Investigative and Feature Journalism

We create writings and blog posts for the hospitality, travel and tourism industries, on history, culture and the environment. Below, “The Gold Rush and the Californios”and The Music of Early California for the 29 Palms Inn, Paul and Jane Smith, proprietors.

The Gold Rush and the Californios

By Robert Lundahl

In December, 1777, Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa and Commandant General Teodoro de Croix approved for the founding of a municipality at Los Angeles. The town was established by eleven “Blacks, Mulottos, Indians, and two Spaniards.”

All the original settlers, including black “pobladores” (“townspeople”), Luis Quintero and Antonio Mesa, married racially mixed women and built their makeshift houses of willow branches, tule reeds and mud. Pobladores de Los Angeles.

The term “Californio” is commonly used to identify a Spanish speaking, mostly Roman Catholic people, or of Latin American descent, born in Alta California from the first Spanish colonies established by the Portolá expedition in 1769, up until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 — in which Mexico ceded Alta California to the United States.

The area had been long occupied by the Hokan-speaking people who fished, hunted sea mammals, and gathered wild seeds. They were later replaced by migrants, possibly fleeing drought in the Great Basin, who spoke a Uto-Aztecan language and were called Tongva (Wikipedia).

By the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the 18th century, there were 250,000 to 300,000 native people in California and 5,000 in the Los Angeles basin. The land occupied and used by the Tongva covered about four thousand square miles. Their trade extended to the Colorado River and beyond.

In the Winter of 1845–46, the federally commissioned explorer John C. Frémont and a group of armed men appeared in California. After telling the Mexican governor he was merely buying supplies on the way to Oregon, he instead entered the populated area of California and visited Santa Cruz and the Salinas Valley, explaining he had been looking for a seaside home for his mother. Thus, the Mexican-American War was extended to California.

The Siege of Los Angeles was a military response by armed Californios to the occupation, which John C. Frémont began

The Americans held northern California but General Jose Maria Castro and Governor Pio Pico planned resistance in the south around the Los Angeles area.

On Oct. 8, 1846, American troops marched from San Pedro harbor up Alameda Street to the Dominguez Ranch, where they spent the night.

But the Californios had a surprise for them. Although there were only a few dozen locals against hundreds of soldiers, the Californios were able to trick the soldiers into thinking that they had more arms than they did by rolling their only cannon around the field between shots. The battle was won, but over time, the war was lost.

Kumeyaay historian Gary Ballard writes: The California Gold Rush (1848-1855), in particular, was catastrophic to the indigenous population and their tribal lands. It was estimated that some 300,000 foreigners poured into California during this seven-year period. By 1900 it was estimated that less than 16,000 California Indians had survived the invasion of their homelands (some 134,000 California Indians were lost during this 52-year period while the United States Government was in control of California).

Of the principals in my film, “Who Are My People?” all four, Alfredo Figueroa, Reverend Ron Van Fleet, Phil Smith, and Preston Arrow-weed, trace their lineage to Early California and before. Chairman Anthony Pico of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, also in the film, is a relative of Governor of Mexican California, Pio Pico. Figueroa is a relative of General José Figueroa, Mexican territorial Governor of Alta California from 1833 to 1835. Figueroa oversaw the initial secularization of the missions of upper California, which included the expulsion of the Spanish Franciscan mission officials, liberating Indians, who were by then under Mission System control.

Ballard reports, “It is believed the Kumeyaay — one of the largest and strongest pre-contact tribal groups in California — had only 1,000  surviving tribal members at the turn of the 20th century (1900).

Some $5 million of gold was taken out of the Julian Eagle and High Peak Mines alone, during the 1870's, from deep in the heart of pre-contact Kumeyaay tribal mountains of San Diego County.

###

The Music of Early California

By Robert Lundahl

In 1999, Don Alfredo Figueroa, directed a project to accumulate and distribute music of Early California, which has meaning to his family’s heritage. Begun under the auspices of Escuela de la Raza Unida, a Chicano/Indigenous alternative school, which the Figueroa family started in 1972, the dual CD set, Nuestro Gran Principio en Esta Tierra, or Our Great Beginning on this Earth, contains ancient Chemehuevi songs, performed by tribal elder Larry Eddy (Which may be heard as part of the soundtrack of “Who Are My People?”).

For an understanding of the origins of the school itself, founded to address educational disparities and a lack of indigenous-relevant curriculum for Native American and farm worker youth, see the short film, “The Battle of Blythe”, created for the 40th anniversary of the school’s founding in 2012. It is narrated by Demesia Figueroa.

Here, music would be part of the educational experience, including historic work songs, ballads to historic figures such as Cesar Chavez, rap, cumbia interpretations, and tribal chants.

Born under a hot tin roof in the blazing desert sun, August 14, 1934, Figueroa is of Chemehuevi Indian heritage on his mother’s side and Yaqui heritage from father Danuario. His mother’s family had come to California from Northern Sonora, Mexico in the 1800’s, before California had become a state. Family relation, Joaquin Murrieta, was a miner, working the goldfields near Sonora, California (the name reflecting the miners’ origins), at Murphy’s Diggings, before John Sutter “discovered” the precious metal and the Gold Rush began. “They overran us” Figueroa explains.

Alfredo Figueroa, with hand painted image of Joaquin Murrieta, from “Who Are My People?”

Alfredo Figueroa, from “Who Are My People?”

Murrieta remains a controversial figure. Alternately portrayed as a thief, horse rustler, Robin Hood, and Freedom Fighter, Murrieta was part of the California history I learned as a child.

Raised in Pasadena, with visions of Murrieta and his “posse” evading capture on the other side of Mt. Wilson, (which I could see from my home), I had even attended summer camp at a place called Hidden Valley, known as a Murrieta “hide out,” along Angeles Crest Highway.

The Figueroa family story holds that when US miners overran the gold fields in 1848, Murrieta was beaten, his mine was stolen, and wife raped and killed. Murrieta sought to avenge the death of his wife by relentlessly pursuing the attackers. Some say he was trying to raise an army and return California back to Mexico. That’s why he was stealing horses and bringing them to Mexico. In turn, he was pursued as a “bandit.”

The corrido (Spanish pronunciation: [koˈriðo]) is a popular narrative song and poetry form, a ballad. The songs are often about oppression, history, daily life, and other socially relevant topics. It is still a popular form today. The corrido derives largely from historic literature of the time, the “romance”, and in its most known form consists of a salutation from the singer and prologue to the story, the story itself, and a moral and farewell from the singer. Until the arrival of electronic mass-media, the corrido served as a main informational, educational and historical outlet, a vehicle for storytelling, like a film.

Of all the corridos sung in California. The Corrido de Joaquin Murrieta stands out. Californio and Mexican-American families often would refrain from singing it in public for fear of reprisal. Figueroa’s grandfather was jailed in Arizona after singing the Corrido. Yet the Corrido de Joaquin Murrieta is a “master narrative” of the history of California, and the struggle of the Californios to maintain lands and influence following the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo — which ceded California from Mexico to the US.

By 1975, times had changed, and when an official of the Smithsonian Institution heard Figueroa sing the corrido in Calexico at a farm workers rally (UFW), he and his family were invited to sing the Corrido de Joaquin Murrieta in Washington D.C.

###

Radical Acts: The Art of Cheech Marin

By Robert Lundahl

The thing for a comedy team to be successful, what people don’t realize, is that it involves a great deal of compromise.

—Cheech Marin

Creativity is a demanding lover and a loving task master. When Cheech Marin realigned his acting career following a string of successes with films home grown from comedy sketches about dope, among them the career making Cheech and Chong debut, “Up in Smoke,” he stepped away from the relationships and financial successes and into unknown territory.

Cheech and Chong as a comedy duo was made from the moment, a tumultuous period of social and political upheaval, beginning in 1963 with the killing of JFK and coming to a hard boil, following the assassinations of his brother Bobby, US Attorney General, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and in the East Los Angeles surrounds of his home, prominent Mexican–American journalist, Ruben Salazar.

From a national cauldron of pain in the United States, Cheech emigrated to Canada, finding peace in the woods as a potter’s apprentice.

Comedy is not funny, it is a radical act of disobedience and disappearance from the status quo, and in that light, we can see the connection and the tension between the times, the topics and the man.

For Cheech, “Born in East LA” was the point of separation, where the man transcends his times and the expectations of those times, and through creativity becomes free.

Cheech Marin was from a quick witted family where you had to be on stage to get a word in at the dinner table. His father was a cop, who, through a period of massive civil discontent, rose up among the ranks of police administration in Los Angeles. 

He was not happy when son Richard Anthony Marin, nicknamed Cheech, dodged the draft and left the country for Alberta, Canada.

The family was stable and straight in the sometimes volatile South Central neighborhood, and later in moving to the (whiter) San Fernando Valley. Cheech remembers South Central as being easier for him, racially, (as he expresses it) in a Biography Channel documentary about his life. Thoughtfully, father Oscar respected his adult son’s right to make the decision for himself, and Cheech was later granted immunity from federal prosecution and returned to LA. The dope comedy and films of Cheech and Chong that rode a rocket to fame in the 1960’s and 70’s, by the 1980’s, had played out.

Cheech was Tommy Chong’s “straight man,” a disciplined achiever, and talented performer since childhood. Knowing this fact helps put what would come later into perspective, as Cheech relied on his analytical mind, rapid fire consciousness, and spirit of personal revolution, to re-find his audience and step, in the public’s eye, from being a performer in a role, even if based on his own improv abilities, to that of a guide and leader amidst a complex social and cultural environment.

And “Born in East LA” was arguably the new beginning he sought, although Marin credits his voice acting in animated movies such as “The Lion King” and “Cars” with elevating his career. “Born in East LA,” is a parable about immigration that nails our current discourse and policies, because that’s what Cheech saw around him, that’s what Cheech lived among. And inequity and overcoming the stigmas of racism, is what, in the final assessment of the period marking the emergence of cannabis and cannabis humor in the movies, will be remembered alongside the long overdue changing of attitudes about weed.

It is this inequity that sparked a response from the largest and as Cheech says wealthiest (“They had money”), generation. “Good luck” he says in an interview with High Times Magazine from July, 2018.

Cheech came into the studio at High Times Magazine to be interviewed by David Burkart on a variety of topics. These short video clips provide an insightful understanding of the thought process of Cheech Marin, the man, and the artist, though the art of his own making.

Cheech Marin, the artist, teaches us more radical acts, remaining faithful to the craft, and to the inner journey, from a time when many, not just a few, were shot down cold in the streets, when it was dangerous to be Mexican–American.

The journey for some has been to escape. Here we might see in the same frame, Cheech’s escape from stereotypes, labels, typecasting, racial conflicts, cultural restraints, political myopia, the country as a whole, the fog of war, stoner roles, the cops, and finally, as understood through his works, time.

But Cheech Marin’s cultural legacy is to be included. It may be reviewed and enjoyed through his personal collection and long embrace of Chicano Art, documenting the cultural perspective of Americans as a movement and as peoples, at the The Cheech Marin Center of the Riverside Art Museum.

Visit http://hightimesinvestor.com, http://hightimes.com

###

La Cuna de Aztlán Sacred Sites Protection Circle Asks L.A. Federal Court to Halt Construction

Filmmaker Robert Lundahl captures a story from Native American elders Alfredo Figueroa and Phillip Smith at Kokopili geoglyph, Blythe, CA. PHOTO : RUTH NOLAN

(BLYTHE, Calif.) - La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Sites Protection Circle, acting to protect Native American Religious Freedom, filed a renewed application for a temporary restraining order (Case 2:11-cv-04466-JAK -OP) yesterday in United States District Court, Central District of California. According to La Cuna attorney, Cory Briggs, in the “Request for TRO” (Temporary Restraining Order), defendant Bureau of Land Management’s “Right-of-Way Notice to Proceed” issued to defendant Palo Verde Solar I, LLC, on November 4, 2010, then subsequently received by the plaintiffs relating to the boundaries of the proposed Blythe Solar project, were in black and white and did not reflect actual boundary lines printed in red on the originals.

Briggs states, “It was not until early May 2011 that my firm received a copy of the Blythe Project’s Notice to Proceed--nearly three months after one of my associates had to threaten the pursuit of “formal legal remedies” in order to get a copy of the Notice to Proceed. The copy that we received was black and white, and thus I was unable to discern the precise lines of the Phase I construction area authorized by the Notice. Until I received a color copy of the Notice to Proceed on June 17, 2011, I had no idea that the lines depicting the boundaries of the Phase I area were actually printed in red.”

Briggs continues,“When I saw the red lines on the color version of the Notice to Proceed, it became clear that the access road for the Blythe Project was going through a swath of land that was not included in the environmental impact statements description of the affected land: namely, the western half of the eastern half of Section 26 of Township 6 South, Range 21 East, of the San Bernardino Meridian.

(Read More)

###

Native American Spiritual Beliefs at Stake

Originally Published on the ECOreport

By Roy L Hales & Robert Lundahl

April 22, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) - Native American spiritual beliefs are under attack. On Friday, April 10, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments for, and against, Native Americans being allowed to worship at their ancient sacred site inside Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Facility. The immediate concern is gaining access; the larger issue is freedom of religion.

Ivanpah is a 5-square-mile enclosure on the ancient Salt Song Trail, which stretches through four states.

There are hundreds of sacred sites along the way, whose spiritual significance has been compared to temples. Native Americans stop at them to pray, while on spirit runs.

“These runs would last weeks, if not months, and (participants) literally might spend all day running, literally running, from one state to another. By putting up the fence, you are essentially requiring them to take a detour from "Point A" to "Point C," except "Point B" is religiously significant," said Cory Briggs, the lawyer for La Cuna de Aztlán Sacred Sites Protection Circle, Californians for Renewable Energy, CAre, and six Native American elders.

He added, "Part of my clients' religious tradition is an oral history tradition… Imagine a path... and along that path you have some significant markers. And for Native Americans on this path, on the Ivanpah site, there are significant religious markers that are part of the oral tradition and the handing down of their religion, that they have to actually be at… They have to have a certain view of the Clark Mountains, they have to be in a location, where the sun rises at a certain time.”

Mojave elder Reverend Ron Van Fleet said the rituals he preformed at Ivanpah cannot be meaningfully replicated, in accordance with his tradition and values, at any other location.

He is no longer able to do this because there is a fence around the solar facility at Ivanpah.

“We have nothing that tells us there is something of significance here, unless every point along the trail, or several points along the (Salt Song) trail are of such significance,” said the Department of Interior’s lawyer, Robert Oakley.

“If the federal government decided tomorrow, that its going to build solar facilities on every one of these historical markers, you can be darned sure we’d be filing a lawsuit,” said Briggs.

The present case dates back to 2010, when the litigants filed suit against the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Energy, for their failure to consult with the tribes on 6 of the first industrial solar projects slated for the California deserts.

Though the judge has yet to announce his decision about Invanpah, there is another controversy brewing on the neighboring hill. According to Lloyd Gunn of the Sierra Club Desert Committee, a transmission line is being built close to another sacred site.

Gunn took part in the Spirit Run up Metamorphic Hill that is shown in Robert Lundahl’s documentary Who Are My People? There is a still of them worshipping in front of two ancient triangles, composed of hundreds of rocks, at the top of this page. Chemehuevi Cultural Monitor Alfredo Figueroa is shown with his hands raised up, as he gives thanks to the Creator. The white triangle is filled with quartz. Figueroa said it is a geo-locator pointing to Spirit Mountain in the Southeast. Spirit Mountain is called Avi-Kwame in the Mojave language. In the Uto-Aztecan worldview it is referred to as Tlalocan. It is an altar with prayer rocks, that Gunn believes is hundreds if not thousands of years old. The black arrow, or triangle, points to the Clark Mountains to the Northwest, the location of hot springs. Figueroa says the Salt Song Trail connects the two.

“I called BLM at Needles, and talked to Mike Ahrens, the field manager, and he directed me to his archaeologist and I was told there was no such thing as a sacred site out there,” said Gunn.

He asked the archaeologist, “Why are you pretending it doesn’t exist?”

When the ECOreport phoned Needles, Mike Ahrens admitted he does not know where the site is. He never-the-less insisted it is outside the footprint of the project. Ahrens said he has heard reports “from non-Native Americans,” but no Native Americans have mentioned it during the year he has been at Needles.

However a photograph on the September 15, 2010, Las Vegas Review-Journal depicts Chemehuevi elder Phillip Smith and Mojave elder Rev. Ron Van Fleet beside one of the triangles.

“We’re reaching out to Phil Smith because we’d like to get his take on this. If the Chemehuevi share this concern then we want to address it,” said Ahrens.

There have been many incidents in the Native American struggle to exercise the same rights everyone is guaranteed under the First Amendment.

A scene in Who Are My People? documents the German company Solar Millennium allegedly bulldozed two of the ancient geoglyphs at Blythe. One of them, the True North Geoglyph, was 50 feet long.

In another scene, a BLM official named Lyn Ensler admitted she could not remember which tribes she had contacted or “which tribes went to which meetings.”

Alfredo Figueroa said none of the Quechan and Mojave elders were given advance written notice of the meeting at Blythe City Hall, on July 23, 2013. If he hadn’t been tipped off the day before, they would not have been present at a scoping meeting discussing the solar projects at Blythe and McCoy.

“This is the most sacred site of the world and it was the worst location for the solar company to place these massive solar projects. It is where the spirit of El Tosco descends down from Tamoanchan and is the center of the Creation story,” said Figueroa.

They did not stop Brightsource from building Ivanpah, but the tribes want access to their sacred site within the facilities fence.

"Are you saying that all you want is for them to open the gate when an Indian comes and let them run through it and then you can have the Ivanpah project?" the Judge asked.

"That's a good chunk of it," responded Briggs, "Let me explain the other part, if there are other phases that would require the destruction of a specific marker, that the government would need to work with my client to accommodate that."

The judge is not expected to make his decision regarding Ivanpah, for months.

The larger issue has yet to be addressed.

Sometimes it seems like the freedoms we hold dear, the fundamental pillars of democracy, provide benefits for and are agreed upon by all. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion and the right to express this as we see fit.

In light of what is transpiring in the desert, we must consider that the level of racial and cultural antipathy towards Native Americans is so deeply ingrained and so vicious, that the presumption of the government may well be that the rights accorded to every other individual and group do not apply. For the most part, that seems to be fine with them. Or is it?

There is something highly symbolic in Cory Briggs fight to open a gate. Let's hope that gate provides a pathway to respect for the Constitution and for people.

###