Many commemorated Monday, Oct. 9, 2023, as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center shares today how this entire week in mid-October traditionally was a sacred and mindful time for Serrano people, when the mourning ceremony was held on Morongo Reservation.
As the Serrano Bighorn Sheep Constellation, which many know as Orion’s Belt, moves above us in the night sky, showering us with beautiful falling stars this week and next, we reflect on the older times when the Serrano mourning ceremony traditionally was held for those who had died.
We’ve previously shared how ceremonial bighorn hunting (“Sharing the Bighorn Creation Story”) and plant gathering such as pinyon pine nut harvests (“Harvest and Tradition”), preceded this important sacred mourning ceremony, and today we’re again sharing details of the ceremony, which is no longer held.
The Serrano Big House
“New council house,” circa late 1800s, photograph by Sarah Morris Gilman, a day-school teacher living and working on the reservation for 17 years starting in 1888, and a friend of Serrano leader John Morongo and family. photCL 39, vol. 3, William H. Weinland Collection, courtesy of The Huntington Library.
“The [ceremonial or Big] House was treated as a living entity,” Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, remembered in 2003 in comments he prepared for the first annual Morongo Cultural Heritage Days.
“It was holy and the people had great reverence for it and the activities that were taking place,” he said. “It was burned down (“cremated”) when the people couldn’t carry on in the proper way.”
A Time of Wonder and Ceremony
“The first part of the week,” Ernest Siva remembered, “dealt with preparation (food gathering, rabbit hunting, etc.) and feeding the House.”
Another important part of the week was hearing the songs and stories telling the history of the people. Storyteller and licensed psychologist Renda Madrigal (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) reminded us the other day of this reflection from Pueblo Native Storyteller Leslie Marmon Silko: “I will tell you something about stories … They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.”
During the week the shamans also danced and sang and displayed their power, their connection with the Creation, such as fire eating, Ernest Siva said. Boys who received the call to become a shaman also danced at this time.
The Memorial lasted a week, beginning on Monday, and ending Sunday morning, the late Morongo tribal leader and kiika' or religious leader Sarah Morongo Martin told anthropologist Guy Mount in 1968.1
Sarah Martin was the daughter of Captain John Morongo, the political leader in the late 1800s of the main Serrano clan at Maarrkinga' (Serrano), or Malkinga' (Cahuilla), as the Morongo Reservation was previously known, Ernest Siva says. John Morongo’s older brother, Francisco, was the traditional leader, or kiika', of the main clan, called Maarrenga'yam Hithiith.
The Serrano Maarrenga'yam and the Cahuilla Kauwisiktum clan of Palm Springs reciprocated ceremonially, according to Ernest Siva. The Serrano from Big Bear, now San Manuel, alternated yearly with the Maarrenga'yam in this arrangement with Palm Springs.
Francisco Morongo, who was Ernest Siva’s great-grandfather, died in 1906. After his death and the deaths of all male Serrano traditional leaders at Morongo Reservation, John Morongo’s youngest daughter, Sarah (who was named after the schoolteacher Sarah Morris Gilman who photographed the Serrano Big House shown above), together with Magdalina Nombre and Merinciana Lyons, kept together some parts of the ceremony in the final years before Sarah Martin died in 1976. The ceremonial House was then “cremated.”
Tribal and ceremonial leader Sarah Martin in her later years (Courtesy of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center)
We’re resharing Sarah Martin’s description of the ceremony as told to Guy Mount in 1968, to give greater access to the cultural knowledge she shared in his 1993 book, Serrano Songs and Stories, a publication that has become extremely scarce:
“Our House always held it the week of the 15th of October,” Sarah Martin told Guy Mount. “We invited people from different tribes here on Morongo Reservation and from down at Palm Springs. The people from Palm Springs held their Memorial Fiesta in March. The Wana-kick, Cahuilla people from Morongo, held their Memorial Fiesta about two weeks after ours. Of course the Memorial Fiesta was not for having fun. We were mourning for the dead. We made images of all the people who died that year. We sang sacred songs all night long Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, resting on Thursday, and singing again all night Friday and Saturday.
“On the first day, members of the House would bring in food that was to be cooked. Long ago, it was acorns and all that stuff they made from grass seed flour. That's all they had.
“But here, when I was a young girl, they took us in the Big House — a brush house bigger than this one, and we sat on the ground. Now we have chairs and benches for people to sit on. But then, we sat on the ground. Even the adult men sat on the ground, even the singers. We all sat on the ground.
“Then they'd bring in our food. There would be a big pan of beans, a big pan of stew and tortillas. Then there was a big pan of acorn, a very big pan. We didn't eat it. It's funny, we didn't eat it. Instead the food was divided among the people who were there and they took it home and ate it the next day — the beans, and the meat and potatoes.” …
Second Day
“On the second day we sang for our feathers. We had songs for our feathers and beads [the sacred bundle]. There were eleven or twelve songs just for that. We call our eagle feathers mirtch and we used to have an eagle dancer, but not in recent years. Nobody knows the songs for the feathers anymore.
“Nobody sings those songs now.” [1968]
Third Night
“On the third night we brought the feathers out and displayed them. They were very old. We kept them in a hand dug cave way back in the mountains.”
Images of the Dead
“On Thursday, the fourth day and night, everybody rested,” Sarah Martin said.
“The images of the dead were made on Friday morning. Men gathered Spanish Dagger … [yucca], a dry plant that grows tall and has a flower. They'd make it just like a cross.
“They'd put the head on top. The leaves are arms. Then women made clothes for the images. We always burned clothing belonging to the dead and made new clothes for the images. The people had to rest on Thursday because they were up again all Friday night. That's when they danced with the images: Friday night about midnight. People who belonged to the family of the dead person held the images in their arms and danced. They cried in sorrow.
“On Saturday morning they’d take the images of the dead outside. They would sit and sing. Sometimes people would come from all over on Saturday. The men played peon and sang gambling songs.
“At dawn on Sunday the paha [ceremonial assistant] burned the images. People sang sacred songs while the images were burning. After that, the paha measured shell-bead money with his arm and passed it out to the families who came. The paha would measure out the beads and say, "This goes to that House." He'd mention the clan name and one of their men would come and get it. About three measures of beads went to each House. The shell- bead money was measured by going once around the wrist then up over the fingers and down to the elbow. It was worth about seventy-five cents. Nobody knows where the strings of shell-beads came from. We brought them with us and kept them. The people from our House also gave each family who came a pan of acorn flour. When we went to their Memorial Fiesta they gave each of our families a pan of flour and returned the beads.
“However, we don't have those ceremonies anymore in our House. The Palm Springs people ended theirs and we ended ours. They ended it because the last of their old people died and nobody else wanted it. They buried the sacred beads.
“And you know, back in 1945 we went to get our sacred feathers. They were kept in a cave we built just for that purpose. Well we found some of the feathers lying along the trail. Those feathers had been fixed in special ways. Some were fashioned into little feathered skirts. And I said to this woman who was walking with me, I said, "You know, it's funny. I found one of these feathers on the trail." She said, "I found one too."
When we got to the cave there was nothing there. Somebody had stolen them. We didn't know what to do. We just returned and sat there in the house. We didn't know what to do. My brother felt so bad.”
Ernest Siva Remembers
Resharing Elder Ernest Siva’s memories of that special time, of attending the last Serrano mourning ceremony as a child in the 1940s, his memories of the end to the ceremonies with Sarah Martin’s death in 1976, and of his mother singing a song for the sacred beads … [originally recorded in 2021]
As you see the meteor showers this week and next with the Bighorn Sheep running in the nighttime sky, think of the stories that have been told and the songs that have been sung under those stars for centuries, across Native American homelands.
Thank you
And thanks for supporting the 501c3 nonprofit Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, led by Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), as we continue our 20th year of saving and sharing Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. And as always, thanks from Center leaders Ernest and June Siva and Editor Pat Murkland for reading, liking, subscribing, and sharing News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, your FREE online weekly newsletter. We love to hear from you. PLEASE EMAIL. October 10, 2023.
Story excerpt from Serrano Songs and Stories, 1993, compiled and edited by Guy Mount, self-published, Sweetlight Books, Cottonwood, CA, pp 18-19, pp 27-30. Author note: “The following narration was transcribed from tape recordings during the spring and fall of 1968 at Morongo Indian Reservation in southern California. I have omitted all of my questions and rearranged the dialog to present the material as a continuous story.”