Indigenous educators fight for an accurate history of California

The Golden State is ignoring a history of violence against Native Americans

Gregg Castro first roamed the Santa Lucia Mountains at the age of 8, going out with his father to hunt deer and wild pigs in the fall, when the oak trees and manzanita bushes turn gold and the famously blue California skies go gray.

Rising along the central California coast, the Santa Lucias are dotted with pines and redwoods and home to rattlesnakes, bobcats and, some say, the ghost of a headless woman — a settler who died crossing a creek in the 1800s. The tallest peak in the range, Junipero Serra, is more than a mile above sea level, and caves and grottos can be found throughout the region, many of them used by Castro’s Salinan ancestors on trips to and from the Pacific Ocean. The mountains are also home to Mission San Antonio de Padua, one of the 21 Catholic outposts Spain built in the late 1700s to establish a colonial foothold here and convert Indigenous people to Christianity.

During winter, on the way to Jolon, California, when the rains came and it was cold, Castro remembers his dad turning up the heat in his old Chevy truck and rolling down the windows. The scent of oaks, rock rose and willow floated into the truck — the “Jolon smell,” Castro calls it, the smell of home.

It was a long drive between the mountains and the city of San Jose, where the family lived at the time, so Castro’s dad would often stop and camp near Mission San Antonio de Padua. That made for an earlier hunting day and gave them a chance to linger in their traditional homeland, where his dad felt comfortable. After dinner, as the campfire died and sunset neared, Castro would wrap himself in his favorite green coat to ward off the mountain valley evening chill and explore the mission’s gardens and tiled walkways.

San Antonio de Padua was built in 1771, but by World War II, the mission was in ruins: Tiles were falling from the roof, and looters stole paintings and other valuables from the interior. It wasn’t until the late 1940s that the Hearst Foundation donated money to begin renovating the crumbling building. A volunteer-run gift shop was opened to peddle rosaries and self-published books about the mission.


https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/indigenous-educators-fight-for-an-accurate-history-of-california-8LImH-OhZ0WSMA7l7Udp5A/

More to read on the lnk

See, Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds published (1961).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi

Original Quill wrote:
See, Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds published (1961).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi

I have a 2002 reprint of that book here...

Pub. by University of California Press.

Bought it off Amazon three years ago.

Fascinating read. Also, I've visited Deer Creek, his lands.

I reckon that 'Ishi in Two Worlds' is a book that our NF history buffs like Didge and Cass should have on their reading lists...

A couple of other books that I believe could be a good accompaniment,  are by Saxton T. Pope  :

"A Study of Bows and Arrows"  (1923, 1930, rep. 2011 by Martino Publishing..);

"Yahi Archery"  (1913..);   <<  I have an ebook of this one on my Kindle..

These books by Saxton Pope are archery-centric books rather than history/sociology, but still help with the cultural/bow & arrow background of the Yahi people.

Ishi (for short) is written by the wife of the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber (at Berkeley) who took him in.  



It is as interesting for the values it reflects, as for the facts.

He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco (now a part of the Parnassus UCSF medical center).  He was supported by Berkeley, on a research associate's salary.

Theodora Kroeber's book was published in 1916.  She was very close to Ishi, and she shared some of her husband's progressive values, notably that primitive man is different, not inferior. She goes into the complexities of Yahi language (two different languages when speaking to women, or men), and argues that it depended upon great abstractions, requiring a mind of deep understanding.