Indian Summer: Traditional Life Among the Choinumne Indians
Jun 24, 2018 11:37:55 GMT -8
Brian, anni, and 1 more like this
Post by Oss Rae on Jun 24, 2018 11:37:55 GMT -8
I'm currently reading, and enjoying, Indian Summer: Traditional Life Among the Choinumne Indians of California's San Joaquin Valley. In the early 1850s, Thomas Jefferson Mayfield's family lived among the Choinumne Indians at Tulare Lake. Thus, about 10 years of Thomas's childhood were spent there. For the rest of his life he refrained from talking about his experiences due to the climate at the time (e.g., the Choinumne were at war with the state of CA not too long after he lived with them)--until the late 1920s, when local historian Frank F. Latta recorded his memories. Thomas died before all the memories could be preserved, but fortunately a huge amount of the recording was done. The work has only been published a few times, the most recent being in 1994.
The San Joaquin Valley, as seen from the 5, always seemed dreary and monotonous to me, though I always wondered if its past had been more interesting. Indeed, one of the rest stops I've been to many times, Bravo Farms (Kettleman City), is very close to where Tulare Lake was (and sometimes comes back).
So far I have read how Choinumne houses were made and how acorns were gathered and prepared. The book has a lot of vocabulary in it (and apparently comprehensive vocabulary was collected independently of this book when such information was gathered about other tribes in California by J.P. Harrington).
At times I find this book upsetting. Beyond the atrocious acts committed against the Indigenous people of the San Joaquin Valley, there is also the colossal alteration of the environment (much of it due to diversion of rivers for agriculture). Beyond the disappearance of Tulare Lake itself, forests of oak trees are long gone (one of them is illustrated circa the mid-1800s). So I guess my hunch was right that the San Joaquin was more interesting at one time.
The book is edited by Malcolm Margolin, who wrote his own book, the excellent The Ohlone Way about Bay Area Indigenous people and also edited The Way We Lived.
Though I'm not that far along in Indian Summer, it's already rekindled my interest in The Miwok in Yosemite: Southern Miwok Life, History, and Language in the Yosemite Region. This is a small book put out by the Yosemite Conservancy in 1996, which I obtained a few years ago ( www.goodreads.com/book/show/28936743-the-miwok-in-yosemite ). This, too, is both edifying and upsetting.