design@aumcomputers.net

A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769-1810 by Randall Milliken

Review by Laura G

Dotted over Northern California are streets, schools, creeks, towns and even shopping centers with names like “Miwok”, “Ohlone”, “Suisun”, “Costanoa”. How many non-native people stop to think about the peoples behind these words? How many have felt, as I have, that the narrative one is taught in California public schools is sorely lacking in substance?  I recently checked A Time of Little Choice out of the Oakland Library. I kept the book until it was overdue and I had re-read many sections. What I found in its pages not only educated me on the subject, and it filled me not only with knowledge, but with rage.

Randall Milliken’s book reminds us that the land that makes up the present day San Francisco Bay Area was once part of a “mosaic of tiny tribal territories” which existed and flourished. Flourished, that is, up to 1769, the time of initial contact with the Spanish.

Milliken has  mined, compiled, compared  and analyzed Spanish Mission and Military records and individuals’ diaries to chart 40 years of “the disintegration of tribal culture”  – from 1769-1810 in what is now the San Francisco Bay Area. There are a couple maps that show the location of over 50  tribes (pp 228, 229). There is also a map showing 8 language groups of native peoples in the Bay Area.

By 1810 these same “tribal territories” were empty of  these tribes. Milliken’s book tells what happened.

When I told some acquaintances about the book, they asked if it was “balanced.” I told them, that I thought the book was a scholarly project to uncover the decimation of tribal culture which was meticulous, but the truth is, there is no “balance” to the history. Whether fully intended or not, the result was near-genocide.

1769-1776

The book quotes passages where the Portola, Fages and other expeditions describe first contact with the indigenous people of the area. The first contacts were experimental. Milliken observed that these people treated the “visitors” and their powerful and new technologies with interest, and sometimes fear, and that gifts were exchanged: beads and food from the Spanish, and baskets and accessories decorated with shells from the  Bay peoples. The Spanish saw that kindness toward the children was noted and appreciated by their native parents, and did their best to foster this. Without editorializing Milliken gives us a glimpse of what the native people were encountering and, while they were trying to learn about these new people and were using the experiences to size up the strangers, nothing had prepared them for what would follow. They had no inkling.

The Missions

In 1776 the Spanish built the first mission in the area and the Presidio at the strategic site of the opening of the Bay. They brought their animals and fenced off land for crops. They “punished” people who “stole” their possessions by whipping and flogging, and finally by demonstrating their power and shooting them.

Spain, competing with the Russians was compelled to do what it could to insure it controlled the California coast.

There is an interesting part where Milliken describes the superstitious worldview of the Spanish: their belief that the world was a setting for the struggle between God and the Devil in which all non-Christian customs and beliefs were actually the work of the Devil and must be wiped out. On the native side, Milliken speculates based on the Spanish observation that there was a practice of respect and of incorporating the new people and their technology into their own belief system.

The ideological framework of the Spanish missionaries was backed up and enforced by the army. The priests wooed the peoples, and at first children and teenagers went to the Mission to be baptized. Once baptized the priests felt they were responsible to guard the “Christian Indians” and had a  (god given) right to keep people from returning to their “savage” ways. Sometimes they would allow children to continue living with their parents, but the older people who were baptized would be forcibly brought back by soldiers when they left the Missions to go back to their villages.

A Time of Resistance

A Time of Little Choice also unearths the fact that as time went on, in this period there was repeated resistance by the peoples of the area to the Missions, and that this resistance was always met with brutal and overwhelming force. The Spanish implemented a divide and conquer method to set the “Christian Indians” against the “heathens”. The patterns of Indian villages changed as some moved closer to the missions for protection, or convenience, and others were entirely absorbed. Milliken says that this was not “forced” but that is too generous an interpretation, as the lands were overrun, and the native food sources compromised, there was an occupying force of priests who used whips and soldiers who used guns, a much higher technology than the weapons developed by the tribes peoples. There was also the important ideological takeover of the culture by the Spanish, who preached Christianity, damnation, etc.

Milliken documents increased resistance over years as the new generations now knew what the Missions and mission life brought about. There was especially prolonged and fierce resistance from the Saclans. But the different tribes did not unite to resist and thus stood no chance of defeating the Spanish. Milliken notes that the loose and informal structure of these peoples’ societies did not lend itself to unity. And before the Spanish came the different tribal groups did not see themselves as “Indians” but as separate peoples who had some relationship to each other through trade, marriage, etc.

The book also gives a chilling and detailed account of the mass death that escalated over the Mission period.  Epidemic outbreaks of diseases that the Europeans were immune to, outbreaks of syphilis, and the food and water diseases brought by the Europeans and their animals and concentrated in the overcrowded conditions in the Missions. One particularly horrible detail that sticks in the mind is that when Indians were dying of these diseases in the Missions, some of them ran miles away to native villages in outlying areas to try to escape the epidemic, thus spreading it to those villages and killing many more.

A Time of Little Choice is an important contribution that deserves inclusion in any course on California history. Not only an in depth look at the “disintegration of … culture” this book is a detailed and chilling record which vividly exposes the Mission Period as a criminal one, guilty not only of crimes against indigenous people, and but against humanity itself.

On February 3rd, in Berkeley, we attended a deeply moving event to benefit the Winnemem Wintu tribe.

We listened to Winnemem Chief, Caleen Sisk-Franco, and to her husband, Mark, describe

the tribe’s bond with the McCloud River Salmon, how the “salmon had given their voice” to the Winnemem Wintu. Last year the tribe journeyed to New Zealand and had a meeting with the Maori people who have happened to become the keepers of this fish, and who have reached out to the Winnemem. The tribe now hopes to bring the salmon back to California, but there are many hurdles in front of them, including the plans of the U.S. government and corporations who have little interest in the Winnemem, or the long term interests of the earth.

This evening of testimony and film was a learning experience, and a solemn reminder that the ground we live upon is soaked with blood, and that all this must change.

In 1854, more than 40 Winnemem Wintu men, women and children were killed by settlers at Kaibai Creek, California. We tasted new bitterness on hearing how more than 150 years later the tribe is “not recognized” by the U.S. government.

Now, the Winnemem Wintu are fighting not only for their own cultural survival, but for the survival of their native lands and for the sustainability of the planet we all inhabit. They are fighting with seriousness, creativity, and with joy.

When the Shasta Dam was built it created a lake that flooded the Winnemem villages. Displaced but not defeated the Winnemem tribe survived and now fights against the raising of this dam and the further destruction of the land and culture.

In 2004 the Winnmem “declared war” on the U.S. government’s planned raising of the dam and held a H’up Chonas (war dance) at Shasta Dam.

sitio tiempo press appreciates these people’s determination and persistance, and takes inspiration from their struggle. You can visit the Winnemem website to find out more. Also see the Sacred Land Film Project and Dancing Salmon Home.

A reading of Burning Silk by Destiny Kinal at Riverrow Bookshop in Owego Sunday January 15th, 2011 morphed into a discussion of the Persephone myth, a natural midwinter theme dealing with the maladies of SADD, depression, and loss of community.

The discussion ranged further into the coming hard times that many are anticipating, not only from the economic downturn, but also from the collapse of our environment as global climate change proceeds: how do we prepare for these changes?

Participants pointed out that hard times are already afflicting those at the bottom of the economy, those who have depended on the underground economy to survive. Two individuals volunteered that they had just lost their jobs because their companies moved to China, a job one of them had held for 16 years.

Persephone, the story goes, the daughter of Mother Earth or Ceres, was abducted and dragged into the underworld by Pluto. The world went into an endless winter as Ceres mourned. The animals sent a delegation to Pluto to negotiate for Persephone’s return. A deal was struck: Persephone could return to the surface of Earth if she ate nothing for an entire year during her stay in the underworld.

At the end of the year, Persephone ate three pomegranate seeds. Thus, a new deal had to be made: Persephone returns to the surface in the spring and summer while in the fall and winter, she remains in the underworld. In this way, not only were the season explained by our ancient forebearers but also death and the consequences of our mortality.

Medicine man of the Lenape Big Horn Band, David Chamberlain, told a myth from his people of horned serpents who live in the underworld, whose ill effects are released when the earth is pierced too deeply. A similar story of an abduction of a human girl by the horned serpents is told by the Lenape as well. Chamberlain, known as Hitakonanulaxk in Lenape, is the author of The Grandfathers Speak: Tales of the Lenape People. The book is available at SRAC on Broad Street in Waverly.

John Doscher of Lockwood, NY, and author of a body of work studying the possibilities of a sustainable society, read three poems on the subject of loss and transformation.

Michael Sean O’Dwyer (Kane) of Waverly and Addison NY read from his recently released book, A Voice in the Wilderness, on his hike from Florida to Canada on the Appalachian Trail, during which time he naturally reflected on the state of the world. O’Dwyer/Kane read passages describing that winter of the soul we call despair as well as thoughts on organizing and strengthening community locally.

The group seemed to agree that the biggest challenge we face now is the disintegration of community, so necessary to organizing to meet hard times prepared. The theme of knowing how to grow your own food and preserve it came up repeatedly.

Destiny Kinal spoke about the metaphor of metamorphosis from a worm to a winged thing, that lies at the heart of Burning Silk, her novel about the alliance between French Huguenot silkmakers and their native American neighbors in southern Pennsylvania in the 1830’s.

Burning Silk, the first novel in the Textile Trilogy, will be followed in 2012-13 by Linen Shroud, which–continuing the story of the Duladier and Montour families in their march toward modernity–takes place during the US Civil War.

Riverrow Bookshop, which is run by John Spencer, one of Owego’s community development entrepreneurs, together with his daughter Laura, features an entire section at the front on regional authors. The basement of the bookstore, organized by subject and genre, is a treasure trove for book collectors.

The organizers of the reading will be meeting to decide whether the Persephone midwinter reading should be an annual event, open to regional writers to read from their work on these themes: the psychological trips to the underworld that afflict us humans at this time of year and the prospect of coming hard times. How can we prepare ourselves for a possible collapse that many scientists and social prognosticators are predicting?

Call Destiny Kinal at 510-701-8909 or 607-565-8475 or contact the Reinhabitory Institute online at info@sitiotiempopress.com if you would like to comment on the event and continue the discussion on the importance of community in weathering hard times.

Closing in on the dreaded Thanksgiving holiday, I took a book off my shelf and began to turn the pages. The book is published by Heyday Books is First Families: a Photographic History of California Indians. These are the photos reproduced from family albums. The Ohlone, Miwok, Pomo, Paiute & Modoc, to name only some. Face after beautiful face. Story after story. Captain Jack, the Modoc leader I mentioned in my last post is there. And so is one of the most famous Indians of California: Ishi. The man whose life was put on display as a living museum.

The majority of people in this book are much less well-known, but no less interesting. Take for example the story of Modesta Avila. According to First Families, Modesta Avila (Ajachmem) hung a clothesline across the railroad tracks, an act of resistance to the Santa Fe Railroad barreling, stinking and smoking through her land. Santa Fe Railroad say she put a tie across the tracks. No one was hurt by her action, but four months later Modesta was arrested and sentenced to San Quentin Prison. Young and defiant Modesta Avila died at this scenic gaol after serving two of her three years sentence. This post is in her memory!

First Families is written by L. Frank and Kim Hogeland, I reccomend you pick up a copy at your local independent bookstore or order online from Heyday.

It is true and I know it: all of California, not to mention the entire U.S., is really native land. The hills of Marin, the sprawl of Los Angeles, the desert,  and the lakes and the mountains.  Indian land.

And when Thanksgiving rolls around, and families prepare their feasts, gathering around the groaning board to stuff themselves with turkey and stuffing, another truth grabs me by the neck and won’t let go. This Indian land is soaked and stained with native blood.

A few years ago I took a trip to the North Eastern corner of California. I went to see the area where Japanese were incarcerated at Tule Lake, now mainly the site of a wildlife preserve. I asked a woman where the Tule Lake Internment Camp had been. She knitted her brow for a moment, and then brightened up and said, “oh, you mean the Jap barracks!” She told me where to go. There is not much left where the camp stood but quite close there was a migrant worker camp. With its gates, and warning signs and barbed wire it seemed like little had changed. Except the people inside spoke Spanish, not Japanese.

There are rocks around this area with messages carved by Issei men, in Japanese Kanji. And on some of the same rocks there are carved much older messages, Indian petroglyphs.

Not too far away is the scene of one of California’s fiercest battles. Kintpuash, otherwise know as Captain Jack led his tribe of Modocs to resist relocation from their lands. They made  use of a natural circular formation of lava rock as a fortress from which he and his people held off hundreds of Federal Troops. Captain Jack subsequently killed General Canby. After this he was captured, hanged and beheaded.

I think I will spend this hollowday reading, perhaps Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, or maybe I will drive up to Lava Beds National Monument, and pay my respect to Captain Jack.