University of Washington Press Chapter Title: Dining’xine:wh-mil-na:sa’a:n Hupa People—With Them—It Stays, There Is a Hupa Tradition ORAL NARRATIVES AND NATIVE FEMINISMS Book Title: We Are Dancing for You Book Subtitle: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies Book Author(s): CUTCHA RISLING BALDY Published by: University of Washington Press Stable URL: http://www

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University of Washington Press Chapter Title: Dining’xine:wh-mil-na:sa’a:n Hupa People—With Them—It Stays, There Is a Hupa Tradition ORAL NARRATIVES AND NATIVE FEMINISMS Book Title: We Are Dancing for You Book Subtitle: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies Book Author(s): CUTCHA RISLING BALDY Published by: University of Washington Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/j.ctvcwn2cz.6 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Washington Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to We Are Dancing for You This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:an 1976 12:34:56 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Ch a P t er 1 Dining’xine:wh-mil-na:sa’a:n Hupa People—With Them—It Stays, There Is a Hupa Tradition or Al nArr Atives AnD nAtive Feminisms Hupa people, Na:tinixwe, the people of where the trails return, I think are a more gynocentric people. Some of our medicines for people, a lot of our ceremonies involve the medicine happening at night because you are tying it to the moon, which we would associate with water, which we would associate with the water from women. —Melodie George-Moore (Hoopa tribal member, Karuk, Cherokee, Whilkut) m Y e ng Age m e n t W i t h n At i v e F e m i n i s m s Be g A n Be c Ause oF m Y own experiences as a Native woman. On one hand I was raised among vocal women who assertively advanced Indigenous issues and actively engaged with traditional cultural practices. I was taught to do the same from a young age. Hupa ceremonies include cycles that have continued uninterrupted since time began. For neighboring tribes, these ceremonies were revived after periods of significant disruption. This process involved community members stepping forward to occupy traditional leadership roles and formulate contemporary articulations of cultural values and traditions. Over time I became aware of unsettling themes emerging in various ceremonial and community contexts. I recall returning after one particular ceremony to my parents’ house and sitting on the couch with my auntie Mary Jane Risling.1 I shared with her that 28 This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 29 in several ceremonies and community events I had attended there was a growing undercurrent of what can best be described as patriarchal “concern trolling” of young women.2 On some occasions young women were told that there were rumors about them not being virgins, and that virginity was of utmost importance for our traditions and dances. This felt antithetical to what I had learned growing up about Hupa people, who did not exclude or dismiss women in this way. These traditions did not treat virginity as sacrosanct, but rather held that in certain ceremonies women should not dance after they had their first child. This, coupled with people starting to say that women could no longer wear red at ceremonies because it reminded people of menstruation and that women shouldn’t wear pants but only long skirts, had left me disheartened. I had even heard people say that women generally should not touch men’s regalia and that women who are menstruating should not be at public educational cultural demonstrations, because they could “hurt” or “curse” people. In community conversations I was told that the reason women had to wear long skirts while they danced in ceremony was because otherwise they would be perceived as trying to attract men and would entice them away from their prayers and good thoughts.3 I don’t remember it being this way when I was younger. I have pictures of my mother and Auntie wearing jeans and basket hats at ceremony. I had worn red to ceremonies before. We have many red things on our regalia: woodpecker scalps, beads, and red abalone. Growing up, I had never experienced someone asking me about my virginity or commenting on the length of my skirt. How these seemingly patriarchal conversations about women had become so prevalent I could not understand. Had Native culture always been this way, and I only started to notice as I got older? On the couch that day with my auntie, I asked her, “Do you think our cultures are inherently misogynistic?” She was adamant in her response: “No. I don’t think our cultures were misogynistic, not at all. Women occupied key and powerful roles as healers, leaders, and regalia holders. I think our cultures have become imbalanced in a way that looks, walks, and quacks like misogyny, but it is something that is learned. And you know how I know that? Because traditionally our cultures are tied to the land and rooted in nature, always the best teacher. Nature strives for balance, and the feminine is central to existence. Women are central to Hupa culture. They are central to our spirituality. We respected women, we knew they were important to our future.” I have felt a very personal longing to explore Native feminisms because, for me, we cannot build our futures without decolonization and we cannot This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 30 chAPter 1 decolonize or enact self-determination without Native feminisms. This conversation has been a growing discourse not only among Native academics but also in Native communities. The intimate ties between Native feminisms and the enactment of sovereignty and self-determination are a foundational framework built by scholars like Kathryn Shanley, Paula Gunn Allen, Ines HernándezÁvila, Mishuana Goeman, Jennifer Denetdale, Renya Ramirez, Audra Simpson, Joanne Barker, and others. Barker notes that gender, sexuality, and feminist studies are central to sovereignty and self-determination because they critically analyze how sovereignty and self-determination are “imagined, represented and exercised” so that sovereignty and self-determination do not mirror heteropatriarchal standards.4 On a community level, Native feminisms can help to formulate a more open discussion about how to empower Native peoples in order, as Barker notes, to confront the “normative gendered and sexed bodies” that seek to create Indigenous peoples as “citizens of the state.”5 In Native cultural epistemologies there is a complex engagement with feminism, which values the empowerment of all people in ways that support gender equality and gender balance. I have seen this type of engaged feminism demonstrated in women’s coming-of-age ceremonies, which enact an epistemological framework that (re)writes, (re)rights, and (re)rites Native feminisms as foundational building blocks of Native culture and society. The (re)riteing aspect of this project requires an intervention in the previous anthropological and historical work that silenced Native feminisms and supported interpretations of Native culture as traditionally patriarchal. Modern understandings of ceremony can become intertwined with patriarchy and misogyny, so much so that contemporary practices of ceremony are used to reinforce this patriarchy in the name of “tradition.” Andrea Smith and J. Kehaulani Kauanui argue that “the imposition of patriarchy within Native communities is essential to establishing colonial rule, because patriarchy naturalizes social hierarchy.”6 The patriarchal invasion of our stories, the foundational building blocks of our cultures and epistemologies, has allowed scholars and even community leaders to create a mythological Native past that mirrored the heteropatriarchal structure of settler colonial society. In this chapter I approach the (re)writing, (re)righting, and (re)riteing of Native feminisms by engaging a Native feminist analytic of the oral tradition to establish that Native feminisms are not introduced by Western culture and are not conceptualized only through a Western cultural framework but are This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 31 instead integral to the enactment of our culture and to our survivance, decolonization, and Indigenous futures. I am in agreement with Renya Ramirez, who argues that “rather than viewing a Native feminist consciousness as a force that could cause internal conflict or as a white construct, it should be emphasized as furthering an essential goal in indigenous communities: to combat sexism.”7 Pueblo scholar Paula Gunn Allen believed that “a feminist approach reveals not only the exploitation and oppression of the tribes by whites and white government but also areas of oppression within the tribes and the sources and nature of that oppression.”8 She saw feminist analytics as addressing the effects of patriarchal colonialism to help tribes reclaim their “egalitarian and sacred traditions.”9 And Lisa Kahaleole Hall argues that Native feminisms must look not only at how patriarchal ideas of the “dominant” society have affected Native peoples, but also at how “patriarchal colonialism has been internalized within indigenous communities.”10 This chapter demonstrates that internalized patriarchal expressions of ceremonial practices are not traditional and illustrates how the revitalization of women’s coming-of-age ceremonies center and reclaim Native feminisms. Throughout history, Native women have been portrayed as either Pocahontas or the squaw.11 Either Native women are assisting in the colonization of their people, or they are dirty and disregarded as overtly sexual, stupid, and lazy. Native women have also been left out of historical scholarship and treated as peripheral to their nations, cultures, and societies rather than shown as integral or as serving in leadership positions. Reframing Native women as central to oral narratives and cultural practices is imperative for (re)righting and (re) riteing Indigenous epistemologies, because as Seneca feminist scholar Mishuana Goeman argues, “Native women are at the center of how our nations, both tribal and non-tribal, have been imagined.”12 It is through engaging Native feminisms as foundational to our traditional cultures as well as our revitalizations that we can truly build a future with our past. The crux of this chapter uses a Hupa feminist analytic of oral narratives to center Native women’s experiences, because, as Michelle Jacob notes, this type of feminist analysis can work “toward envisioning a society in which our traditional cultural norms which respect and honor women’s contributions are upheld.”13 I aim to reconfigure discussions of Hupa oral narratives and material culture to reflect a gendered analysis focused on how Hupa people valued gender equality in their culture and society as well as their spiritualities and philosophies. Bringing our frameworks of gender balance and equality to bear This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 32 chAPter 1 on how we understand material culture and societal organization demonstrates the feminist practices that should be a part of our contemporary revitalizations of ceremony and culture. In Weaving Strength, Weaving Power, Venida Chenault argues that “by reconnecting to and utilizing the strengths of the traditional cultures, the wisdom of the origin narratives, the gendered teachings within these creation stories, and the systems and processes that support strong tribal women, the full power of Indigenous peoples is embraced.”14 As Chenault highlights, Western scholarship does not provide interpretations of Indigenous societal organization that “accurately interpret roles, status, power, and influence of tribal women. Instead, disparaging portrayals of Indigenous women are mired in constructed images advanced in cowboy movies, cartoons, and stereotypes that continue to serve as the basis for information and shaping public opinion.”15 My Native feminist analytic is built on a tribally specific methodology that shows how oral stories inform Native feminisms and reinscribe them, not as modern-day liberal cultural values masquerading as tradition but instead as dynamic parts of our Indigenous past, present, and futures. My argument is that women’s coming-of-age ceremonies engage Native feminisms and dismantle a heteropatriarchy that is often characterized as “traditional” or even “modern” in some contemporary Native nations. It is important that the types of critical engagement offered in this chapter clearly demonstrate that women’s comingof-age ceremonies are not vehicles to oppress women, nor a longing for an idealized past, but instead support the (re)writing, (re)righting, and (re)riteing of Native feminisms. As Joanne Barker notes, locating Indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist study in Indigenous territories contextualizes the relationship between land and people and holds the analysis accountable to specific communities.16 My feminist study is necessarily accountable to Hupa people. And while I have experienced occasions when patriarchal ideology is held up as tradition, I have also seen engagement with values of gender equality and respect that continue as a part of Hupa cultural practices. I aim to provide a theoretical framework for what Native people already practice in community revitalizations so as to reinforce that their focus on gender equality and the rejection of patriarchy has always been part of Native culture and society. n At i v e F e m i n i sm A n D t h e or A l t r A Di t ion Many scholars have written about Native societies as “egalitarian” groups where the roles of women and men were balanced and women had religious, This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 33 economic, and political autonomy.17 Scholars who study the role of Native American women in Indigenous societies believe that the centrality of a female divine spirit demonstrates how important Native American women are to Indigenous cultures and societies.18 Kim Anderson writes in A Recognition of Being that “many native creation stories are female centered, and there are many stories that speak about the role of women in bringing spirituality to the people. The Iroquois attribute the beginnings of the earth to a female, rather than a male. Among the Sioux, the White Buffalo Woman is recognized as the culture bearer, as she brought the sacred pipe.”19 Devon Mihesuah provides a summary of some of the divine roles of women in Indigenous American Women. She notes that for the Navajo “‘mother’ symbolizes earth, sheep and corn.” Apache also have a central female spirit person, known as Changing Woman. There are also central female spirit people for the Cherokee (Selu), Tewa Pueblos (Blue Corn Woman and White Corn Maiden), and the Shawnee, who refer to their creator as “our grandmother.”20 Native women participated in governmental affairs in a number of Indigenous societies, a fact that highlights their central role in the structure of the society. Sally Roesch Wagner writes that Haudenosaunee women were “involved in all decisions of governmental policy, from the local to the federal level.”21 Jennifer Denetdale notes that for the Navajo Nation, “Although written reports do not mention women as leaders or chiefs, Navajo oral tradition and other accounts make note that it was not unheard of for women to serve as headmen or chiefs. . . . [E]arly American accounts have noted Navajo women’s presence in council proceedings between Navajo and American leaders.”22 In Being Again of One Mind, Lina Sunseri describes the Haudenosaunee women’s roles in traditional society, which included the ability to “exercise sexual autonomy, to divorce, to own property, to approve of war or to order its end.”23 She also notes that lineal descent had to “run through the female line.”24 Lisa Kahaleole Hall notes that in Hawaii “there were women chiefs as early as 1375” and that in religious systems of Native Hawaiians both male and female gods had power.25 Marilou Awiakta writes at length about the role of women in traditional Cherokee society. Awiakta explains that in negotiating their treaty with Western colonizers, the Cherokee people included women in these talks. When Westerners came to negotiate, however, they did not invite or involve women, which inspired a Cherokee leader to ask, “Where are your women?” thereby noting the fundamental differences in worldview and ideas about gender and gender equality that separated these two very different cultures.26 This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 34 chAPter 1 The (re)writing and (re)righting of the historical record of gender equality in Native communities has been an important and necessary intervention made by Native studies scholars. While anthropological and archaeological studies have attempted to recreate this history through ethnographic interviews and studies of Indigenous burial and village sites, they did not fully engage with or attempt to discuss oral narratives as complex philosophies, methodologies, or ontologies. Early ethnographic studies significantly misinterpreted gender in Indigenous cultures and societies. This has led to several misconceptions about how Indigenous peoples valued and conceptualized gender. It has been up to contemporary Indigenous scholars to reclaim the historical, anthropological, and ethnographic record with a more discerning analysis in order to (re)write, (re)right, and (re)rite gender epistemologies and Native feminisms from a perspective that values oral narrative accounts as “archive” and “documentary evidence.” These stories were and are how Native peoples define and redefine their sovereignty, cultures, knowledges, and feminisms. Calvin Martin highlights how Native peoples “survived equally as long” as Western societies around the world and that, much like other cultures throughout the world, Native peoples in the Americas had “scrutinized and pondered the great cosmic and existential issues and produced answers just as complete and satisfactory” as Western civilization.27 It is through stories that Native people engage theories, philosophies, law, and systems of government. Dian Million argues that Indigenous stories are powerful not because they fit a Western framework of methodology or structure but “because they are engaged in the articulations that interpret who we are in the discursive relations of our times. We engage in questioning and reformulating those stories that account for the relations of power in our present. That is theorizing. It offers new experiential frames, in our case, often from our lives, from our own felt experience, from our stories, from our communities, from our languages.”28 I argue that in records and documentation of oral narratives and material culture we can discern a foundation of Native feminisms that build Indigenous epistemologies. I am particularly engaged by Million’s insistence that our stories are not only interpretations and documentation of the past, but also part of our theory making and research paradigm as contemporary Native peoples. Indigenous scholars have led the way in exploring the many rich, illustrious aspects of the oral tradition that encompasses Indigenous thought, philosophy, histories, literatures, and knowledges. Vine Deloria Jr. compared the oral tradition to science.29 Christine F. Black utilizes Australian aboriginal language This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 35 to develop an Indigenous jurisprudence.30 Creek scholar Craig Womack utilizes Creek oral narratives to analyze and develop a Creek methodology for literary analysis that values Creek nationalism.31 Indigenous scholars also continue to build a critical and theoretical analysis of the oral tradition to support methodologies and theories of history, culture, and sovereignty. Taiaiake Alfred utilizes Indigenous oral narratives to develop culturally based epistemologies of politics and leadership.32 Gerald Vizenor uses the oral tradition to inform and build a postmodern discussion of tribal philosophy. Vizenor ties the oral tradition to the vitality of Native spiritual and cultural philosophies. He also uses the oral tradition to build modern discourse and theoretical concepts for analysis, his most cited being the “trickster discourse,” where he argues that trickster stories build tribal survivance.33 Native survivance is intimately tied to the continued existence of Native people and stewardship of lands and cultural practices. Indigenous narrative histories like Vizenor’s decenter Western notions of historical chronology by building history from an Indigenous framework. Native feminists like Mishuana Goeman have explored Native literature and storytelling as narrative tools that must be part of Native feminisms. Goeman writes that stories “serve as fertile grounds” and can “disorient colonial narrations of ‘authentic’ Native places, bodies, and sets of relationships that sever ties between Native communities, families and individuals.”34 In regards to the importance of reconfiguring historical analysis of material culture, I draw from Goeman’s articulation of this as a “spatial narration” and agree with her argument that “Native communities need to promote the forms of spatiality and sovereignty found in tribal memories and stories . . . by critically engaging the epistemologies and practices found in these stories.”35 For this reason, this chapter uses a Hupa feminist analytic to critically engage epistemologies and practices of gender equality found in oral narratives. Both Angela Cavender Wilson and Deborah Miranda tie stories and storytelling to the very survival of Native people. Wilson writes that “when our stories die, so will we.”36 This is a testament to the fact that these stories are built from Indigenous survivance. Native peoples went to great lengths to preserve them even as they faced “the end of the world.”37 In this chapter I argue that stories not only build a foundation of survivance into Native cultures and futures but are grounded in Native feminisms, and these feminisms, wholly targeted for eradication and erasure by settler colonial society, are necessary to a decolonizing praxis. This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 36 chAPter 1 h u PA F e m i n i sm A n D t h e or A l t r A Di t ion The story of the “Formula of Medicine for Going to War,” told in December 1901 by Henry Hostler, begins with a warning.38 Chickenhawk, a K’ixinay woman living in the before time in the Hoopa Valley, tells her brother, “Tomorrow a company will come to kill us,” and she quickly goes about developing the armor, prayer, song, and medicine to protect those who are going to war. She does this by first testing the armor and then teaching her brother to follow her example. It is not seen as out of the ordinary that she takes action to protect her brother. In fact, he listens intently to what she asks of him.39 Chickenhawk’s story ends with her instructions for Native people, as they may one day fight to secure and protect their futures. “Indians are about to become,” she says. “This will be the medicine. The Indians will say of me when they become, ‘This one, I hear, did that way.’ Even if many men come against him, there will not be blood on him. When he puts the twigs and black oak leaves on his head, tied together, this way, he will be ready to fight.”40 Chickenhawk is one of the K’ixinay people for the Hoopa Valley Tribe. Many California Indian tribes attribute their ancient history and knowledge to the “First Peoples.” The Hupa call them the K’ixinay, and they are immortal beings who left instructions for how to live in this world. The K’ixinay, in some cases, carry names that would become associated with certain species of animals, like Xonteh?-taw (Coyote), K’ist’ay’-chwing (Blue Jay), and Ch’ahl (Frog), though they are not animals.41 The K’ixinay are a fully realized race of beings who provide knowledge to Native peoples in the form of oral stories, songs, prayers, ceremonies, medicinal formulas, and environmental practices, all of which make up the history and literature that ground the Hupa people in their epistemologies and culture. The K’ixinay are not metaphors or mythological characters, but instead embody powerful philosophies. The story of Chickenhawk is just one example of how Hupa culture is built with gender equality and empowerment of women as well as men. In many California Indian cultures, there are central and important feminized First People. In these stories, K’ixinay women create formulas and medicines that are essential to the health and well-being of Native peoples. Nowhere is this more evident than in the numerous prayers, formulas, medicines, and rituals surrounding menstruation and women’s coming-of-age. For my engagement with the oral tradition, it is not only important that I configure my analysis from a tribally specific point of view but also that I situate myself as an interpreter of these stories and acknowledge that my This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 37 understanding of Hupa creation stories may differ from others. This is a key part of how I engage with a Native feminist analytic. The beauty and complexity of oral literatures is that they support and encourage multiple interpretations. Vine Deloria Jr. notes that where the oral tradition was concerned, tribal elders did not worry if their version of creation was entirely different from neighboring tribes.42 In fact, Indigenous philosophies often stipulated that oral narrative accounts deserved multiple representations. History would then reflect “contrasting or overlapping vested interests, differing modalities of accounting and interpreting and culturally divergent senses of what it all meant.”43 The multiple versions and accounts and also the multiple interpretations and retellings of oral narratives are the “defining benefit,” according to anthropologist Peter Nabokov. Nabokov argues that in any culture, society, or history, “it is hopeless to search for any single, authoritative narrative as it is to look for paradise. Keeping many versions of its primordial claims and cultural experiences fluid and available for discussion enables a society to check and adjust its course through uncertain times. Any of those interest groups might provide a version that privileges its ancestral role in the account.”44 My interpretations are informed by my family, my villages, my position in the tribe, my cultural experiences, my spirituality, and my academic background. As with any oral narrative or story, my interpretation will serve as a guide for this work but should not be considered the definitive analysis of these stories. The Hupa people have a long history that includes not only more recent histories of contact with Western civilization, or even the history of Native people prior to invasion by Western settlers, but also stories of a time before humans existed, or what is often referred to as “the before time.” This ancient history is mirrored across tribal nations from Northwest California and predominantly features stories of a race of immortal beings who lived in the “before time.” These “First People” are particularly difficult to codify or summarize. Each of them embodies a full, complicated spirit that features in numerous stories. The K’ixinay, who are the Hupa First People, have been described as “deities,” “divinities,” “prehuman spirit deities,” and in the Hupa Online Dictionary and Texts as “immortals.” According to the Hupa Online Dictionary, the direct translation is “immortals, spirits, ‘angels’ [literally, the ones who escape, the ones who are safe]. Note: The people who inhabited this world before human beings arrived to claim it. They had no fire and didn’t know death. They now live in Heaven—a world across the eastern ocean, beyond the sky—and are prayed to. Equivalent to Yurok wogey, Karuk ikxareeyav.”45 This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 38 chAPter 1 For the Hupa, K’ixinay stories are creation stories that provide information about how things came to be, where knowledge was formed, or why the world works in the way it does. These creation stories are not only told in different versions, but can also feature several points of view on the same moment. For instance, many K’ixinay stories focus on the period when the K’ixinay realize their time on the earth is over and that it is now the time of people. To prepare the world for people, the K’ixinay must document their adventures, ideas, and histories, which they pass on to help the Indian people survive and be responsible for the world. They leave their instructions in the form of stories, formulaic prayers, and songs.46 Hupa scholar Jack Norton explains: “The decisions of humans and their responsible destinies were based, therefore, upon each individual’s willingness and awareness to enact the codes or ‘medicine’ of the [K’ixinay], the first beings.”47 After they have finished their preparations, the K’ixinay leave this earth, some by going into and becoming the rocks, rivers, trees, and other parts of the earth and others by going across the ocean and to the K’ixinay afterworld, where they perform certain ceremonies for all time, except for those times when the Hupa people call the ceremonies down for use on earth.48 Many of these creation stories are about the time before people existed. It is an ancient time. The world is described as new and unspoiled. The K’ixinay world was balanced and free of death and disease.49 Stories often feature the land, river, and landmarks of the Hupa world, which encompass the valley and other aboriginal territory. Wailaki/Concow scholar William Bauer calls this “place making,” and he writes that “creation stories emphasize the indigenousness of their respective people by featuring and naming the important features of the land.”50 These stories, however, also extend and solidify Hupa ties to the peoples and places of surrounding areas. Stories feature villages located in Yurok and Karuk land and communities. Stories mention tribes from Central California, like the Wintu, and also tribes from the coast, like the Wiyot. The K’ixinay people came into existence in various places. Their creations are traced back to both inside and outside the valley, something that ties the Hupa people to areas outside the valley center. At first, the K’ixinay live in a peaceful, abundant time. There is no death or sickness. One story tells about a time when a dark cloud moved over the valley. The huge cloud “blocked the sun, the acorns and madrone berries didn’t grow and soon many animals, particularly deer and birds, began to weaken and die.”51 The K’ixinay, realizing that their world has become unbalanced, respond This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 39 by creating concrete, embodied ways of addressing this imbalance. For ten days “they sang and danced in a certain manner,” and the dark cloud receded. This put the world back into order. In turn, the Hupa people continue to repeat these sequences of informed rituals so that “the people know the propriety of their manners, behavior and customs. Thus, specific words or songs became more than culturally defined symbols.”52 Many of these rituals continue today in the Hoopa Valley. And it has also become a special focus of the Hupa to revitalize rituals that were not as prevalent following colonization. Singing and dancing “in a certain manner,” as laid out by the K’ixinay, is a tangible way to disperse the dark cloud that has settled over our valley. Our ceremonies were built as a decolonization praxis from the very beginning to help put our worlds back in order. This story in particular showcases how these creation stories are about much more than placing Hupa people in relativity to their world, providing methodologies for living in this world “in a good way.” This frames Hupa people as a central part of keeping their world in balance, tying them to the health and well-being of the earth. The stories of surviving dark, destructive moments, coupled with the K’ixinay’s resistance to this attempted destruction of their way of life, also prompt the K’ixinay to demonstrate the power of the culture, ceremonies, and knowledge they will give to the Hupa people. These ceremonies and knowledges will lay the foundation for how the Hupa people navigate and enact survivance long after the K’ixinay people have moved on. The K’ixinay are sometimes described as giants who have physical traits reminiscent of animals. These stories not only feature what some anthropologists call “cultural heroes” but also focus on First People who share the names of animals that we know today. Yima:ntiwinyay, whom the Hupa consider a central figure in their culture, is a complex First Person. He is not perfect or infallible. He often makes mistakes, and then is tasked with finding or creating ways to address the consequences of his actions. He must constantly learn from his obsession with lust and pleasure and from his tendency to make hasty decisions that satisfy his immediate desires at the expense of others. He is also a guide and teacher who is invested in the human race. In several stories Yima:ntiwinyay mentions that when humans come, they will “spoil the earth.” He immediately makes plans and encourages the other K’ixinay to leave instructions about the best ways to care for the earth. In some versions of the story Yima:ntiwinyay mentions that he will one day return—or he may not.53 This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 40 chAPter 1 At the time of human creation, many of the K’ixinay leave by going across the ocean and to the world above, or by going into the rocks, rivers, trees, and other flora and fauna of this earth. It is this moment of creation, when some K’ixinay people become travelers who extend their reach across the ocean and to the skies, and some remain, becoming part of the landscape and environment where the Hupa people will live “until the end of time.” By extension, Hupa people become responsible to all things of creation, including the rocks, mountains, rivers, and streams. Each of these things is endowed with a spirit, a literal “force of nature” that the Hupa regard as a creator of their world. These stories link together Native people from different nations. Stories not only feature landmarks, villages, and people from other tribes, but they also link Native people through the rivers and oceans that run through their Indigenous landscapes. Consider how some of the K’ixinay people leave the Hoopa Valley to explore “the world” by going over the ocean. The Hupa were taught and knew that there was an entire world beyond the valley where they lived. Yima:ntiwinyay explores “the world” so he can find all the things the Hupa people will need to thrive. He comes back with animals, plants, knowledge, and medicines. The reach of Hupa culture and epistemologies therefore extends to conceptualizing the ocean as part of their Indigenous space.54 These creation stories mark Hupa people as explorers of the world and also as sharing in a world history shaped by intercultural exchange. The K’ixinay embody the rivers and other bodies of water, so that in the Hupa context, the K’ixinay nourish and are part of other tribal nations. Built into these stories are ideas about sharing across oceans, rivers, and borders, suggesting that the Hupa have always been a trans-Indigenous culture and society.55 From the very start of creation, borders were conceptualized as fluid, and sharing ceremonial and cultural landscapes was essential to living in the world in a balanced way. Hupa oral narratives focus intently on a “balanced” society, which includes equality of genders or Hupa feminist epistemologies. In many stories, K’ixinay women are seen as leaders, as the core of culture and society. K’ixinay women also create formulas and medicines for important aspects of everyday lives. They develop a specific formula for medicine for making baskets, which provides luck and wealth to those who make baskets. They also leave behind instructions for shortening the period of “exclusion after menstruation.” In this story, told in Hupa in December 1901 by Emma Lewis, a K’ixinay woman provides the instructions for making medicine and finally having her body This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 41 “become another one” so that she can return to her everyday activities.56 This story demonstrates clearly the agency that K’ixinay women (and by extension Hupa women) have in self-determining their role in the culture and society of the Hupa people, especially in regard to cultural practices at menstruation. A woman had every right to decide how she could best participate in cultural practices. The Hupa creation stories constantly play with “women’s” and “men’s” roles and show how men and women are important to each other’s lives. For instance, though K’ixinay women are responsible for many of the formulas used to protect and bless a child, male K’ixinay are also important to the formula for giving birth and the origin of the women’s coming-of-age ceremony. The “Formula of Medicine for the Birth of the First Child,” told in November 1891 by Emma Lewis, features Yima:ntiwinyay,57 who has sex with several women and an oak tree while he is traveling. It is his sexual encounter with the white oak tree that results in a child. Yima:ntiwinyay must use a medicine that he develops from the bark of the tree to make the tree open so he can take the baby out. He says, “This way it will be, when Indians become.”58 Yima:ntiwinyay knew that with this medicine it would be easier for women to give birth, and he passes this along to the Hupa people. The story provides clear instructions about which type of medicine (white oak bark) will be used to help women give birth. The story continues with Yima:ntiwinyay and Panther each trying to bury their first child in the ground to leave them behind for the Indian people. Where the children are buried becomes the site where the medicinal herbs that are important for giving birth will grow.59 This involvement of men specifically in helping to create medicine for giving birth speaks clearly to Hupa beliefs about the importance of both men and women in all aspects of each other’s lives. It is not just a woman’s responsibility to create medicine for birth, and men can play a very active role in helping with the birthing process. Other aspects, like blessing the child or making the medicine for the child during the first ten days of life, are created by K’ixinay women and passed to both Hupa men and women as part of a balanced society. In the Hupa creation story of the Flower Dance told in June 1901 by Robinson Shoemaker and recorded by linguist Pliny Earle Goddard, Yima:ntiwinyay displays the trademark cunning, manipulation, and also deference that he has in several other stories. While the story begins with Yima:ntiwinyay’s deception of his daughter and his teasing of her for being so trusting of her father, it is ultimately about how this young girl becomes the perpetual kinah?dung, brought to the K’ixinay afterworld to be danced over for all time. In this story This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 42 chAPter 1 Yima:ntiwinyay asks his daughter to make eels for him and also for her uncle who lives just up the hill from their house. Each day she does this. She then carries the eels up to her uncle’s house to leave them for him. Yima:ntiwinyay has told her that she must not see her uncle or watch him take the food. After she leaves each day to bring her uncle the eels, Yima:ntiwinyay hoists his house onto his back and runs up the hill, where he plants his house and waits for his daughter, thus tricking his daughter so that he can get more eels to eat each day. This goes on for quite some time, until one day Yima:ntiwinyay’s daughter looks and sees the house running up the hill. She immediately goes to her father with this information, and instead of chastising her or becoming angry, he puts her in the corner of his house and makes a kinah?dun-ts’e:y dance rattle stick to celebrate that she is no longer a child.60 Eventually the “invisible people” join him in singing and dancing for her. In the end they take her with them back to the world above, where she becomes the perpetual kinah?dung and they will always dance for her. The continuous honoring of the young woman is at the heart of this creation story. The story does not center the perpetual kinah?dung as being valued for her fertility or reproductive powers, nor is it centered on her physical pubertal changes. Instead, the ceremony is ritualistically performed as a great honor for the young woman, so much so that the K’ixinay insist on performing it for all time in the heavens above. The importance here is how the role of the first/perpetual kinah?dung supports the empowerment of women in Hupa culture and society and intimately ties them to the foundations of spirituality in Hupa culture. There is a clear link here between the kinah?dung as a spiritual being, one who now exists for all time in the K’ixinay afterworld, and the K’ixinay people. This connection will remain for all time and will continue to be resolidified when the dance is performed for young women of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. Carol Markstrom, a developmental psychologist who did extensive research on women’s coming-of-age ceremonies among the Apache and Navajo, remarks that in these types of creation stories, women of the tribe become linked to the power of a female First Person, which is also important to the communities.61 This means that women, through their puberty ceremonies, were able to harness a close and personal relationship with a K’ixinay person, which each woman could use during her ceremony to offer blessings to others and also carry with her as she continued menstrual rituals and customs throughout her adult life. Clearly Hupa feminism is intimately tied to spirituality and cultural ceremonies. This grounding in spirituality and culture will sustain the Hupa This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 43 people as they confront, survive, and heal from the historical invasion of Western civilization. Their K’ixinay First People, having provided the knowledge for living peacefully with the earth, will also be central to providing the Hupa with the methodologies by which to enact survivance before, during, and after colonization. ge n De r B A l A nc e i n h u PA c u lt u r e A n D s o c i e t Y Native feminisms are not only epistemological frameworks for ceremony and spirituality but are also part of material culture and societal organization, which value gender equality. Ethnographies of Native people, like the Hupa, often frame Native societies as “primitive hunter-gatherers” instead of engaging with them as complex, multivalent organized structures. Native feminisms are part of the fundamental organization of Native societies but are not often identified as such in interpretations or scholarship. For many Native cultures, there are clear groundings in gender equality that run throughout the basic tenets of everyday life. Like many tribes, the Hupa people center their world around the land where they came into being. The Hupa call the valley Na:tinixw, “where the trails return” and they call themselves Na:tinixwe, “the people of the valley.” The Hupa aboriginal territory centers around the Trinity River. The river provides much of what the Hupa need to survive, they include the river in their ceremonies and cultural practices, and they consider the care of the river central to their purpose as Hupa people. Hupa directions are expressed as “upriver” or “downriver,” centralizing the river as a grounding point and demonstrating how Hupa people understand their world. The river was also a central travel route, where the Hupa traveled by redwood dugout canoes that they traded for with the nearby Yurok people. Bathing in the river was particularly important to the Hupa people. Men and women bathed separately but often in the same designated spots. Certain bathing spots were set aside for particular time periods; for instance, there were bathing spots used by menstruating women (these bathing spots were known as tim or “lucky spots”). These same bathing spots were used by men during times when they needed to be the most lucky or powerful. Tending to and caring for the land is a central epistemological belief for the Hupa people as well. The Hupa were adept at caring for, tending to, and sculpting the natural world. They considered humanity to be an essential part of nature instead of divorced from it. Hupa people, like many tribal peoples, created and shaped their ecosystem diversity through interaction, cultural This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 44 chAPter 1 activities, and Indigenous management practices “that can still be seen today.”62 The Hupa, like many California Indians, practiced controlled burning, which contributed to habitat diversity, allowed certain plants to thrive, and helped support the continuation of ecosystems by creating an environment that encouraged the growth of trees and plant materials. They maintained what Kent Lightfoot and Otis Parrish call “a flexible relationship with local food sources. Plants and animals did not become dependent on human intervention for their reproductive success and survival. . . . Consequently, they did not need to tend to specific food crops throughout the growing season but could incorporate them into the management of the landscape on a multi-year rotational cycle.”63 This type of complex harvesting and horticulture is much different from the “hunter-gatherer” designation often used by Western scholars. Instead, Native peoples, the Hupa included, were hunters, gatherers, harvesters, ecologists, botanists, biologists, and much more in a fully realized agrarian society that could support “relatively dense populations, complex political organizations, craft specialization and sophisticated ceremonial systems.”64 Hupa horticulture and agriculture is intimately tied to gender equality as well. Hupa women became what Kat Anderson refers to as “superb natural historians,” with a knowledge of the natural world that was “grounded in ancient tradition and encompassed what today we call ornithology, entomology, botany, zoology, ichthyology, ecology, and geology.”65 Hupa interactions with the land were made intimate because the land was part of their everyday activities. Women were the primary caretakers of different land spaces, tasked with harvesting certain areas and managing other areas so that the resources would be replenished each year. Women were also the primary basket weavers of the Hupa, which meant that they had intimate and interrelated understandings of the natural materials required to make baskets. The tending of the land practiced by these women was also in respect for how best to care for the land while also promoting the healthiest basket-making materials. Villages were a central component in Hupa life and identity. People were often identified by their village. Their personal names reflected the village where they were from and tied them to a certain part of the valley. Village names reflect Hupa epistemological ideas about place and focus on descriptive terms. Names like Me’dil-ding (Canoe Place) or Xonsah-ding (where the water is deep) are just some examples. Villages were much more than communities or neighborhoods; they were political representative bodies, municipalities that participated in government, culture, spirituality, and law. Each village site This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 45 had its own headman who served as the political leader and in some cases the spiritual leader. This headman was blessed with wealth, but as Hupa scholar Jack Norton notes, “their positions of honor were not gained at the expense of others. Individual exploitation was not tolerated within the communal system of values. Honor, wealth and respect were not solely dependent upon social status. A prestigious person was also a responsible religious person.”66 Women could be the primary owners of homes, regalia, and goods. This meant that women sometimes held the largest amount of accumulated wealth, which afforded political autonomy. Women could be ceremonial regalia owners and dance leaders, though they would also hire men to help them work with the parts of ceremonies that primarily concerned men. In various villages doctors were primarily women. These doctors were spiritual guides as well as healing and curing doctors. Doctors were rigorously trained in the herbs, medicines, songs, and prayers required to treat their patients and also to guide the spiritual practice of ceremonies. These medicine women were central actors in each ceremony held by the village and were also invited to take part in important political and societal decisions as advisers and leaders. Villages have specific roles in the culture and society of Hupa people. Ta’k’imi?-ding, the heart of the valley, is particularly significant because it is the site of three Hupa ceremonies and the place from which the tribe’s main spiritual leader is chosen. It is also considered the spiritual center for the people of the valley. Famed photographer Edward S. Curtis, who visited Hupa in the 1920s, wrote that Ta’k’imi?-ding was “the principal settlement of the northern division” and “the scene of the annual ceremonial acorn feast,” which made it “the most important of all their villages.”67 Ta’k’imi?-ding is the site of the xontah-nikya:w or Big House, which is the most sacred house for people of the valley. Goddard wrote that the Big House was “said to have been built by the people of long ago and to have sheltered the first dwellers of the valley.”68 This is also the home of the tribe’s spiritual leader. The xontah-nikya:w represents this ceremonial way of life, and even as it was destroyed on occasion by flood or fire, it was always rebuilt as a testament to the Hupa’s strength and survival and stands to this day. Villages were at one time divided into two districts. The central village of the north was Ta’k’imi?-ding, and the central village of the south was Me’dilding. The Hupa people lived in peace with one another through this village system, and the people came together in ceremony, for celebrations, for feasts, and in matters relating to the governing of the valley. Hupa historian Byron Nelson explains, “The leaders of [Ta’k’imi?-ding] and Me’dil-ding had This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 46 chAPter 1 influence over the other villages because they had the greatest wealth, but warfare rarely involved more than one village. . . . A medicine woman often accompanied the soldiers, and other women could join the party if they chose to. . . . Warfare in the area did not involve large-scale fighting, pitched battles, many casualties, looting, or intentional attacks on women and children. The war party tried to inflict enough damage to bring about negotiations without incurring heavy settlements.”69 The Hupa people lived in relative peace and harmony with surrounding tribes as well. Their system of balance stretched to their interactions and exchanges with neighboring tribes. Political and social ties were solidified through participation in each other’s ceremonies. Tribes often intermarried, and this system of exchange was important to the maintenance of tribal relations throughout the region. Jack Forbes notes in Native Americans of California and Nevada that because of this intermarriage and intercultural exchange, “if one were able to construct a genealogical chart for the Hupa people it would be most probably that their ancestry shared with the Yurok, Wiyot and Karuk peoples would be very much greater than that shared with Navajos, Apaches, Sarsis and other Tinneh language groups.”70 The complex sociopolitical structure of Northwest California tribes like the Hupa is illustrated by the “well-developed inter-tribal system of commerce” that existed between neighboring tribes. Hupa scholar Jack Norton further illustrates this system, explaining that “the Yuroks, who were considered to be the principal boat-builders, often traded with the Karuk and Hupa for inland foods and materials such as bows, arrows, ceremonial feathers and obsidian. There was extensive trade with more distant peoples such as the Tolowas, Wiyots, Mattoles, Shastas and Wintus.”71 Karuk medicine woman Mavis McCovey explains that these extensive economic ties between tribes involved considerable traveling, and “it was not unusual for a messenger to travel forty miles in a day.” She contends, “I don’t care how isolated we look, the tribal people did move around and trade all the way out to the East Coast.”72 While the economy often focused on trade for food and goods, there also existed a complex monetary exchange that centered on dentalium shell money.73 Hupa houses were permanent plank house structures. There were three main living quarters. Men primarily resided in the sweat house. It was here that they prayed and learned from each other. Adolescent boys went into the sweat house “to be taught the manners, customs, songs, dances, prayers and stories that reaffirmed the people’s being.”74 Women primarily resided in the main family house. Male and female children stayed in this house with their This content downloaded from 130.166fff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 47 mothers. Men would join the house during certain times of the year. Young girls remained with their mother in this house until they were married. It was here that their mothers taught them to weave, cook, and sew “all with ‘proper respect.’ ” 75 The third main living dwelling of the Hupa was the m’inch, or women’s house, commonly referred to as the “menstrual hut.” The role of this housing structure in Hupa cultural practices is explored in depth in chapter 4. Women used this house while they were menstruating, after giving birth, and after a miscarriage. It functioned much like the sweat house, as a place to be in concentrated meditation and to “reaffirm the people’s being.”76 The staple foods for the Hupa were acorns, salmon, and deer. Acorns are a staple food of Indians throughout California; they were readily available because of the proliferation of oak trees throughout the state. This staple food was so central to Native cultures in California that the Hupa referred to Indian people as K’iwinya’n-ya:n, or “acorn eaters.”77 Basket weaving is “among the most ancient of all arts” that existed in California. There was no denying the craftsmanship that went into Northwest California basketry. This “art” was part of everyday Hupa society. There were baskets for a multitude of uses: storage, all phases of acorn preparation (gathering, drying, grinding, sifting, making, and eating), everyday use, and ceremonial use. Babies were carried in a xe:q’ay’, which was made of hazel and willow sticks and structurally engineered to keep the child safe.78 Baby baskets were also important to the development of children. The basket is designed with a tie to hold babies safely in the basket. It also mimics being held closely by someone and gives infants a sense of always being held.79 Women were the primary weavers of baskets, although some baskets were made by men (including eel trap baskets).80 Lila O’Neal, who worked in Northwest California with renowned basket weavers, commented that “a weaver’s ability to make a good one will give her a widespread reputation as an expert.”81 Baskets were part of everyday life, they were used in important ceremonies, and they were central to the cultural practices of Northwest California peoples. Basket weaving demonstrates how Native Northwest California women were integral to the culture and societal organization. The fact that many of these baskets are central to everyday life, cultural practices, and spirituality demonstrates how integral women are to the society. Native people grow up learning respect for baskets and basket materials, and by extension respect for the fact that women contribute immeasurably to the society. Spirituality and ceremony brought together multiple villages and also tribes and resulted in building not only spiritual relationships but also sociopolitical relationships that would determine the course of exchange, economy, This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 48 chAPter 1 and future partnerships of various villages and tribes. Jack Forbes refers to these as “ceremonial exchange systems,” and he believes that “such ceremonial exchange systems are particularly significant in California regions where distinguishable political units above the level of the village life are absent, because the people who shared a common ceremonial life doubtless also shared kinship . . . and more significantly, probably operated as an informal political group (exchanging information, settling disputes, planning mutual activities, etc.).”82 Hupa people guided their everyday lives, politics, medicine, science, and community by their spiritual understanding of the world. Prayer was essential to how the Hupa lived as part of their world. These prayers were spoken, formed part of songs, or could be passed on through formulaic stories told about the “before time,” or time of the K’ixinay people. Pliny Earle Goddard wrote, “It was not only on these dance occasions that the Hupa’s religion manifested itself. Every day and all through the day he maintained a pious frame of mind. When he awoke in the morning he greeted the dawn with a silent prayer that he might see many of them.”83 Hupa scholar Jack Norton echoes this writing: “The Hupa lived a life that would, more than likely, be conducive to the graceful K’ixinay world of song and dance. Those who were not so spiritually inclined were considered ‘poor’ in all connotations of the word, in this world and the next.”84 Hupa historian Byron Nelson has a lengthy account of many of the ceremonies that were and in many ways still are central to a Hupa life. He organizes these into a yearlong timetable to show the consistent ever-present performance of ceremonies that created the Hupa world. He begins with the First Eel Ceremony in the spring, the First Salmon Ceremony in the summer, and the building of the annual fish dam in the winter, which is also a religious activity. In the late fall was the First Acorn Ceremony, which “like all Hupa ceremonies” was “a celebration as well as a religious occasion.”85 Gambling games were often played at these ceremonies; women played a dice game and men a guessing game with a bundle of sticks. While these ceremonies were tied primarily to food harvest, there were other ceremonies as well. In late summer there was the Deerskin Dance and Jump Dance, known in contemporary contexts as the world renewal ceremonies.86 There were also ceremonial dances that could be performed upon request, like the Brush Dance (to heal or bless a child), the Flower Dance (women’s coming-of-age ceremony), or the Kick Dance (doctor-making dance). This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms o r A l n A r r At i v e s A n D n At i v e F e m i n i s m s 49 The Xonsi?-ch’idilye (White Deerskin Dance) and the Xay-ch’idilye (Jump Dance) are often referred to as the world renewal ceremonies of the Hupa people. The cornerstone of the dances is the renewal of the world, and each time the dances are performed, the Hupa people are helping to renew, rebalance, and recenter the earth so that it will be safe and free of disease, death, and destruction. Both the Deerskin Dance and the Jump Dance primarily feature men, although this interpretation is limited because of the perspective from outside looking in, primarily by white male anthropologists. There are only male dancers in the Deerskin Dance, although women play central roles in the medicine, feeding of the medicine people, and organization of the dance giving. Women are also a central part of the planning, cooking, and feeding of the dancers, something that is a key part of Hoopa epistemologies. In the Jump Dance there are two young women who participate as dancers, and again women play central roles in the medicine, feeding, and organization. Both dances are rigorous ten-day ceremonies that require dedication and a lot of time and energy on the part of dancers, dance givers, and community members. Alfred Kroeber and Edward Gifford identify the Jump Dance and the Deerskin Dance as being central to Hupa culture because “there is a single word which denotes the performing of either dance in distinction from all other kinds or ways of dancing-—a word, in short, meaning ‘world renewal dance’ or ‘major dance’ only.”87 The Hupa word Kroeber and Gifford are referring to is ch’idilye. This term also ties these dances to the K’ixinay afterworld, or the ch’idilye:-wint’e:-ding. The only other dance that is done in the ch’idilye:wint’e:-ding is the Ch’i?wa:l, or Flower Dance. The fact that the women’s coming-of-age ceremony is the third dance done by the K’ixinay in the ch’idilye:-wint’e:-ding is incredibly significant. Ch’idilye:wint’e:-ding translates to “religious dance—always—place” or “the place where they are always dancing the world renewal dances.” Since the term ch’idilye was used to establish the Jump Dance and Deerskin dance as “religious dances” tied to world renewal, it is particularly illuminating that the only other dance specifically tied to this K’ixinay dance place is the Ch’i?wa:l or women’s coming-of-age ceremony. This dance is focused on young women and their coming-of-age, menstruation, and the role of the community in supporting these young women; its inclusion in these world renewal ceremonies is a significant indicator as to how Hupa people valued the role of women in their culture and spirituality. This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 50 chAPter 1 c onc lusion I end this chapter with the women’s coming-of-age ceremony precisely because it has always been central to Hupa spirituality. By revitalizing their comingof-age ceremony, the Hupa people would once again prove that their First People’s history is a living history and that their ties to land, culture, spirituality, and the K’ixinay will continue to provide them with the guidance to heal and decolonize. The reclamation of this dance necessarily focused on a tangible recapitulation of Native feminisms. At the root of this revitalization is the engagement of a self-determination that embraces Native feminisms. The root of self-determination is a deep respect and connection to one’s own body and to the community that is created during this ceremony. Our revitalizations, when built with Native feminisms, disrupt settler colonial and heteropatriarchal intrusions in our contemporary cultures. As we look to women’s coming-of-age ceremonies as key to our continued movement toward decolonization, we must understand how our renewal is tied to the renewal of our Native feminisms and gender equality. This reclamation of Native feminisms is important to our futures because it helps to dismantle a heteropatriarchal and heteropaternal system of oppression that attempts to divest Native people of their rightful claims to culture, ceremony, and lands. Coming-of-age ceremonies help demonstrate how women are integral to culture and how our cultures embody feminism. Alanna Nulph (Hupa, Yurok) notes how her Flower Dance demonstrated for her that in Hupa culture and society women are very important and that Hupa culture depends on understanding this importance: “[In Hupa culture] women own a lot of property and regalia and did a lot of the work. [Hupa people] are acorn eaters, and who gathered all the acorns? Women! And who weaves all the baskets? The women, with exceptions sometimes, you know. Who cuts up the fish? Who dries the fish? The women. So women are important just the same as men are important in the bigger dances. You need something to celebrate women or else women will get mad at you and you don’t want angry women in your society.”88 This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:31:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Washington Press Chapter Title: Ninis’a:n-na:ng’a’ The World—Came to Be Lying There Again, the World Assumed Its Present Position CALIFORNIA INDIAN HISTORY, GENOCIDE, AND NATIVE WOMEN Book Title: We Are Dancing for You Book Subtitle: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies Book Author(s): CUTCHA RISLING BALDY Published by: University of Washington Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwn2cz.7 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Washington Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to We Are Dancing for You This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Ch a P t er 2 Ninis’a:n-na:ng’a’ The World—Came to Be Lying There Again, the World Assumed Its Present Position cAliFor niA inDiAn historY, genociDe, AnD nAtive Women When the militia and soldiers came to this area, and the miners came, they came without women and they started kidnapping Indian women and stealing them, raping them, taking them away from their families. When they would go and interview the miners or interview the militia that took them, one of the things that they said was “Well, they had a dance. The Indian people had a ceremony that said that the girls were ready to be with men.” And that’s how they interpreted it. . . . And then later, when the missionaries came and the matrons came for the boarding schools, all these issues were such that Indian people didn’t want to have Flower Dances anymore or they went underground. And people would have ways to recognize and to do things but they didn’t want to have public aspects of those dances. —Lois Risling (Hupa, Karuk, Yurok) i n 201 4, t h e W i Yo t t r i Be h e l D t h e i r F i r s t Wor l D r e n e WA l c e remony in over 150 years, at the site of one of the most brutal massacres in California history. In February 1860 Humboldt County citizens massacred over 150 Wiyot people in the early morning hours after the Wiyot had finished their 51 This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 52 chAPter 2 world renewal ceremony to pray for the health and balance of the earth. That had been the last time the Wiyot performed a world renewal ceremony on what became known as “Indian Island.” But in 2014 the Wiyot people were dancing again. And though Humboldt County had been one of the most violent places in California during the Gold Rush, the tribal peoples in Humboldt County— Wiyot, Hupa, Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa—were still dancing. All over California, recognized, unrecognized, even terminated Native people are dancing. Indian Island is not just a place where a bloody massacre occurred; it is once again a place of world renewal. Our landscapes once more feel the stomp of our feet and the warmth of our fires. I remind myself of this constantly as I begin this chapter on California Indian history. It is necessary to explore the brutal and unrelenting history of genocide in California to grasp the importance of cultural revitalization as decolonizing praxis. The narrative in this chapter focuses on the postinvasion history of California and critically analyzes how this invasion by settlers led to the suppression of women’s coming-of-age ceremonies. This historical analysis shifts the focus of California history to demonstrate the systematic attempts to denigrate Native feminisms. The targeting of women and women’s coming-of-age ceremonies would ultimately influence the continued practice of these ceremonies, and while many tribes would maintain the public practice of ceremonies that primarily featured men dancing and singing, women’s coming-of-age ceremonies would become more secretive and little practiced. Engaging California Indian history to understand how this change came about and the subsequent profound effects on Native people requires an analysis of gender violence and settler colonialism, which can then build a foundation for healing through methodologies that (re)write, (re)right, and (re)rite history to address the many lasting effects of this violence on Native communities. The brutality of California Indian history is palpable to contemporary California Indian peoples, and it is difficult to summarize the widespread violence and destruction that invaded the once peaceful and abundant territory of my own people. As my mother, Lois Risling, has said in many of her own public lectures, “My grandfather once told me, ‘Remember, Granddaughter, you are alive because some miner was a bad shot.’ ” Our histories as Indigenous peoples in California are real, lived, and continuing. Yet not enough people know about what happened in California. There are no public memorials to the hundreds of thousands of people killed in order to claim their land, their children, their homes, and their resources. History books erase the brutality of the missions, rancho system, and Gold Rush. In contemporary California politics and This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms c A l i F o r n i A i n Di A n h i s t orY A n D n At i v e Wom e n 53 academia, there is still pushback from scholars who refuse to acknowledge how genocide formed California. In 2015 a Navajo/Maidu student by the name of Chiitaanibah Johnson challenged a history professor at Sacramento State who had, according to Johnson, stated that the word genocide was “too strong” for what had happened to Native people in California. After trying to discuss this with the professor during the class and presenting research she had done to show that genocide was precisely what happened in California, she was told by the professor that she was “hijacking” his course and asked to leave. Johnson’s story set off a firestorm in the media, including several stories in Indian Country Today.1 In the end, the Sacramento State University president, Robert Nelson, concluded that the history professor had not violated any university policy, but suggested that “we as a university must learn from this incident and the discussions surrounding it.”2 Although there are numerous public records, oral histories, and firsthand accounts to support Hupa scholar Jack Norton’s assertion that genocide is how the state of California was founded, there is still not public awareness of or engagement with this history; instead children learn in schools about the founding of the state of California as an expansion of the west through a benign mission system and a prosperous Gold Rush led by the “forty-niners.”3 In this chapter I explore the postinvasion history of California to critically analyze how women experienced this genocidal landscape and how this invasion led to the suppression of women’s coming-of-age ceremonies. Preinvasion cultures of Native people and Native feminisms were systematically attacked by the settler colonial state precisely because Native feminisms challenged settler colonial claims to legitimacy. This chapter focuses on the genocide perpetrated in Northwest California as part of the Gold Rush, including legislative attempts by the State of California to legalize and justify genocide against the original inhabitants of the land, in order to show that this genocide, which extended not only to legislative but popular support for the murder of Native peoples, is why women’s ceremonies and practices around menstruation were nearly abandoned by Native people in California. I aim to establish the difficult negotiations by Native peoples throughout the history of settler colonial invasion, so that moments of ethnographic refusal, as articulated by Audra Simpson, are understood in their historical context. Simpson explains that her notion of refusal “articulates a mode of sovereign authority over the presentation of ethnographic data, and so does not present ‘everything.’ This is for the express purpose of protecting the concerns of the community.”4 While anthropologists and ethnographers would This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 54 chAPter 2 go on to write treatises about how women’s coming-of-age ceremonies and menstrual practices represented a more primitive time and Native people abandoned the ceremonies as they became more civilized (see chapter 3), with historical context, it is clear that these ceremonies and menstrual practices were targeted as part of continuing gender violence meant to subjugate, fracture, and oppress Native societies. Violence was clearly a central part of the settler colonial invasion of California, as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz notes that settler colonialism “requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals” because “people do not hand over their land, resources, children, and futures without a fight, and that fight is met with violence.”5 Women especially, once centrally important to many Native societies, were targeted for gender violence because of how important they were to culture and politics in their communities. Antonia Castaneda writes that “in California as elsewhere, sexual violence functioned as an institutionalized mechanism for ensuring subordination and compliance. It was one instrument of sociopolitical terrorism and control—first of women and then of the group under conquest.”6 Attempts to subvert the roles and place of Native women were built into settler colonial policies because Native women, who at one time exercised autonomy in Native societies, represented a threat to the settler colonial state and settler colonial societal organization. Scott Morgensen calls this a “terrorizing sexual colonization” of Native peoples.7 He writes, “Colonists interpreted diverse practices of gender and sexuality as signs of a general primitivity among Native peoples. Over time, they produced a colonial necropolitics that framed Native peoples as queer populations marked for death. Colonization produced the biopolitics of modern sexuality that I call “settler sexuality”: a white national heteronormativity that regulates Indigenous sexuality and gender by supplanting them with the sexual modernity of settler subjects.”8 Indigenous women’s ceremonies are a necessary disruption of “settler sexuality” and not, as has been claimed by primarily white male anthropologists and ethnographers, about a focus on fertility. Instead these ceremonies are demonstrations of reproductive justice and self-determination. This chapter demonstrates that while colonial biopolitics of settler sexuality, as articulated by Morgensen, ultimately attempted to annihilate women’s coming-of-age ceremonies, it was Native survivance that disrupted the settler colonial narrative of “extinction” and instead demonstrated a refusal and resistance through every historical period aimed at the dissolution of Native feminisms. This shows how decolonization relies on the (re)writing, the (re)righting, and This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms c A l i F o r n i A i n Di A n h i s t orY A n D n At i v e Wom e n 55 ultimately the (re)riteing of Native feminisms through ceremonial praxis like women’s coming-of-age ceremonies. I grew up in Humboldt County, the site of a number of egregious acts of genocide perpetrated against my own peoples. Fifty-six massacres of Native people took place in the Humboldt region from 1850 to 1864.9 Stories of miners and settlers (or, as Jack Norton calls them, “invaders”) in Humboldt County included many atrocities: taking infant Native children, swinging them around, and smashing their heads against trees or rocks; raping Native women and taking them as sex slaves; shooting Native peoples just to test out guns; killing Native parents and kidnapping the children; burning villages and food supplies; and sliding whole villages off the sides of mountains into the canyons. My own great-grandfather David Risling Sr. wrote in 1972: “The Karoks [sic] received the most cruel treatment by the miners killing males, taking their wives and daughters, setting fires to their homes destroying their villages taking their land for mining claims, and leaving no records or history to tell the story (but the scars are still there).”10 California’s postinvasion history is framed by genocide with the aim of total annihilation of California Indian peoples. The population of California Indians was reduced by 90 percent during this period. California Indian peoples contended with continuous disruptive and destructive structures, including the Spanish missions, the Mexican-American War and rancho system, and the Gold Rush.11 For Southern and Central California, the mission system was designed to seize lands in the name of the church and convert Indians to Catholicism, while also enslaving Native peoples and enforcing farming and manual labor that primarily benefited the missions. Jack Forbes writes that the missions of California were “not solely religious institutions. They were, on the contrary, instruments designed to bring about total change in culture in a brief period of time.”12 Missionaries “exercised complete control over the ‘neophytes’ . . . this control even extended to regulation of sexual behavior, splitting off children from parents (e.g. locking up all unmarried girls above the age of seven in a ‘nunnery’ each night and the males in another building), forbidding native marriage and divorce practices, and, of course, attempting to suppress all aspects of Indian religion and curing practices (Indian doctors or curers were flogged whenever apprehended).”13 Violence was rampant in the mission system. Women were targeted by Spanish soldiers, and one of the first acts recorded by Father Junipero Serra in his account of the missions in California was the rape of Native women by Spanish soldiers.14 Father Luis Jayme also reported the continuous rape of women by Spanish soldiers at Mission San Diego.15 A This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 56 chAPter 2 proliferation of Spanish-Indian marriages was intended to tame Indian women. According to Virginia M. Beauvoir, Franciscans argued that “women were better off at the mission than they had been in indigenous society.”16 She writes, “The depiction of Indians as heathens who are sexually loose, unfaithful spouses, and polygamists made the California conquest a moral crusade.”17 Because the missionaries focused so intently on Indigenous sexuality, it stands to reason that they would view women’s coming-of-age ceremonies in this context, believing that these ceremonies were about “fertility” or “reproduction” and that Natives should be forced to end these ceremonies along with their ceremonies and teachings about pregnancy and childbirth. During the mission period, Native people actively resisted the mission system and led revolts against the violence and abuse perpetrated against them by Spanish missionaries.18 In October 1785, a group of Natives led by a woman religious leader, Toypurina, attempted to destroy San Gabriel Mission. Toypurina, a medicine woman from the Japchavit Rancheria, along with a group of men, led eight villages in an attack on the priests and soldiers of the mission in 1785. Following the attack the men were punished, not only for their attack against the missionaries but “as much for following the leadership of a woman.”19 Toypurina was exiled to Alta California (specifically to Carmel, and later San Juan Bautista). Though missions were only established as far north as San Francisco and San Rafael (just north of San Francisco), Spanish exploration and missionization would likely have been discussed or reported among the Native people of Northwest California. The struggles of the Native peoples in Southern California very likely reached the people of Northwest California, as they continued to trade with explorers well into the mid-1800s. By the end of the mission period, many California Indian peoples had died of disease, moved inland, or south to Mexico, or were living in the missions without claim to or ownership of any land. In addition, they experienced rapid and often destructive changes as a result of the Mexican government’s laws, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Gold Rush, and finally the continuing attempts of the federal government to assimilate what became the “mission Indians” through relocation and termination. Scholars note that contact invasion and settlement in Northern California happened “relatively late” in the 1800s and were tied mostly to the influx of people during the Gold Rush. The history of the California Gold Rush contains brutal, disquieting truths about the settlement of the West, where violence was integral to the success of colonization, it was the policy of the government This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms c A l i F o r n i A i n Di A n h i s t orY A n D n At i v e Wom e n 57 to “blink at genocide,” and extermination was considered the most “practical” approach.20 These stories of depraved violence are thought of as the isolated experiences of a few and not endemic to a settler colonialism intent on eradicating Indigenous peoples. The history of settler colonial invasion was in part a project set on taming—taming the land and the “wilderness,” taming the “wild Indian,” and taming the “Native woman.” This taming involved the most intimate aspects of Native peoples’ lives, including their relationships and their bodies, and resulted not only in settler colonial policies of genocide and removal but also in policies of assimilation like allotment and boarding schools. Native peoples did not just have to conform; they needed to do it in a way that supported capitalism and heteropatriarchy, completely divorced from Native epistemologies, not the least of which were the Native feminisms that were foundational to their cultures and societies. During the assimilation era, in programs like the boarding schools—which forcibly took young children and placed them in schools with the hope of “killing the Indian to save the man”—young Native girls were reimagined as uncivilized, undomesticated women who could be taught the proper way to dress, eat, do their hair, and perform domestic servitude. The assimilation process was meant to erase Native culture from existence, and part of accomplishing this was to erase from the cultural imagination Native feminisms. This reeducation tried to make Native people understand their past, where women were equal partners and could hold important positions of power, as “primitive” and “unnatural.” These notions of primitivity became part of a much larger structure of assimilative policies that continuously attempted to reconfigure Native societies as heteronormative and heteropatriarchal. It is precisely for this reason that a historical analysis focusing on gender, women, and coming-of-age ceremonies in California can demonstrate how the continuation of Native cultural ceremonies and practices sustained Native peoples as they confronted and enacted survivance during the historical invasion by Western civilization and why these cultural revitalizations are part of a decolonizing praxis. ge no c i De , t h e g ol D rush, A n D c om i ng - oF-Age The California Gold Rush weighs heavily on California Indian history and deserves much more than the pages I offer here, because of the extent to which this history is silenced in our modern education system. I cannot, in this case, This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 58 chAPter 2 write my own detailed history of the Gold Rush, but instead offer my engagement with foundational texts that establish a history of genocide in the state of California. I have decided to approach my historical (re)writing and (re) righting in this way because (1) the foundational texts and scholars of genocide in California deserve to be heard and utilized, and (2) I provide this historical background not as a treatise on how or why genocide happened, but instead as a discussion of how and why Native women’s ceremonies are such important sites of (re)writing, (re)righting, and (re)riteing the historical record. I utilize two foundational texts concerning California Indians and genocide—Jack Norton’s Genocide in Northwestern California and Brendan Lindsay’s Murder State—to demonstrate that long, detailed, and fully researched materials exist to establish that California was built through the attempted genocide of Native peoples, and that this genocide was documented and legalized by the state as well as the federal government. In California genocide is written on the landscape. It shaped not only the way the state and federal government continued to approach Native people as a “problem” but also how generations of people would come to understand Native cultures, histories, and futures. I am reminded of historians, ethnographers, and anthropologists who have previously written about Native peoples as having “given up” or “lost” certain ceremonies or cultural practices. The disengagement with genocide in these studies not only makes them problematic but also demonstrates how little new generations of scholars are taught about critical engagement with historical records that erased genocide. The language of “giving up” or “losing” that is perpetuated in the rhetoric of history and ethnography completely ignores the lengths to which Native people went to survive and resist the continuing attacks on their cultures and peoples. It also denies any sort of culpability or responsibility; it makes the founding of the state of California benign, removes any lasting or residual trauma, and pretends that ownership or rights to land and resources in this state are settled and beyond reproach. What I offer here is only an introduction to the many well-established scholarly studies and papers that challenge the benign language of “settlement.” And from here I build a much clearer understanding of why Native women, women’s coming-of-age ceremonies, and women’s cultural practices are so central to decolonization and the building of Indigenous futures. Jack Norton, a fellow Hupa tribal member and noted historian, provided one of the first and most thorough accounts of what he called “the plundering horde” of the 1850s in his book Genocide in Northwestern California: When Our This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms c A l i F o r n i A i n Di A n h i s t orY A n D n At i v e Wom e n 59 Worlds Cried, first published in 1979. Norton’s seminal work was meant to demonstrate, through documented historical evidence, a record of genocide that was “so blatant, so hideous, that the world as a whole must weep for the inhumanities inflicted upon a people who inhabited their lands since time immemorial.”21 Norton took up the task of proving that the actions of the settlers during the Gold Rush amounted to genocide, meeting all of the criteria from the United Nation’s Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. He writes, “When I used the term genocide to identify and to document the brutal acts of American citizens against the original peoples of northwestern California I was met with derision.”22 But he is clear in his findings that particularly in California, policies were officially effectuated leading to public incitement to murder and terror. The massacres, the enslavement and the forced removals were overtly sanctioned from the highest officials to the general citizenry. These crimes were often directly incited by people who held political as well as economic power within the community. . . . In addition the public was continually urged to commit genocide by the local newspaper. . . . Indian rights were openly denied as California courts, statues, and the legislature disallowed guarantees under the Constitution. Its goal was to appropriate the lands and resources of the original owners. It was assumed that if the native had no legal rights, and no guarantees of human dignity, then clearly he had no claim to hold the land.23 Thirty-three years later, scholar Brendan Lindsay continued Norton’s work in Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, where he argues that “most property-holding, adult white male U.S. citizens in California—in other words, the electorate—at the very least tacitly supported the system of atrocities attempting to circumscribe or eliminate Native Americans in the state.”24 It was not just “thousands of white citizens” who actively participated in murdering hundreds of thousands of Native men, women, and children but also the “hundreds of thousands of white citizens who, through apathy, inaction, or tacit support, allowed the extermination to proceed directly by violence or indirectly through genocidal policies of cultural extermination and planned neglect.”25 Brendan Lindsay provides many recorded incidents of deplorable violence against Native people during the California Gold Rush. In one incident he writes that “a Native man and woman caught gathering clover on a white man’s This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 60 chAPter 2 property near Clear Lake were punished by having three ferocious dogs set upon them. The man survived the mauling, but the woman died from her wounds, which included having her breasts torn off by the dogs.”26 Sally Bell, a Sinkyone woman from Northern California, offered her own recollection of this violence in Malcolm Margolin’s collected work The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs and Reminiscences: My grandfather and all of my family—my mother, my father, and me—were around the house and not hurting anyone. Soon, about ten o’clock in the morning, some white men came. They killed my grandfather and my mother and my father. I saw them do it. I was a big girl at the time. Then they killed my baby sister and cut her heart out and threw it in the brush where I ran and hid. My little sister was a baby just crawling around. I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared that I guess I just hid there a long time with my little sister’s heart in my hands.27 While numerous incidents of violence run rampant through the historical record, there are clear gendered implications to the many ways that Native people were treated and targeted during this period of time. Newspaper articles and reports by California settlers tended to refer to Native men as bucks, Native women as squaws, and California Indians in general as “diggers.” The terminology speaks to a much larger trend of treating the murder of Native people as a sport. A newspaper article from the San Francisco Bulletin of August 1859 reported on activities in the Red Bluff region, including an attack on a large rancheria of Native peoples where settlers had succeeded in “killing ten Indians, including one squaw, who threw herself between a white man and one of the bucks just at the moment of firing off the rifle of the former.” The story refers to the white men as a “gallant little army” who then went on to attack a much larger group of Native people.28 An article from the San Francisco Bulletin in July 1864 includes references to “the most exciting Indian hunt that has yet been made by any scouting party” and describes some settlers who followed a group of Indians including “about 9 bucks, 6 squaws, and 2 children, for forty-two days and nights.”29 The article details this stalking as a harrowing feat of tracking where they finally met up with another group of soldiers, found the Indians, and “killed 9, and took 2 squaws and 2 children prisoners.” Native men were hunted like animals, and killing them was considered an accomplishment, while Native women were “taken”—something This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms c A l i F o r n i A i n Di A n h i s t orY A n D n At i v e Wom e n 61 that is not often elaborated in the historical record but usually resulted in forced marriage, concubinage, enslavement, or sex slavery.30. Native women were often targeted through rape and physical violence. Albert Hurtado notes in Indian Survival on the California Frontier that violence against women in California was rampant and built into settler society. Hurtado argues that the popular derogatory slang term diggers was “derived from women’s work—getting roots and tubers with a sharpened digging stick.”31 California Indian women were also objectified and degraded because of the seminudity of traditional clothing which, according to Hurtado, was one reason miners disparaged Native women—“because they did not measure up to Victorian ideals.”32 In addition, the violence of this period led to increased rates of prostitution among California Indian women as well as increased rates of forced concubinage and “frequent” sexual assaults.33 This in turn led to increased violence against white settlers, as Hurtado notes: “Retaliation for assaults on Indian women was a common cause of violence in Gold Rush California.”34 The first expedition by Spanish explorers in Northwest California was in June 1775, when they landed at the village of Tsurai.35 Fur traders arrived in the Northwest California area in the 1820s and 1830s.36 In 1828, “Jedediah Smith and a company of Hudson Bay troopers crossed from the Sacramento valley and descended the Trinity to the Klamath and the Klamath to the Pacific.”37 Excitement about the possibility of striking it rich during the Gold Rush would lead to the massive influx of white miners to Northwest California. This “marauding horde” had no interest in continuing exchanges with the Native people of the area; instead they attempted to annihilate the Native people in the hopes of claiming ownership of gold, resources, and land. The massacre on Indian Island became a heinous illustration of the depravity of white settlers, who killed over 150 Wiyot people during their world renewal ceremony in 1860. Those murdered were mostly women, children, and elderly, who were killed with hatchets, axes, and knives.38 Estimates of the deaths of Wiyot people range from 150 to 250.39 This incident demonstrated that settlers had no qualms about targeting Native people who were gathered for ceremonial purposes. It became well known among Native peoples that ceremonies had become targets, and as demonstrated by the Indian Island massacre, women and children would not be spared. Miners had not come with families or brought women with them while they traveled. They often took Native women as concubines or sex slaves or forced them into prostitution. Many times these “women” were in fact still This content downloaded from 130.166.3.5 on Sat, 08 May 2021 19:32:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 62 chAPter 2 children.40 Reports of the kidnapping and rape of young Native women describe this as happening “daily...