In our Inland Southern California canyon, we talk about where Qwa'al (Cahuilla), Kwaat (Serrano), Red-tailed Hawk, is nesting this year. As the babies grow, we can hear them calling for food from their tall-tree nest. We often see a parent circling in the sky, on the hunt. Someday soon, we’ll see at least one baby flying above us in jerky, awkward circles as it tests its wings. We also know the resident bobcats, coyotes, the rabbits, the hummingbirds, and more. And of course Shaywaddika'yam, the tiny wild kangaroo rats, always like to hop in close for a treat when Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano) sings a little song in Serrano, and then gives his horse, Annie, her daily feed at 4 am.
An old oak (Pat Murkland Photo)
We also become acquainted with the wild plants growing around us. We try to learn more about the relationship that the First People had with trees, plants, the birds, the animals. Today we talk about that. We also tell about one slightly scary adventure in which we learned from animal and plant survivors of last summer’s severe wildfire.
Lowell Bean (2011): “Extremely Efficient”
History, first. “A very important thing about Cahuilla social organization,” Lowell Bean explained to us in 2011,1 “If you go into any one canyon, you look all the way up into that canyon, that canyon is owned by a particular lineage … The Cahuilla people divided the territory so that each lineage had the full use of all the life zones of the area. So, they had the use of the plants and animals in the lower desert all the way to the higher mountain areas.
Illustration by Gerald Clarke Jr. for Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s 2008 Dragonfly Gala shows a bounty of nutritious traditional cuisine: agave, yucca, black oak acorns, and pinyon pine nuts.
“This is an extremely efficient way of organizing yourself,” Lowell Bean continued. “Because it meant that every Cahuilla lineage or group had pretty much the same resources, pretty much the same time of the year. It may differ a little bit depending on what part of the area around San Jacinto Mountain or the Santa Rosa Mountains they lived. But you go all the way around the Santa Rosa Mountains and in each little canyon, you had a village or a lineage,” where numerous foods were available all year round, every month.
Delicious Yucca
Panu'ul (Cahuilla), Uumuc (Serrano) blossoming in spring 2020, before the fire. (Pat Murkland Photo)
One canyon superplant providing food and fiber is canyon yucca, (as shared in our April 14, 2021 News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center). Yuccas blossom first in warmer, lower elevations, the late Daniel McCarthy often explained in his annual agave and yucca talks. As the weather warms, the various stages of the plant make available the different resources (blossoms, seed pods, stalk) throughout lower to higher elevations. These resources are still important today, countless years later.
June Siva cooks processed yucca blossoms. Yum. (June Siva Photo)
On a windy canyon afternoon, Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, shares some joy and memories of eating yucca blossoms and yucca stalk.
When we find tiny yucca plants emerging on the canyon slopes, we watch and are fond of the individual plants as they grow over the seasons. We remember that countless years ago, the Native American people who called our canyon home watched the progress of these yucca plants’ ancestors.
Lowell Bean: “Respect”
Mule deer, súkut (Cahuilla), hukaht (Serrano) (Pat Murkland Photo)
“Philosophically, everything in the Cahuilla-Serrano-Luiseño environments were living things,” Lowell Bean explained. 2 “They were like people. They were Mukat [Cahuilla] Creator’s gifts to the world. When Mukat and Temawayat created the world, they created beings. So if you’re out, for example, picking for a basket, you’re not picking [a plant]. You’re picking up a being. Something that is alive and has a personality, and you treat it as such. It has rights. You talk to it.
“If you’re going to hunt a deer, or a major game animal like a mountain sheep, prior to the hunt, you would communicate with that animal and ask its permission for you to use it. And the deer, as the song indicates, knew you were going to do that. And this was his place on Earth. Just as the acorn has its own place on the Earth. And the chia seed has its own place on Earth. You treat it with respect for it. It just isn’t a religious matter that you treat it respectfully. It’s because it’s also a spiritual being.
“But, what’s the point? Some old Indian fellows many years ago got together and they figured out there is a thing called an ecological ethic. You have this ecology and all these things in this world that can support mankind. And if you don’t take care of it, you’re going to lose it. If you take care of it well, you’re going to live better than if you don’t take care of it well. So there were rules and regulations about how we treated the animal world and the plant world. We treated it with respect. What does that mean? That means you don’t overuse it.”
Survivors
Whenever we pick yucca for food, we leave enough behind for the future. Yucca take five to 10 years to grow to maturity. Once a yucca stalk shoots up into the sky, sometimes 10 to 15 feet high, then buds develop. These bloom into flowers, which are pollinated by a tiny specialist, the California yucca moth (Tegeticula maculata). Seed pods develop. Then as the plant dies, the pods split open to release the seeds. New plants grow from those seeds.
A wildfire disrupted the process last summer, burning canyon plants to the ground and leaving trees and shrubs as charred skeletons.
Yucca survivors of a severe wildfire in summer 2020 (Pat Murkland Photo)
Yet amazingly, sometimes on a slope blackened with ash and seemingly emptied of life, we spied a spot of green: a surviving yucca. Then another. And another. And more. Yucca of all ages survived, assuring no gaps in their growth and reproduction. And so did their moths.
The Guardians
By Pat Murkland
This yucca was badly burned in the August 2020 Apple Fire, but survived. (Pat Murkland Photo)
One yucca that we had watched grow over the years was so badly burned in the Apple Fire, it looked as though a few green sword-shaped leaves were growing out of a big black pot. That was all that remained of the characteristic cluster of leaves at the bottom. I kept checking on this plant from time to time. A hole near the base was sheltering some fire refugee.
A hole at the base of the yucca, protecting some fire refugee. (Pat Murkland Photo)
One day I climbed the steep hill where it lived, to see the yucca again. The leaves had now grown and the old leaves covered the black base.
Yucca recovering in spring 2021. (Pat Murkland Photo)
I wanted to see if the “pot” had changed. So I lifted my walking stick and touched one of the sharp spears. Then I noticed movement. It was a rather large rattlesnake. Yikes! I jumped back. Yikes!
Rattlesnake, Herngt (Serrano), Séwet (Cahuilla) (Pat Murkland Photo)
But the rattlesnake was sound asleep. I moved closer, marveling at how its pattern perfectly blended in with the diamond-shaped bits of shade and light between the plant leaves. The snake was breathing deeply, long, deep, peaceful breaths, in and out. In and out. Zen meditative snake. In and out. I wondered what it was dreaming.
Ernest Siva says the rattlesnake is a guardian, and indeed, if I’d had any thoughts of taking anything from this scarred survivor-yucca, this snake ensured that the yucca would be left alone. The yucca was also a guardian of the rattlesnake. This big rattlesnake had obviously lived for years before the fire, and somehow, it also had made it through. This was the one place in the open, fire-scarred landscape where the snake’s camouflage colors worked, and where it could take a nap in peace, shielded and protected from any predators. I left them to their peaceful relationship. But I watched the ground carefully all the way home.
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Lowell Bean, Dragonfly Lecture in 2011, Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, recorded with permission and transcribed by Pat Murkland
Ibid.