his face over a disputed call. Rather than engage in a prolonged argument, Joe balled up his fist and dropped the upstart with one punch. Joe was that kind of guy.
Anyway, they heard footsteps. Joe had the gun; Ralph picked up a shovel.
“Who is it? Who’s there?” they called out.
No one answered.
Ralph took the lantern to the window to see if he could see anyone.
But no sign of anyone.
Then a loud thump, like someone had fallen against the house.
The cabin door shook, as if someone was trying to get in.
“I’ve got a gun!” Joe yelled. “I’ll shoot!”
Ralph, still peering out the window, thought he saw a car coming up the drive. Mom and Dad, he thought. They opened the door to welcome the safety of their parents, but there was no car, no person, no nothing, only trackless snow.
Time passed in fear. The stove, even with a full load of wood, couldn’t keep the trembles at bay. More noise at the door. Joe held up the big lever-action gun, ready to shoot.
The door opened. Their dad, Julio, hollered out, “Hey, it’s us!”
A mix of relief and horror. Mom and Dad were home, but they almost got shot.
After a while, Ralph rechecked the window. He spotted a coin on the outside windowsill and a handprint on the glass, as if whoever set the coin there had leaned against the glass.
Ralph and Joe were shaking and scared witless as they told of the intruder. Julio walked with them around the house, but there were no footprints, no signs of anyone.
To this day it remains a mystery.
Ralph and Joe have been dead many years. But I knew them well. They were men of tradition, respected peon players and bird singers. Ralph told this story to his daughter Lela Guachino of Pala when she was about fifteen. She’s in her fifties now. Lela told this story to me the other day.
“I loved listening to his stories,” Lela said. “This one was a little spooky and made me curious about the spirit world.”
“And heck yes, I believe in spirits,” she said.
October 26, 2015
A REZ TAKE ON MISSION FOODS
Much of life is a search for home, a desire to belong.
For me, there is no better expression of home than the foods of my childhood: tacos, burritos, enchiladas, tamales, empanadas, palillis, and the rest—all foods that got passed from the missions through the Indian generations to me.
So, as others debate the damages missions have wrought on California Indian culture, allow me to sink my teeth into a greasy taco, juices from tomatoes, salsa, fried hamburger oozing from the bottom, running down my arm, dripping onto my shirt.
It’s partly why you see so many Indians with stains on their ribbon shirts at gatherings.
Would there be tacos here without the missions? Sure. But for those of us who grew up in the shade of mission campaniles, tacos and other mission foods have become our destiny.
On the Pala Indian Reservation where I live, home to Mission San Antonio de Pala, an asistencia of Mission San Luis Rey, many locals don’t attend the mission’s Sunday Mass. Nearly all, however, crave the modern-day offspring of mission foods.
Mission foods nourish our bellies as well as our souls.
True, mission padres and Spanish soldiers often dealt cruelly, sometimes unmercifully, with California Indians. But there is no denying that missions and ranchos left a lasting imprint on our culinary selves.
Before the missions, we Indians led confined culinary lives. Coastal natives hunted and gathered. They shot deer, speared fish, collected wild greens, ground acorns into flour.
Before the missions, acorns were a staple. Up and down the coast, where great oaks flourished, Indians picked acorns to make a kind of gruel.
Each tribe had a different name for it. On the Pala Indian Reservation, the Cupeño, Luiseño, and Diegueño Indians who live here call the acorn pudding weewish.
In the fall, when acorns dropped from the trees, the people bent to pluck them from the ground. The deer liked acorns too, so it was an annual contest to see who got the most.
Pre-mission Indians stored the acorns in big twig-woven granaries. I’m sure it was some kid’s job to run to the kuulish (the granary) and fetch a basketful of acorns for his mother so she could grind the meats into flour.
The flour had to be thoroughly washed to leach it of residual tannins, the same tannins the padres found useful for tanning hides. After leaching, the flour was boiled into a pudding-like dish, resembling a thick Hawaiian poi.
While weewish is nutritious, packed with proteins, vitamins, and other nutrients, it’s not what you’d call bursting with flavor.
Don’t get me wrong. I like weewish. But I like it best when it’s sopping up bean juice, nicely salted, and topped with good, hot salsa.
On its own, it’s bland. Some newbies liken it to mud. Few kids these days like it. And I’m guessing, in the olden days, after eating it day after day, no kid, when Mom told him there was weewish for dinner, jumped with glee singing, “Weewish, weewish, we all wish for weewish.”
