By Pat Murkland
The morning rain still was drizzling when we headed east from San Gorgonio Pass into Cahuilla desert homelands. We were headed to one of the world’s ancient places.
We were off to explore Palm Canyon, home of the Achachem lineage, and the Palms that live there, a place of wonder and mystery.
In the desert, the rain had cleared up and the sun was shining as Agua Caliente tribal member and Culture Bearer Sean Milanovich generously shared a few of his favorite places in Palm Canyon, where he grew up hiking and experiencing adventures with his family. He and his wife, Maria, now share the canyon with the next generations, their daughters and grandchildren.
The overlook view was dramatic — palms stretching into the distance, their canopies still shining with drops of the morning rain — and the view didn’t cease to disappoint as the foot path took us down into the canyon. Hundreds of barrel cacti thrived on the sides of steep rock walls. Canyon visitors had spotted bighorn sheep and their babies earlier in the week, and although we didn’t see the bighorns, we could feel that they were there. Soon, Palms towered overhead.
Palm Canyon (Pat Murkland Photo)
Palm in Cahuilla is Maul (sometimes also spelled Moul). Palm Canyon has the largest stand of native California Fan Palms (Washingtonia filfera), and in older times was a major, permanent village for Cahuilla ancestors, Sean Milanovich said.
Palm Canyon, along with Murray, Andreas, and Tahquitz canyons, today are in preserves owned and managed by Agua Caliente Band. As News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center shared recently, nearby Andreas and Tahquitz canyons are among only a handful of Indigenous desert sites that are listed in the National Register of Historic Places,
Since Creation
Dinosaurs walked among the Palms.
Maul has given food, fibers, materials, and even music to Cahuilla people since the time of the Creation, when a head man of Sungrey gave himself up and transformed into a palm to serve the people.
“So he stood up very straight and very powerful,” Francisco Patencio told in his 1943 book, Legends and Stories of the Palm Springs Indians, “and soon the bark of the tree began to grow around him, and the green leaves grew from the top of his head. And so he passed from the sight of his people.” The seeds from that first tree were carried from Indian Wells to other desert homelands.1 And that’s how the vast groves began to grow, Patencio said.
“This is how he wanted to be remembered,” Sean said, “By becoming Palm he was able to feed the people with the fruit.”
Maul serves the people in many ways. You also can make bows from Palm. The fibrous leaves served as construction materials for homes, basket materials, and much more, he said.
Clusters of fruit (left) hang down. (Pat Murkland Photo)
Maul also gave the people fire. A beautiful woman named Min my wit lay on her back, and as a palm, she was drilled for the first fire, which lighted the Creator’s funeral pyre, Francisco Patencio told. 2 The drill used friction to start fire in palm stems.
This sacrifice helped the people gain fire to cook, to stay warm, to live well, Sean said.
Fire and Water
Maul also tells the people where to find water in the desert, Sean said as we walked amid palms that stretched to 60 feet, or higher, above us. Wherever Palm grows, water flows under and above the ground surface. Water is life, water is medicine; in the desert, people and the larger animals need to live close to water to thrive.
Sean stopped to dip his hand in water seeping along the trail. Sometimes the water is hot.
Agua Caliente = Hot Water in Spanish. Hot water (pal tingish in Cahuilla) with growing young Palm. (Pat Murkland Photo)
Palm Canyon sits along a collection of earthquake fault systems in the Coachella Valley, a network of big and little fault lines. The most infamous fault system in Coachella Valley is the San Andreas, where, as geologists theorize, giant tectonic rock plates float underground and periodically crash together to create earthquakes, and warnings of the Big One to come. Throughout the canyon are giant boulders slanting sideways from the ground, testifying to the massive forces under our feet that were creating the hot water.
Water, rocks, and Palms (Pat Murkland Photo)
Not a Tree
Palms aren’t trees, botanists say. What people see as a trunk is actually a long stem, and what poses as bark is really the hardened cells left over from the bases of fronds that were shed previously.
Not bark (Pat Murkland Photo).
Palm grows by shedding fronds and keeping its canopy green with new fronds. Contained inside the big stem is a pithy, spongy mass. Roots are famously shallow; no tap root is found here.
Each Palm offers several fruit clusters ranging from five to twenty pounds each, Lowell Bean and Katherine Saubel said in their 1972 landmark book, Temalpakh: Cahuilla Indian knowledge and usage of plants.3 At harvest time hundreds of people once came to collect this important food, Sean Milanovich said. A fruit that tastes much like dates from the imported date palm is about the size of a pea.
Making Music
Sean showed a seed alongside the fruit.
Maul fruit and seed (Pat Murkland Photo).
About 30 of these give the rattle to gourd rattles, the musical instrument used to accompany Cahuilla bird songs and other traditional music. Each seed needs to be round to give good sound, he said.
Bird Singers Kim Marcus (left) and Ernest Siva, president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, sing a favorite song accompanied by gourd rattles at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center's annual Native Voices Poetry Festival at the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center Gathering Hall in January 2017. Seeds from Maul help make the distinctive music.
Another Gift
Standing or sitting among the majestic Palms also offers opportunities for meditation and reflection, the tribal canyon guide says. (To visit: https://www.indian-canyons.com/hours.)
So true. As I looked over photos from our excursion, I saw something I hadn’t noticed earlier: After the early morning rain, a rainbow had guided our way.
A rainbow over Palm Canyon (Pat Murkland Photo).
Thank you!
Thank you, Sean! (Pat Murkland Photo)
Thanks to Sean Milanovich for taking us all to Palm Canyon! Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, led by Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that saves and shares Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. We welcome your donations. (MORE INFO.)
We welcome your EMAIL. Thank you from Editor Pat Murkland, March 30, 2022.
Francisco Patencio and Margaret Boynton. Stories And Legends of the Palm Springs Indians, 1943, Palm Springs Desert Museum, p. 101
Ibid, pp. 19-20
Lowell John Bean and Katherine Siva Saubel, 1972, Temalpakh: Cahuilla Indian knowledge and usage of plants, Malki-Ballena Press, pp 145-149.