Migration Patterns and Geography

 

            There is evidence that the Tubatulabal tribe has continuously inhabited the Kern Valley for more than 2,000 years. The Paiute and Tubatulabal language is a Shoshonean tongue and indicates their origin, but has different greatly enough that it is accorded a category of its own.

           

The Kern Valley is formed by the junction of the Kern River with the South Fork of the Kern River. This twenty-mile flood plain is considered the Sonoran Desert biome, and is similar to the habitat of other Great Basin tribes, particularly the Paiutes in the Owens Valley. It is separated from the Great Basin proper by three successive mountain ranges, the southern Sierra Nevadas, the Coso Range and the Panamints. To the south and west lies the San Joaquin or Great Central Valley. The access is the narrow, precipitous Kern Canyon, where it enters present-day Bakersfield, or on ridge trails over the Greenhorn Mountains, separating the Tubatulabals from the Yokuts tribes of the San Jaoquin Valley; the Paiutes, separating them from the Kawaiisu of Walker Basin and Tehachapi; and the Kern Plateau, which culminates in 12,123 foot Olancha Peak, dividing the territory of the Tubatulabals from the Western Paiutes and Coso of the Indians Wells and Owens Valleys.

           

It was in this dry (about 10 inches a year), high (2,700 feet above sea-level), yet comparatively fecund land that the first Indians found an amenable area to live. With plenty of water, fish and game, the Indians prospered and developed a culture that assimilated features of both Great Basin and California Indian tribes. 
           

It is likely they migrated over Walker’s Pass (5,250 feet), the most accessible conduit from East to West in several hundred miles. The Tubatulabal shared cultural affinities with the Coso and Western Paiutes, particularly in the lack of a migration myth, and cultural intercourse over Walker Bsin continued through the advent of the Spaniards and gold miners.

           

Perhaps the strongest and most telling similarity was the absence of migration myths. This is indicative not only of all Great Basin tribes, but their antiquity. Petroglyphs located below the present day main dam of Lake Isabella show the use of an atlatl. It is supposed by local archaeologists that the spear thrower was replaced by the bow and arrow in this region no later than 600 A.D.

           

 There is much evidence of tribal intercourse, mostly in trading and exogamy. Even before the arrival of the first miners in 1854, few Indians could clain to be full-blooded Paiute, Tubatulabal or Kawaiisu. The Kern Valley Indians traded widely with dried fish ant their standard stock-in-trade, tobacco balls, for the obsidian of the Great Basin tribes and the cowrie shells and asphaltum of the Chumash.

           

The Kern Balley Indians were roughly divided into three entities, the Tubatulabal, Palegawan, and Bankalanchi. The Paiute and Tubatulabal lived at the confluence of the Kern and South Fork and east to the present day town of Onyx, where the southerly flowing South Fork makes a sweep out of the mountains and begins its short, easterly course. The Palegawan lived along the augmented Kern south to a “waterfall” about 13 miles north of present-day Bakersfield. This water was most likely a particularly treacherous stretch of rapids that formed a natural barrier. The Bankalachi, as they were called by neighboring Yokuts (they call themselves Toloim), had several village sites near present-day Kernville.

           

The Bankalachi do not exist as a tribe today. The last full-blooded member was Lash-Yeh, who died in the mid-1960s, nearly 100 years old, on Tule River Reservation. They were probably absorbed by neighboring Yokuts. Linguistically, they bands form one of the four major divisions of the Shoshonean languages – Kern River branch; the others being the Serrano, Mono-Bannock and the Ute-Chemehuevi ( to which the Kawaiisu belong).

           

 The Kawaiisu tribe arrived at a later, undetermined date. Their range encompasses the Paiute and Scodie Mountains to the south and west to the Tehachapi Mountains, with historic sites in Walker Basin and Kelso Canyon.

           

 The combined territory of the Tubatulabals extended over 1,300 square miles; from the headwaters of the Kern River north of Mt. Whitney down to the stretch of rapids in the canyon near Bakersfield in the southeast. Most of their food-gathering activities were carried out in the southern one-third of this range. The higher elevations were mostly used as occasional hunting grounds, although personal accounts tell of higher meadows being used for summer rendezvous (a custom lately revived) with neighboring tribes, particularly Paiutes and Coso. In later years, the Kawaiisu of Walker Basin would join other area tribes for a Rendezvous in the Kern Valley or Walker Basin, where earnings from the mines and ranches were dispensed freely in games of chance. In a article in the Havilah Miner in 1872, orators and dancers from Fort Tejon and Caliente entertained 200 visitors. The report described the gathering: “Some were eating, some singing, some paying their respects to the fair sex, while others were gambling and dancing: everything having a decidedly lively appearance…”

           

 The Kern Valley Indians had much in common, including language and lifestyle, and freely moved about from one association to another. In the present, as in the past tribal differences were more a matter geographies than culture. The northern Kawaiisu and Tubatulabal have blended together through intermarriage and common interest.

           

 Prehistoric population estimates vary greatly, the Paiute and Tubatulabal population at about 300 – 1,000. According to the 1860 Tulare County census, which fortuitously includes Indians, there were 549 male Indians over the age of 21, including Bankalachis and 144 Coso at Little Lake in the Indian Wells Valley. This would give a projected estimate of more that 2,200 Indians based on the accepted formula of five women and children per male adult. However, that estimate would include the influx of other Indians form Owens Valley and Central Valley to work the mines, although there is no firm evidence from the census that they came in any great numbers. One who did, Adaline Carson, was the half-Indian daughter of legendary mountain man and frontier scout kit Carson. A courtesan, she is believed to have died in the mining town of Keysville in 1860 at the age of 25. due to the isolated nature of the region, most Indians at that time lived in a aboriginal state. Even with an adjusted reduction of the estimate to exclude transient mineworkers with no families, there must have been at least 1,500 Indians, giving a population density of more that 1 per square mile, and much greater in the actual population centers near the confluence of the two rivers.

 

 

 

 

History

Kern River Valley Indian Community

(A Historical Overview)

By: Bret Bradigan, Published in the Kern Valley Sun

The native Indians of Kern River valley lived a loose, semi-nomadic lifestyle. Their culture is anarchic, and leadership is not a titulary conferred position, but based on the demands of the moment – whether rabbit drives or warfare – that required a higher degree of organization. The tribal mixture of Indians here reflects their culturally-encouraged exogamous practices. Most Indians in this area have ties to Great Basin tribes; Western Paiutes in the Owens Valley and Coso in the Indian Wells Valley, as well as Yokut tribes rimmed around the San Joaquin Valley and the coastal Chumash. They do not have the same measure of tribal integrity characteristic of Plains or Eastern Woodlands Indians.

            The Indians of California were denied the assimilation period that the Indians from the east won through treaties and warfare against an often overwhelmed foe, which was forced to capitulate through necessity. The first Europeans in America needed the cooperation of the Indians to survive. The Indian tribes became adept at dealing with this new entity, and established a detailed history through their dealings.

            But the early history of white men in Kern Valley region is the history of the gold rush. The restless surge of gold miners profoundly disturbed an aboriginal culture, deeply rooted in a highly formalized style of life, which had not the luxury of several centuries of gradual accommodation. The Indians of California became loose and dissolved into Rancherias or government schools and became wards of the state. They had no opportunity to form a body politic to interact with the intruders, thereby forming the consequential, continuous history necessary for federal recognition.

            One important item in favor of the Kern Valley Indians is that this area has attracted attention because of its strategic location and the fact that the Paiute, Tubatulabals and Kawaiisu blended elements of two widely dispersed cultures; the Great Basin and California Indians.

            Paiute, Tubatulabal and Kawaiisu Indians had aboriginal living habits, from preparing tobacco balls and the botanical indicators of the pine nut and acorn harvest, to the building of fish corrals and the consumption of jimson weed.

            They are fortunate in that their location provided an intriguing enigma; being in an isolated yet pivotal location between very different Native American cultures, the California and Great Basin Indians. They were the slenderest link in a chain of related cultures that stretched from Comanches of Texas to the Chumash of the Pacific coast, from the Aztecs of Mexico to the Utes of Utah.

 

(Map)

 

Settlement and Social Organization

 

            The Indians had a semi-nomadic existence. The majority of village sites, however, were clustered near the confluence of the Kern and South Fork of the Kern River. This is where they spent their winters in small bands of two to six families. During the heat of the summer, individual family bands would often move to the cooler mountain meadows, where deer, sheep and trout were plentiful. According to informants, the summer was a time of rendezvous with neighboring tribes, with games, dances, sweats, and sometimes fights. This tradition has recently been renewed.

            Circular thatched tule reed houses were used for winter dwellings. They were about 8-10 feet high and 20 feet in diameter. The outsides were often plastered with clay, and the interiors were carpeted with tule mats. The doors faced east to catch the morning sun, and were about 21 feet wide and 4 feet high. The fire pit was placed in the center of the house beneath the smoke hold. The houses were quick and efficient to assemble, and would last up to four years.

            The basic clothing for both men and women were apron skirts make of deerskin and laced together from and back. Adornments varied, the most common being bead fringes. Breechclouts for men were also made of deerskin. They were brought around through the thighs and fastened with a belt of milkweed fiver. Breechclouts were also worn by menstruating women. For cold weather, rabbit skin robes were draped over the shoulders and held together with the hands. Children usually went naked, but wore the apron skirt in cold weather. Men went hatless, while women wore coiled basketry hats with straps for carrying supplies. Moccasins were made of tanned deerskin from the animal’s neck (for durability), and extended well above the ankle. Fro dances and funerals, clamshell disks obtained in trade from Yokuts and Chumash were worn by women. Both men and women would paint their faces for special dances.

           

Leadership and community – Leadership was not a titulary conferred position. It was not always hereditary, but the sons of a chief often had first chance to prove their merit.

            The chief, beyond his duties in organized food drives, served as a referee in disputes between tribal organizations or with other tribes. The chief gave lectures and speeches at ceremonies and was often selected based on oratorical ability, hence “Big Talker”.

            The Kern Valley Indians did not recognize ownership in any form concerning hunting and gathering places. Although wealth was accrued and the number of tobacco balls, shell money, obsidian implements and later, horses, possessed were often considered the worth of a man, surplus wealth was distributed through ceremony, overseen by chiefs, as in other primitives cultures throughout the world.

            The opposite of the chief was the clown. His role was to provide the necessary humor to leaven the chief’s sobriety. Clown roles were passed from father to son. The major influences of the clown were to oust incompetent chiefs. The clowns also supervised mourning ceremonies.

 

 

Advent of Europeans and the Gold Rush

 

            The first account with white men allegedly occurred when the peripatetic Father Garces visited the Forks of the Kern in 1776. A Porterville man, Bill Horst, closely followed Garces’ diary several years ago and discovered it unlikely that Garces penetrated the Kern. More authentic is the account that scouts of Pedro De Font reached the Forks in 1777. During the next 80 years Kern Valley Indians began trading with Spaniards at the San Buenaventura Mission near Santa Barbara and at an outpost near Fort Tejon. From the Spaniards they obtained horses, metal utensils, and knives.

            The first Americans to reach the region were on a surveying expedition of John C. Fremont in 1834, let by Joseph Reddeford Walker. A man named Kern was the cartographer and the area took his name. In 1854 gold was discovered in Tubatulabal territory at Keyesville. Gold rushes also began in the nearby White River mining district in 1857. by 1860 the white population of the Kern Valley and adjoining areas was 560 and the Indians were soon outnumbered.

 

Whiskey Flat Massacre

 

            Peaceful coexistence was generally maintained until the gold strike in Kernville, then called Whiskey Flat. A reprisal raid of cavalry soldiers under the command of Captain McLaughlin surprised the village site near Tilly Creek and massacred approximately 35 male Indians, and several women and children. This signaled the end of the aboriginal era.

            Accounts of this tragedy vary. According to Ardis Walker, McLauglin and his detachment of 24 men from the Second California Volunteers were looking to punish Indians for raids on ranchers in the Owens Valley. He started out from Visalia, and the village by the new mining camp of Whiskey Flat was his first encounter with the Indians. With the help of interpreter Jose Chico, a well-traveled Tubatulabal from the Tule River area, he commanded the Indians to lay down their arms.

Massacre Site/Wofford Heights, Ca

           

 Walker wrote, “…As soon as the villagers had laid down their arms 35 of the men were lined up by Captain McLaughlin and shot by his troopers who then passed among the wounded braves and sobered them for good measure. After the troops rode away, the women and children, helpless witnesses to the tragedy, took up the sorrowful task of burying their dead.”

            Walker was given this account by his friend Stephen Miranda, who was 13 years old at the time of the tragedy. The Indians had been warned by miners Judge Joseph Summer and Joseph Caldwell, but felt that since they weren’t involved with the raids in the Owens Valley they had nothing to fear. There were nine visiting Indians present who had participated in the raid, but they took cover above the camp and watched the massacre before slipping away.

            Bernice Wermuth, great-granddaughter of Betty Buckskin who lost her husband in the massacre, said that Jose Chico persuaded his fellow tribesman to meet with Captain McLaughlin and discuss the possibility of moving to Fort Tejon. Then Chico accused the Indians of being hostile and the cavalry slaughtered them. Betty, whose Tubatulabal name sounded like Buckskin, was taken by a friendly German miner named Frederick Butterbredt to Kelso Canyon. She later married him and started the largest Indian family in California. This fact was borne out during a claim settlement by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1960s.

            Soon after the tragedy, survivors either retreated into the mountains near the Tule River Reservation, or began working on nearby ranches. Local accounts tell of early ranch families being struck by the curiosity, mingled with disdain, which the local Indians showed towards white women. Bob Powers, local historian, said that a distant relative, Sophie Smith, who was the first white woman in the Kern Valley, was alarmed at the Indians that would cluster around the window, eager for a look at her. She eventually befriended the Indian women, and would serve them tea on the lawn of her farmhouse.

            The account ledgers of Andrew Brown’s flour mill in the South Fork tell of Indians being paid one dollar a day for cutting cottonwoods to fuel the mill, and for digging ditches.

            By 1880, all but a few of the Indians had given up their aboriginal existence. A few tenaciously clung to the older ways into the 20th century, but even they came to depend on the white men for flour, sugar, and sundries.

            Now, a revival of interest in the old ways is occurring, and many Indians are expressing a renewed interest in their ancestors. They see the grimy indigence of the Rancheria as a dour reflection of the white men’s ways, and see the aboriginal lifestyle as simple and dignified. With the interest in old practices, they are forming a fusion of the best of both worlds, and renewing their ancestral ties to the land.

 

Warfare

 

            The Paiute, Tubatulabal and Kawaiisu were peace-loving folk who occasionally engaged in small scale feuds and raids with neighboring tribes. A war party of 30 was considered big. They fought with arrows, and depended upon a strategy of surprise as opposed to open combat. The Tubatulabals made raids and reprisal raids on the Yokuts and Kawaiisu, and often enlisted the Coso as allies.

            The Kern Valley Indians took no provisions into battle as they expected to return by evening. One war took them to Yokut territory in San Emedio Canyon, 100 miles away. It took place in the late 1700s, when the Spanish missionaries had a gold smelting operation in the canyon, and after several missionaries were allegedly killed by Kern Valley Indians, the Spaniard’s, Yokut, and Chumash allies made a reprisal raid at Canebrake. They were beaten badly, and were chased down into the San Joaquin Valley and back up into the Fort Tejon area, where the Yokuts laid an ambush. They trapped the Kern Valley Indians in a narrow canyon and created a landslide of boulders. Then they rushed down into the canyon and massacred the survivors.

            Then Kern Valley Indians had no victory dances, only an informal round dance. No prisoners were taken, but the enemies’ weapons were confiscated.

 

 

Theology

 

           The closest form of worship probably centered on a loose jimsonweed cult, and culture heroes like the trickster Coyote and the chief Eagle. Both bald eagles and golden eagles are indigenous, although bald eagles only winter here. Indians would raise them as pets, pluck a few feathers when they reached maturity and set them free. They also wrapped live yellow ants in eagle down and swallowed them, both as a purgative and to induce visions. The biting of the ants on the stomach lining apparently produced beneficial spiritual effects for the Indians.

            Spirits were widely regarded. Some took animal form, became animal spirit helpers of the shamans, and other assumed human form. Brownies – small, anthropomorphic creatures who usually lived near water holes – were prevalent figures. According to informants, they were responsible for the many petroglyphs in this area, as well as guiding people when they ingested the jimsonweed concoction.         

            Most of the shamanistic practices are of a Great Basin. Kawaiisu shamans apparently didn’t take jimsonweed, though Tubatulabals did frequently. They did not ascribe their power to the jimsonweed, however. Shamans appeared to be born, not made. There were both witches and doctors, malevolent and benevolent. They all had animal spirit helpers, “pets”, which instructed them on medicines and songs. Even as late as the 1930s, the power of witchery was widely respected. They especially had power over one’s dreams, when the sleeper was most vulnerable. Witches and shamans could cause bad dreams which made the subject person gradually sicken. People would pay to have a curse put on an enemy, and would also pay to have it lifted. If a shaman’s malevolent power grew too great, they would often be killed. Bill Viejo Chico was bound with rope to a tree and burned alive in the 1880s.

            Besides shaman doctors and witches, weather shamans were widely respected. Weather bundles from the Kawaiisu have survived intact, and rain doctors were paid well, although in barter, usually salt, aphid sugar or tobacco. Bob Rabbit, a legendary Kawaiisu rain doctor of the early 1900s, apparently became mad at the white men, and stopped his practice. Three years of drought in the early 1930s.

            Dreams played an integral part in the spiritual life of the Kern Valley Indians. When a person dreamed of hunting deer, he would kill a man. If he killed the deer and left the spot, then looked back, he would not live long. If a person dreamed of another person without eyes or nose, it meant the person dreamed of was going to die.

            Jimsonweed was the main outside catalyst of the Indian’s spiritual life. Besides curing illness and providing portents, it was widely used as an initiation ritual for both boys and girls. It was hoped they would find an animal helper. If they did, it was kept secret. If they talked about it, they would lose that helper.

            The procedure for the initiation ritual began when a group of half a dozen boys and girls were put under the charge of an elder, who led them into the sweat house, then kept them there for several days. Each morning they were given infusion to induce vomiting. On the third, the elder dug the jimsonweed roots, apologizing to the roots as he did so. They were mashed on a metate, soaked in a basket for 10 hours and given to the boys and girls in the evening. They were also subject to dietary restrictions before and after the ceremony, progressively lessened. Meat or greasy foods were taboo for two months.

            The taking of ants was common, but not considered as crucial as the jimsonweed. After a period of fasting similar to the jimsonweed, the ant-eaters were given seven balls of eagle down containing five yellow ants each. They were supposed to increase one’s strength. After a whole day of vision-seeking, the ants were expelled with an emetic. The greater the number of ants, that survived, the longer the life for the ant-eater.

            There were a great number of taboos, particularly against eating meat or grease after the death of a spouse. Mourning ceremonies usually took place one or two years after the death of a spouse. Face painting played an integral part in the mourning ceremony as well. It was a time to ostentatiously display wealth, and neighboring tribes were invited for the death of important leaders.

            The accepted theory is that the Ghost Dance movement of 1870 and 1890 never reached the Indians of the Kern River Valley. But according to reliable informants, the great-grandfather of noted Paiute medicine man Raymond Stone was a frequent visitor of Bill “Bull Run” Chico in Kernville. Raymond Stone’s great-grandfather was also a close friend of Wovokah, or Jack Wilson, leader of the 1890 movement. Based on their strategic location and ties with Great Basin tribes, it is not unlikely that the Kern River Valley Indians participated to some extent in the Ghost Dance Movement of 1890. they may still have had an innate fear of discussing such matters with the Voegelins, since white authorities actively suppressed such movements.

             Sweat houses were communal affairs, and were used frequently for spiritual, as well as therapeutic.

 

Diet and Food Gathering

 

            The population was sustained by two major staple foods; the pinon pine (pinus monophylla) and the acorn. The Kern Valley Indians were the only known Indian tribe to make regular use of these two resources; the pine nut of the Great Basin and the acorn of the California Indians.

            The pine nuts were gathered in the east, on the southerly ascent of the Kern Plateau near Chimney Peak or in the nearby Scodie or Piute Mountains. The sweeter live oak and California oak acorns were gathered on the Greenhorn Mountains to the west and south, near the present-day Tule River Reservation. Pinon pines might go several years before having an adequate flowering to bring a good crop.

            Acorns, on the other hand, bear the most fruit during dry years, as a protective measure against extirpation. During the drought conditions experienced in this region recently (1987-89), acorns have been unusually fruitful, and sweet enough to eat out of hand, with no leaching.

The Indians of the Kern Valley region had no famine myths. They lived in an area with easy access to riverine, lacustrine, Sierran and pinon-juniper environments and made full use of each. Botanical indicators played a major role in determining when to harvest crops. When the Californica Cuspidata berries ripened the pinons were ready to be gathered in the mountains.

            Other food sources included chia sage seeds, as well as meats like deer, bear, Tule elk, pronghorn, antelope, bighorn sheep, squirrel and rabbits, which were usually driven into traps, often with the help of neighboring tribes. There were three species of fish native to the Kern River drainage; suckers, squawfish, and Gilbert’s rainbow trout, closely related to the state fish, the golden trout, which is native to the higher regions of the South Fork Kern River and Golden Trout Creek in the Indian’s northern range. Fish were caught with trot lines and speared as well as being corralled into rock traps. There were 130 species of plants that the Indians put to use, either as food or medicine, usually both.

            Two species of tobacco (Nicotiana Bigelovii and Attenuata) were used. Tobacco was the only plant that was cultivated in any form, which merely consisted of trimming top leaves to produce broader, longer leaves. Tobacco was drunk, snuffed, eaten and chewed. Chewing tobacco was mixed with lime. It was often taken at night to induce vomiting. This cleansed the stomach and led to deep, dreamless sleep.

            Storage was very important. As most food was ground for gruel and meal on an as-needed basis, campsites usually clustered around the bedrock mortars. A fine degree of sophistication was achieved with straw basketry, and their pottery, while somewhat unfinished, has definite Aztecan similarities. Comparing their tule reed basketry to the Yokuts, many of these baskets were large, capable of holding a hundred pounds of food at a time. Leaching baskets were also used regularly, as very few acorns were considered sweet enough to forego to extend leaching. The red oaks from Paso Flat were leached for several hours, while the bitter live oaks closer to home were leached for two days.

            The small family groups moved freely in the pursuit of food, although several permanent village sites have been excavated, particularly one in the Long Canyon area. From late autumn to early spring the groups subsisted on food caches, supplemented with fish, ducks, quail and occasional deer.

            By February, after months of leisure and storytelling, the groups began to move again, foraging for newly-sprouted wild onions and hunting geese in the seep lakes near present-day Weldon. They also traveled to the swampy lakes in the lover San Joaquin Valley to fish for Sacramento perch and hunt ducks and geese.

            About the time of full runoff in May and June, fishing became difficult and dangerous. Small seeds were gathered in the valley and foothills, including digger pine nuts and juniper berries. Rabbit drives were also organized during this time of year, and by June, food caches of pinon nuts and acorns dwindled.

            Bird and rabbit hunting continued through the early summer, and by July, food-gathering began in earnest. Tule roots, tobacco, salt grass, aphid sugar, and Manzanita berries were dried. By the end of July, the runoff in the Kern River begins to abate, and fish camps were set up to corral fish into the circular rock traps. Groups also visited the Yokuts to participate in antelope drives.