Merry Christmas!
Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, shares Christmas carols with us:
A Time to Look Forward!
A December sunset view of San Jacinto Peak from Banning, CA.
The Chumash people named December the “Month when the Sun’s Brilliance Begins,” (1) and throughout time, people have welcomed Winter Solstice and the promises of the sun. Winter across Southern California’s Native American homelands is also a traditional time to gather around and tell stories, and for “teaching the young.” (2)
In this traditional time for sharing, several Culture Bearers have been reflecting together, to develop and offer to our community a resiliency workshop, “Story Medicine in the Time of the Pandemic.” Dorothy Ramon Learning Center will offer this workshop, focusing on traditional storytelling for resiliency and healing, via Zoom on January 5, 2021. Please watch for more details.
The conjunction (bright star in center) from near Banning Water Canyon (Pat Murkland photo).
This year’s Winter Solstice was especially beautiful as we also saw the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. The last time these two planets “met” in our skies was 400 years ago, and the last time it happened at night was nearly 800 years ago, according to NASA.
Close by our observation point is Banning Water Canyon, once the site of a huge, thriving Native American village in San Gorgonio Pass. (3) We began thinking of the people many years ago who were looking up to the stars nearby on the night of the Solstice, the same way we were, many, many years later.
A Scene From Nearly 200 Years Ago
Historic photo of San Jacinto Peak from Banning Water Canyon, circa 1920 (Courtesy of Banning, CA, Public Library District).
We do have a description of Banning Water Canyon from Christmas, 1823, when Captain José María Romero and his party, exploring a possible route from San Gabriel Mission near present-day Los Angeles to Tucson, rode from San Bernardino starting at 9:15 on Christmas morning. They arrived at what they described as the rancho Yucaipa at 1 p.m., and continued to the rancho San Gorgonio, “in the vernacular, Piatopa.” (4) They arrived at 5 pm, which would have been around sunset, in time to see the night stars over Banning Water Canyon. They had traveled about 25 miles on Christmas Day, across the typical terrain of San Gorgonio Pass.
“The terrain covered today is full of obstructions, and rocky. The mountains are bare of large trees, and all is without pasture. At the entrance to the canyon of the northern Mountains where the corrals for the cattle are, and where there is a small Indian house, there is a dry arroyo. It has a little water in small pools, but such a small amount that the horses didn’t drink. Twenty-eight horses that couldn’t continue were left at this rancho.” (5) They continued struggling the next day and arrived near what is now Palm Springs on December 28. They eventually got lost in the desert and headed back to the mission, until their next try in 1824.
1940s view of Banning, looking toward Banning Water Canyon (courtesy of Banning Public Library District).
Notes
1. Blackburn, Thomas C., 1975, December’s Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives. University of California, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London.
2. Bean, Lowell John, 1972, Mukat's People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London (1975 paperback, p. 157)
3. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s informants from Morongo Reservation told her in 1922 that this was Pihatüpiat, a Serrano village.
See: Benedict, Ruth F., 1924, “A Brief Sketch of the Serrano Culture," American Anthropologist, Vol. 26, p. 368.
But according to those Native people who shared traditional knowledge with William Duncan Strong (1929), Lowell Bean (1960), and other ethnologists, Banning Water Canyon was home to the Wanikik Cahuilla Pisatanavitcem lineage.
See: Bean, Lowell John, and Sylvia Brakke Vane and Jackson Young, 1991, The Cahuilla Landscape: The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains, © 1991 Ballena Press, p. 76.
Researcher Francis J. Johnston jumped into the discussion in 1969: “Isaac Morongo, a Maringa of the Tamukwvayam lineage, confirmed all Maringa data and also the fact that Waankik and Maringa lived side by side at this site — to author, December 1, 1964.” See: Johnston, Francis J., 1969, “San Gorgonio Pass: A Forgotten Route of the Californios?” Journal of the West, Vol. 8 (1), p. 136.
4. and 5. Bean, Lowell John, and William Mason, 1962, Diaries and Accounts of the Romero Expedition in Arizona and California, 1823-1826, Ward Ritchie Press, Los Angeles, p. 35, note 20: “This site would appear to be the aboriginal village location of Pisata, or what is now known as Banning Water Canyon. It was one of the village-lineage locations of the Wanikik Cahuilla (Bean 1960).”
Here’s to You!
Thank you to all for your support! We welcome your ideas and contributions to News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center: EMAIL. Pat Murkland, Editor. Dec. 23, 2020.
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that saves and shares Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. Join us at dorothyramon.org and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center on Facebook.