thank you very much Bryson and thank you all for coming I'm delighted to be
here and I also would like to let you know that I have been working with some
wonderful very experienced colleagues so the research that you're going to hear
tonight is not just my work it's the work of a collaborative effort of John
Johnson, Steve Schwartz Renee Vilabowitz and Glenn Paris so without further
ado let's see if we can get going. there the story of the
lone woman is so much more than just the story of one woman who was abandoned on
San Nicolas island for 18 years. Tonight we're going to talk about the people who
left that Island in 1835. These were her people who were her family, her community,
probably even very close family. So much of what has been written about them has
come from secondary sources and one thing we focused on was finding original
sources with primary information that is eyewitness accounts or event participant
accounts because as you can see the lone woman's story and her people has pretty
much been told through newspaper accounts from the 19th century, the 20th
century, and so much of that information has been incorrect. There have been some
kernels of truth but a lot of it has been hearsay or secondary passed on from
person to person and actually I think before I go a little bit beyond this
just to make sure we're all on the same page, how many of you have read Island
of the Blue Dolphins? Okay a lot but not everybody okay then I I should just
do a little bit of basic background of Island of the Blue Dolphins was a
children's novel written by Scott O'Dell, first published in 1960, it was
based on the story of the lone woman of San Nicolas Island she was also called
the lost woman and in some cases the wild woman of Santa Nicolas Island she was
left alone from 1835 to 1853 when her people were removed from the island she
was unintentionally left behind, there are
stories and they may or may not be true that she jumped off the boat when all of
her people were on the boat, she said she missed a son on the island and we're
actually doing some research to find out if this was in fact accurate and not
just a fantasy, but at this point from what we know so far she was left to live
by herself for 18 years. Then a otter hunting group that was led by George
Nidever from Santa Barbara came and found her on the island, picked her up
had her accompany them back to Santa Barbara. She lived about seven weeks from
the time she arrived in Santa Barbara and lived with the Nidever family
there's a thought that she likely contracted dysentery, she also fell off
the porch of the Nidever Adobe and hurt herself that way but she
declined quite rapidly about seven weeks from the time that she was
brought to Santa Barbara. But in that time that she was in Santa
Barbara there were attempts made to find people who could communicate with her
and some of those attempts were partially successful but for the most
part her story and the story of her people, most particularly people taken to
San Pedro was not recorded so what we tried to do is go back to the original
records that were recorded at the time that the Nicolanos were taken from
San Nicolas Island, brought to San Pedro. And we had these basic questions to
answer how many Nicolanos sailed from the island and we know that they sailed on a
schooner called the Peores Nada. Where were the Nicolanos taken after they
arrived in San Pedro, and were any Nicolanos alive when the lone woman
sailed to Santa Barbara in 1853? And you can see from the the map here there's a
pretty straightforward route between San Pedro and San Nicolas Island. We're not
sure if this is the exact route that the the Peoras Nada took but it's likely
that they went to pick up this group, the community living at the Tulle
Creek site on the northwest coast of the island. And we had two features that
helped us to find and follow the Nicolanos that was to look at original
sources with primary information about original sources, copies of the originals or
the original documents in the cells rather than relying on derivative
information like transcripts or translations or indexes because whenever
humans transcribe a document there is room for error and it's not that
original sources are free of error but there's less error possible when you go
to the original source. And the other part of that search strategy was to look
for primary information-that is information from event participants or
eyewitnesses to events. So we looked at, particularly, and focused on Mexican
records from Alta California from 1835 through 1850 and after that we looked at
United States documents particularly census records, land records, probate,
that sort of thing. We also looked at other material for context which was
very helpful because it's not just about the number of people and where they went
but who were they living with and how were they treated we wanted to know all
those things. The second fact a feature that helped us to find and follow the
Nicolanos was to use a genealogy research technique called the FAN
principle and basically we're looking for the Nicolanos's FAN club and I
know that sounds odd but FAN stands for Friends Associates and Neighbors and
this helped us not only to understand the social and economic context in which
the Nicolanos were living in Los Angeles at the time but it helped us to
harvest clues that allowed us to track the Nicolanos as they were moving
through their new lives in Los Angeles so FANS were very important and this
document here is an example of how we used FAN research it's a 1836
initial page of the Indian section for the Mexican census of Los Angeles
and this census was fabulous because it told us in very detailed descriptions of
where many of the Indians came from: Yuma, or Yaqui, or in this case in the
highlighted square there was one woman who was noted as "islania" and that
means Island Indian. We believe she is one of the Nicolanos. It is highly likely
to be one of the Nicolanos who came from San Nicolas island in 1835. What was
frustrating about this census record was that the people who did the enumeration
segregated the Indians from the other people in the city so you couldn't tell
from looking at the census record whether or not the Indians were living
with and working for some of the other non-Indian people in the city so what
we had to do was to look at who Juana's neighbors were and her immediate neighbor
just above her was a young boy by the name of Ignacio and he was a Yaqui
Indian and from primary and secondary records we learned that Ignacio was from
northern Mexico from the Guaymas area, he had been captured by a Mexican soldier
was about to be shot and his life was spared because James Johnson who was an
Englishman who was in Guaymas saw what was about to happen. He offered the soldier
twelve dollars to buy this young boy and the soldier agreed so Ignacio got to
join the family of James Johnson. James Johnson was known as Santiago Johnson in
Alta California and in Mexico. And he came with the family to Los Angeles and
lived with James Johnson's family and his relatives the Guiraros. It was his
wife's mother's family so we know from the association on the census record and
we also know because Juana's godmother was a "neives Guiaros" that she was living
in the same household. That's how FAN club research helped us
with this particular issue. Now these two gentlemen were our primary source of
information about the Peoras Nada. We know that Isaac Sparks was one of
the gentleman who was on the Peoras Nada, the Mexican schooner that went to
San Nicolas Island to pick up the Nicolanos and bring them to Los Angeles. We
know that from a Mexican document that I'm going to show you in a moment and
George Nidever was a otter hunter. He was born in 1802 and Tennessee came to
Santa Barbara in the early 1830s. Isaac Sparks was born in 1803 in Maine also
came to Los Angeles area initially and then lived in Santa Barbara and they met
up and they went otter hunting and in December of 1835, January of 1836 and it
was on this trip that Isaac Sparks told George Nidever about the fact that
Isaac Sparks had taken the Peoras Nada to San Nicolas Island to pick up the Nicolanos
and bring them to Los Angeles. So we don't have the information directly
from Isaac Sparks but he has noted on a Mexican document and we learned this
from George Nidever's oral history that was recorded by E.F. Murray in 1878.
This is the document, this is not an original, this is a copy from 1878 made
by Thomas Savage for Hubert Howe Bancroft, this is from 1835 and this gave
us a starting point from which to look for information on the Nicolanos in
Los Angeles. This says that the Peoras Nada, that they were getting ready to load
aguardiente which is a brandy and angelica which i believe is also an
alcoholic beverage onto the ship. They were sending it up to Monterey and from
Monterey they were going to send lumber up to San Francisco and this was a note
asking for permission to ship from the captain of the port. So this gives us a
place or a date in time from when to begin to look for information on the
Nicolanos and unfortunately there's no passenger manifest. It doesn't say
that the ship had been on San Nicolas Island but this sure gives us an
indication of the approximate date when the ship would have been out there
and been back to San Pedro. These two gentlemen definitely played a part in
where the Nicolanos went when they came off the boat. James Johnson who I
mentioned before had a lease understanding with the owners of Rancho
San Pedro so he was running horses and cattle on Rancho San Pedro right down
here by the water between 1833 and 1840 and Isaac Williams was another American
born 1799 in Pennsylvania, came to Los Angeles, he also knew Isaac Sparks and
George Nidever from hunting trips and both of these gentlemen appear to have
worked together to distribute the Nicolanos in Los Angeles. They may have
actually been in cahoots if you know the old-time term. They may have secretly
collaborated because they both benefited. One of them had a female Nicolania
come to live with him- Isaac Williams and I'll tell you more about
that in a little bit and James Johnson known as Santiago Johnson he was
connected with four different people who were godparents to Nicolanos so he
and his family definitely benefited from having the Nicolanos in their
household and basically what they did with them as have them act as servants so
they had homes to go to but they were expected to serve the families. and this
is a scene here of San Pedro about 1875 and you can see Dead Man's Island in the
background. There's only two-there's been two, primary source documents that we
looked at before this time that had information about the Nicolanos
and that was about a middle-aged man who was very robust
and we learned this from both George Nidever and from William Dayon Phelps
who was master and commander of the Alert. Phelps wrote in his diary of 1841
that there was a man who was partly foolish from San Nicolas Island from a
hit on the head that he had from a fight with the Alaskan native otter hunters
but that he lived at San Pedro and he helped, he would assist the
hunters, assist the sailors by hauling in the ships and hauling in seals and
helping them scrape the blubber off or whatever it is they do with the marine
life there. Anyway those were the only two accounts we'd had up until this
point that were eyewitness accounts about a gentleman by the name of Black
Hawk and of course that was not his name that was the name given to him by sailors
who were on the ship Alert. And as it turned out the best source of
information initially after we found the Mexican document were sacramental
records from the Catholic Church. There had been rumors about the Nicolanos
being taken to Mission San Gabriel and it turns out that that was not the case.
We looked very thoroughly at the records- the baptismal and death records at
Mission San Gabriel, Mission San Fernando Rey and the Los Angeles Plaza Church
which was part of the Catholic Church obviously in the Los Angeles area.
There were no Nicolano, no islanio, no people from isla and that stands for
Island Indian showing up in records in Mission San Gabriel in 1835 or later.
But there were Nicolano and probable Nicolanos showing up in Los Angeles at
the Los Angeles Plaza Church from 1835 through 1836 and one of the reasons why
they weren't going to Mission San Gabriel was because the missions were
going through secularization, they were being given over to civil administration.
In fact the Franciscan Padre Tomas es Tenaga
left Mission San Gabriel without leave and he was gone from Mission San Gabriel
from July of 1835 through April of 1836 so it made no sense that they would have
the Nicolanos go to Mission San Gabriel when there was no Franciscan
padre there. As it turns out the very first person to be baptized was a young
boy and he was noted as being "coma de cinco anos" so about five years old. His
parents were noted as Gentiles or unbaptized Indians from San Nicolas
Island and he was baptized by a French Catholic priest who was at that time in
charge of both Mission San Gabriel and the Los Angeles Plaza Church. This is
Father Jean Agustus Alexis Bachelo and he signed his name Alejo Bachelo
when he was in Alta California. He himself had been in exile, he was kicked
out of Hawaii he had been sent to Hawaii to establish a Catholic mission there
and there was a squabble and the Protestant missionaries convinced the
Queen in Hawaii that it was dangerous to have a Catholic priest there, so she
kicked him out, she sent him on a boat to San Pedro and he and his compatriot
Patrick Short were dumped off uncharitably at the beach at the San
Pedro, so he was much like the Nicolanos, he was without a home in
the place that he didn't belong. But he stayed in California. He assisted Father
Sanchez and Father es Tenaga at Mission San Gabriel and when the need arose he
helped out at Los Angeles Plaza Church and helped to baptize a little Tomas
Guadalupe. By the way the Franciscan priests and Father Bachelo were
estimating the ages of the Nicolanos. They didn't know all the California
Indian languages so they just looked at the person and decided, oh he's about 5 or
she's about 20 so then you know the ages are kind of a general estimate.
Tomas had a godmother who is very interesting: Elida Johnson who was
the five-year-old daughter of James Johnson so we found this very intriguing
because we had never before seen a godmother who was five years old. She was
the same age as Tomas. We still haven't figured that out but it's true. We've
checked her birth records, there's no question that she was very
young, maybe they wanted to teach her responsibility for a real early age.
And the other person who we know who is unquestionably Nicolania was baptized
as Maria Madalena or Magdalena. She was baptized by Father Pedro Cabot because
Father Bachelo was out of town at the time and as you can see from her baptism
record she was only indicated as islania when she was baptized, not from
San Nicolas Island but because we check original records we always make sure
we're checking every original record we can get our hands on. We looked at the
burial record and it clearly states she is a neophyte de las islas de
San Nicolas and of course islas was a mistake it's the island of San Nicolas
not the islands of Santa Nicolas and the burial was officiated by Father
Alejo Bachelo so thank goodness that Father Bachelo at least knew if she was
from San Nicolas Island. The other thing that's interesting about this is she
was ill, she was noted as "inferma" so she was not baptized in the
church she was baptized in the pueblo. And this made us very curious, where was
she? Who was she living with at the time? She was given- even though she was sick-
she was given godparents Narciso Botteo and his wife Francisca Ruiz. They were
cousins to James Johnson's wife, so more connections with the Johnson family.
Johnson family made out very well but she didn't show up in the 1836 census
she probably died before they did the census.
So it took us a while but we finally figured out where Maria
Magdalena was living and I will tell you about that just a minute. Okay so this
shows you a summary of the people who we know are from San Nicolas Island
Tomas Guadalupe and Maria Magdalena who I've just told you about. Juana, you've
seen, the first page of the Indian section, the 1836 census, she was listed as
"islania" or "de la isla" but because of the timing of her baptism in
1836 because no other island indians were being baptized from any of the
other islands, from San Clemente Island, or from Catalina Island, we believe it's
highly likely that she was from San Nicolas Island as well. And little Maria
Luciana was interesting she was a newborn but she was baptized and her
parents were said to have been island Indians, again, because of the timing of
her baptism in 1836 it's possible that her parents also could have come off the
boat from San Nicolas Island. It's also possible that they could have come from
earlier from San Clemente Island or Santa Catalina Island and not been
baptized waited and waited and waited they had a daughter they wanted her baptized so
they're a little bit less likely but it's still a strong possibility and
if they were Nicolanos then she was conceived on San Nicolas Island so
she would have been Nicolano had she not come over on the boat and been born in Los
Angeles. And Maria Aleja is another one who we think is highly likely to be from
San Nicolas island she was said to have been about 45 years old and we do have a
fairly reliable record, well we've got a primary source- the US census for 1850
noting a woman by the name of Maria in her godmother's household in the
household of Maria Ignacio Amador we also have a newspaper account saying one
of the middle-aged Nicolanias lived in the household of the highly
respectable citizen for most of her life while she was in Los Angeles so we
believe Maria Aleja is also highly likely to be a Nicolania and I love
this photograph by the way this is 1880 Los Angeles intersection
of Main and Temple and Spring Street, some of you may recognize this area,
and within the the red rectangle is where Tomas lived with the Johnson
family he lived there probably until 1859 when Carmen Johnson, James Johnson's
widow, was forced to sell the home because the financial circumstances were
declining. But this is where Tomas lived when the lone woman was in Santa Barbara
in 1853 and she was only alive for seven weeks so obviously they didn't have time
to find him. But this is the heart of downtown Los Angeles, the business
district as it was then, and of course this is 1880s this is not 1835 so it
wouldn't have been quite this crowded. In fact I love to point out, look at
that look at the the parking it's really at a premium already you've got horses
and carts they're lining up there so it's already a hot spot actually
the whole block before the red rectangle is now where the federal courts building
is and the block where Tomas lived with the Johnson family is where the City
Hall is, the 32 story City Hall of Los Angeles. So that's right where the
neighborhood where the Nicolanos grew up at least spent the first
many years of their life in Los Angeles. The other thing that's really
interesting about this photograph is it's taken from the viewpoint of the Bella
Union Hotel and this was where Isaac Williams lived.
He had an Adobe built here in 1835, it actually was taken over by Pio Pico and
was the the last headquarters of the Mexican government in Alta California. It
later became Bella Union Hotel, the Charles Hotel and went into decline
after that but this photograph shows you how close...actually I'm giving it away
right now... Maria Magdalena lived at this location with Isaac Lampton, and I should
go into that story right now because I'm getting ahead of myself. This is another
example of FAN research. We ended up looking at her neighbors in the burial
record and two of her neighbors really stood out: Hervasio Olipus and Maria
Del Rosario Via and there was a notation on Maria's record that said "ambos
pasados por las armas al dia antecedente" and I had never seen that before. My
Spanish is really poor but I was curious so I did Google Translate, and can
anybody tell me what that means? Anybody here know Spanish: "ambos pasados
por las armas al dia antecedente?" There in the back? "Ambos pasados por las armas"
"ambos pasados por las armas" and in the context they're in a cemetery, they
were put to death, basically, they were executed and the reason was
they had murdered her husband, Rosario Via's husband. These were two lovers
Hervasio Olipus and Maria del Rosario Via, only they lived together while she was
married to Domingo Felis and they murdered Domingo Felis because he had
the nerve to have the alcohol. They forced his wife to come back and join
him and they were they were leaving town
they were going to Rancho Los Felis and unfortunately Hervasio came and used
his lasso and roped for Domingo off the horse. Domingo was on the ground, Hervasio
stabbed him and he was dead and they dragged him off to ravine and kind
of partially buried him, and this is kind of a long-winded story but it will get
to the point. The citizens of the town found out about it very quickly the
horse the empty horse without Domingo Felis and his wife came back and they
realized that Domingo Felis had been murdered so they captured Hervasio
Olipus and Rosario Via. They put him in jail and shackles they took her to Abel
Stern's house and kept her under lock and key but the citizens of the town
were irate there was so much violence it was going unpunished they knew that this
was a capital case that would not come to sentence and an execution would
not take place because an appeal would automatically be made and a judge in
Mexico would have to hear the case so this was the first vigilante committee
action. About 50 citizens formed a party for the defense of public safety and
they sent messages to the city council saying, 'man we want these prisoners are
you going to release them to us or not or are you going to execute them as they
should be executed,' and the City Council said we have nothing to do with you
this is an illegal action but the City Council was powerless to do anything
about it so the people and this vigilante committee overpowered the
guard took Hervasio Olipus on the hill behind the LA Plaza Church and they shot
him 4:30 in the afternoon on April 7th and half hour later at five
o'clock they also shot Rosario Via and they let her sit in the chair they were
they were a little nice to her she was really scared
but they shot her and then they took these two bodies and had them out for
2 hours in front of the jail so everybody could see them and then they
got to be buried and this comes to the part which ties in with the Nicolania,
Maria Magdalena. She was baptized on April 9th. These two were buried on April
8th and they were buried and their ceremony was performed by Father Pedro
Cabot so he was summoned, as it turns out, read the report the vigilante
committee report by Victor Prudon who was the president of the committee. There was a
footnote that said Isaac Williams sent a note to Father Pedro Cabot to ask him to
come and baptize a sick woman who was living in his household and there was a
dual-purpose. There really was a sick woman living in Isaac Williams household
but they also wanted Father Pedro Cabot to come and administer the last rites to
the condemned murderers and Father Cabot didn't come until the 8th so that
was a day late, you know the execution had already taken place but so
he buried Hervasio Olipus and Rosario Via on April 8th and then the next
day he baptized Maria Magdalena on April 9th. That was how we knew she was living
with Isaac Williams so FAN research was very helpful there. It's kind of a
long way around, thank you for hanging in there with me. It took a while but we
got there. Ok this is the the handout that you all have or some of you have
this is just to show you and actually this is a partial view of the handout
that you have this is to show you we did look at the native people from the
southern islands of San Clemente- that's the the left-hand column and Santa
Catalina that's the next column over and the undifferentiated island Indian or
what's called either isla or islania and as you can see a lot of them took
place in the early to mid 1820s and 1830s and
most of the island Indians from San Clemente and Santa Catalina had come
off of the island by 1820 but they continued to trickle in and get baptized
either as adults or have their children baptized or even have some of their
infants baptized. But right about 1835 is kind of a cut off; all the people from
San Clemente Island, Catalina Island, had already been baptized if they were going
to be baptized and they'd had their children baptized and then that was when
we started to see the Nicolanos, Tomas, Maria Magdalena, Juana, Maria Aleja and
Maria Luciana being baptized so that's how we figured out they had come off the
boat in 1835, late 1835, but it was important to understand the context what
happened to the other southern island Indians. And this is when we finally get
to see one of the Nicolanos Tomas in the household of his godparent, actually
in this case it was his godmother's mother Carmen Johnson. She was now a
widow, James Johnson had died in 1847 and she headed this pretty incredible
household and a couple things that are funny about this: her age was 32 here,
well she had also been listed as 32 in the 1844 Mexican census and it wasn't just
vanity, it truly wasn't. The problem was this was a newly minted American town. It
had formerly been all Spanish-speaking. There were very few English speakers so
the census enumerator was John Everttson from New York, he comes to Los
Angeles, he can't speak Spanish very well, the Spanish-speaking people sure can't
speak English very well so they did the best they could. Anyway, her age stayed
the same, Tomas in the 1844 Mexican census of Los Angeles was listed as 15
here he's listed as 14. Well guess what,
the native people were not giving their ages directly to the census enumerator, it was a head of household.
Carmen Johnson didn't know how old he was, she didn't care, she just, you know,
figured out what or maybe you looked in the census numbers from the previous
census oh he's 15 so oh and the other thing on this one, there is both
Tomas and a Brea del Carmen are noted as "I" as Indian in the census. She is not one
of the Nicolanos, we don't believe. She didn't show up as Nicolano or Isla in
1835, 1836 or later but there is a Maria del Carmen who was baptized in 1833 Los
Angeles Plaza Church and she was from Quienque which means San Clemente Island so
we think she was another Island Indian but from San Clemente Island.
And had ended up in the household of the Johnson's but this is a real interesting
household, we'll look how diverse it is, we've got Carmen Johnson was born in Sonora,
Mexico, three of her children were half European, her husband James Johnson was
from England, we've got one of her relatives Jesus Guerraro and down below
we've got William was a black man from Mexico, or from New York, sorry, and
Jose Palio who was a laborer from Mexico so we've got people from Mexico, people from
New York, half Mexican half European, and island Indians all living together
in early Los Angeles and hopefully getting along or learning how to. And
from our FAN research from looking at friends, associates, and neighbors
particularly on census records but certainly on baptismal records we were
able to figure out where all the Nicolanos or probable Nicolanos were living.
Tomas of course was in the Johnson household, Juana was in the household of
her godmother Nieves Guirado who was Carmen Johnson's sister.
Maria Aleja as I mentioned was living in the household we believe her
godmother Maria Ignacio Amador. Maria Magdalena was not living with her
godparents she was living with Isaac Williams and Maria Luciana, newborn, and
her Island Indian parents were likely living in an Indian locality called the
Rancheria de los Pipimares. The island Indians in Los Angeles apparently
had their own cluster of families that live together and we, from various sets
of documents, figured out that it was at San Pedro and between 7th and 8th
streets on the west side and the reason why we figured out she may have lived
there her parents may have lived there: Maria Luciana's godmother was
Incarnacion Reyes, her father was Jose Jesinto Reyes and he and his family
were godparents to 10 island Indians: it's more than any other family in Los
Angeles and the reason why we feel that is true or that is important is because
the Reyes family owned property on either side of San Pedro at 7th Street so
their property, their vineyards, actually bracketed the village of the
island Indians and Maria Luciana and her parents probably lived there and
probably worked for the Reyes family and this is Adalida Johnson, of course,
Tomas's godmother and daughter of Carmen Johnson with her first husband
Francis Melas who is a very prominent American businessman in early Los
Angeles. This is a plan view map of the downtown section of Los Angeles from
1849 E.O.C. Ord's map if anybody's familiar with this. The cross hatch in the middle
is Ord's compass rose so north is pointing to the upper right. Number one
is the Los Angeles Plaza Church it's in that locality right now and number two
is the plaza Alvera Street is just to the right of number two, the plaza, I'm
sure many of you visited Alvera street but you can see number three was where
the Johnson family lived and Tomas lived in that locality probably from about
1835 through 1859 when the house was sold. Number four is where Isaac Williams
lived that was where his Adobe was and Maria Magdalena lived there so they were
not quite shouting distance bu pretty close. Number five was where the
Rancheria de los Poblanos was this is also locality of the Alvarado complex at
First Street and Main and that's probably where Maria Aleja lived with
Maria Ignacio Amador when she first came to town. The Rancheria de los Poblanos was
kind of an encampment, not an Indian rancheria of any long-standing, but that
was probably where the Indians from menga moved after the initial Pueblo
moved the plaza. The early movies, here's let's see if I can do this with the arrow...the earliest a
location of the Pueblo of Los Angeles was here it eventually moved here at
particularly after the the massive flooding of 1815 so the Indians who
lived in this area moved were forced to move south to a location that became
known as the Rancheria de los Poblanos.
This is the larger view of E.O.C. Ord's 1849 map, you can see number one and
number two are on the raised river terrace. That was where most of the
townspeople lived, it was a much better place to live because it was above the
floodplain, everywhere else was in the floodplain. And this was an important
site this was where we believe that where the Rancheria de los Pipimares
was located that was near the property of the Reyes family. And there
was also a very interesting interview, we read Cecaria Valenzuela de Lorenzana
gave an interview to Charles J Prude- Home in 1913. She lived quite close to
that area and she described in 1842 a morning ceremony that was being
performed by the Pipimares Indians apparently it was a multi-day ceremony:
they built a bonfire, they threw chia seeds, pinyon nuts and juniper berries on
a fire as well as clothing and other items belonging to deceased relatives
and then the ceremony was completed but that was another reason why we knew;
we started putting different pieces of direct and indirect evidence together
that the village of the island Indians was in this area of 7th Street and San
Pedro and actually if we think about it Maria Luciana and her parents could
easily have been part of that ceremony 1842. One thing I need to point out and
this was certainly important to understand again the context of life in
early Los Angeles for the Nicolanos: the native people were literally
marginalized in their own territory they were first moved from Yaanga which was
the original site number one there that was the site that the Portola Expedition members
encountered in 1769. They were moved south once the people, the pueblo,
decided to move their town to a more prime territory away from the flooding.
Los Angeles River, by the way sorry I should point this out, this is Los Angeles River here
this is East Los Angeles River also is up in this area north of town that's why
the water was flooding that early town site so badly. People also wanted to
move the island Indian village, somebody had a dispute with them and actually
most of it was probably a naked land rib they really wanted the territory for
vineyards and other agricultural purposes so everyone was moved to the
Rancherias, number 4 there, the one on the right, was likely in place
early on but then and that lasted about 10 years from 1836 to about 1845. Then
everybody was moved to number five Pueblito, that was east of Los Angeles
River, that site lasted about five years and then that rancheria was razed and
the Indians again were forced to move in dispersed settlements or to live with
their employers in town so this was another reason why the Nicolanos
likely lived with their godparents, they saw the continuous movement of the
Indians who were living in that area- continuous forced movement- and it made
more sense for the Nicolanos to live with godparents room then try to make
it on their own. In 1860 after Carmen Johnson sold the home, Tomas had to find
another place to live. He ended up moving to work for Antonio Coronel, and Coronel
was a very prominent member of the community, he was the first Latino mayor
of Los Angeles, and yeah he was also an assessor and he was state treasurer for
a while, but he owned a large vineyard on Alameda at the level of 7th Street. So
Tomas shows up on his census enumeration and he also shows up as recently married.
So the next person on that same list is a young girl/ woman Refugio
Lopez was an Indian so we looked for the marriage record, sure enough we found the
marriage record, and that was a gold mine because the witnesses on the marriage
record told us that we had the correct Tomas. One of the witnesses was Soledad
Coronel, that was Antonio Coronel's sister. The other witness was Maria de La Merced
Valdez, and that was Tomas's former next-door neighbor on Spring
Street, so that told us, yes, that this was the same Tomas. So this also showed
us that he was alive in 1860 so he lived at least seven years beyond when the
lone woman was in Santa Barbara in 1853. And this is a timeline we were able to
construct for five individuals. That vertical columns represent the
records we'd identified for five different people. As you can see we have
the most records for young Tomas: six records in a row and several others. We
have records going through 1850s so you know we're pretty certain many of these
individuals lived beyond the early 1850s. It's been hard to find the records.
One of the things that helped us a lot initially was using the early
California Population Project Database which is published online by the
Huntington Library, and anybody can access it, it's got records of over 200,000
sacramental baptisms, marriages, or burials at the various Spanish missions
and the Los Angeles Plaza Church. It runs only up to 1850 though so we're
back to looking through year after year after year for deaths of different
Nicolanos: Juana and Maria Maria Luciana and it's difficult unless
you've got extra information on those burial records, if you've got a burial
record for just someone by the name of Juana and no witness or notation
where she was from, then you cannot identify it as Juana from San
Nicolas Island so it's tough going but we're working on it. And actually there
was a birth, Tomas and his wife Refugio Lopez did have a son, and I have to give
credit where credit is due, this was found by Ted Gaston who's a professional
genealogist who lives in Sherman Oaks. I had consulted with him, I asked him to
look at my research plan to see if I'm making all the right choices looking and
you know in all the right archives and he went over my research plan but he
couldn't resist himself and he opened up his computer and looked at his database
and within a matter of minutes it was almost embarrassing- that was, well it was
wonderful- I was just amazed. It was great he found these two records and
what I realized is I had to check my assumption. I was, I had been looking for
records for Indian neophytes and this little boy was not indicated to be an
Indian and neither were his parents so I had seen six records in a row for Tomas
from San Nicolas Island as an Indian and all of a sudden, and if this is the same
priest, Brast Rajo, father Rajo did not indicate that Tomas was an Indian
although he did when he married Tomas and Refugio. Anyway little Estevan de los
Reyes was born in 1861 and unfortunately the little guy passed away
yeah less than 10 months later but what's intriguing about this is that he
had a last name which was similar to Thomas's native name. Tomas and his
marriage record used what appeared to be a surname Augri and we looked at that
upside down and sideways and it didn't look like a Spanish name at all and
finally we figured out it's likely his native name. But what happened with
little Estevan's baptismal record, that name had started to change to become
Hispanicized so from Augri it became Ereyes then in the burial record it was
noted as Agres so we're seeing name change pretty rapidly from 1860,
1861 in 1863 which is real intriguing.
And this was the- it's not quite a family tree chart in the traditional sense but
this is the closest thing that I could cobble up- Juana Maria was the name
that the lone woman of San Nicolas Island was given upon her, baptismal,
baptism on October 19, 1853 and Blackhawk of course was not his
native name it was a name given to him by sailors, we've got approximate dates
here where I wasn't certain I put Abt for about and for the death dates I put
aft if I had a record and I wanted to indicate after this date so this shows
you at least Tomas Augri and Refugio Lopez had a son Estevan de los Reyes Agres
and the second tier represents the the probable or, well, two are highly
likely to be Nicolanos, Juana and Maira Aleja, we're not so certain about
the Indian father and island Indian mother of Maria Luciana but given the
timing of her baptism it's certainly plausible. So as you can see where we've
got a good start and we're still working on it the research continues. And this is
a summary of what we've looked at and discovered to date: we've identified two
Nicolanos, two probable Nicolanos, two possible Nicolanos and their
daughter. We found the people who the Nicolanos lived with and the locations
where they lived in Los Angeles, the status and occupation of at least Tomas
and Juana, both were listed as, she was listed as a servant in 1836, he was
listed as a servant in and she was in 1844 and Tomas was listed as a laborer-
firm laborer- in 1860. Uh, location: the Rancheria de los Pipimares and the
Rancheria de los Poblanos. They'd had been mentioned before but had not been
pinpointed in any records, any published records, any scholarly records
I should say, there is one newspaper account in 1894 Los Angeles Herald that
helped to confirm the location of the Rancheria de los Pipimares at San
Pedro and between 7th and 8th Streets. And of course we now know that Tomas
at least was alive when the lone woman was in Santa Barbara but she died too
soon for them to be able to locate him and she was not the last of her people,
they had not all died out. This is of course a contemporary photograph Los
Angeles Plaza Church, this is where Tomas, Juana, Maria Aleja, Maria Luciana and
Estevan were baptized and this is also where Maria Magdalena was buried. She was
likely buried to the left of the church, there was a South Side cemetery it's now
a memorial garden and any of you can go and visit, pay your respects to Maria
Magdalena and all the Indians, all the Island Indians, all the native peoples
who came to Los Angeles to help to build the city. And I'd like to leave you with
these names to the native people from the Los Angeles Plaza Church records.
These are all Island Indians from San Clemente Island and Catalina Island
as well as just the one from San Nicolas Island. Not all native names were
recorded by the Spanish Padres but at least we have these names. We know the
native people lost their land, they lost their life-way, their names were taken
and replaced by Spanish names, but at least we can remember them and
acknowledge that the descendants of more than 160 Island Indians baptized in Los
Angeles are still with us today. Thank you very much.
Now we have time for a quick question and answer period so we can take a few
questions so we can begin that now. What does the name Peoras Nada mean? The schooner Peoras Nada
it literally means 'better than nothing' it was kind of like they put the ship
together with duct tape in it and you know really wasn't wasn't that well
built but it it got out to the island and got back. Is there a relationship
between the Nicolanos and the Chumash?
Yes they both lived on the the Southern California coast but they had different
languages, they had some similar customs, both had plank canoes but they were they
were different linguistically and in other ways and of course the Chumash were
living on the northern Channel Islands: San Miguel, Santa Rosa,
Santa Cruz whereas the Nicolanos and the other- the Island Gabrielino were
living on Catalina, San Clemente and San Nicolas.
Just Peoras Nada means worse is nothing worse worst like it's the worst
'worst is nothing'. We have time for one final question. Yeah you in your
research you referred to the godparents over and over and at that time at that
time and in the structure of the family and and and in the households what was
the role of the importance of godparents and and and you know and as far as them
being called godparents. Okay godparents from what I understand were to stand in
for parents in case the parents were to pass. Godparents were to take care of
their their godchild, to educate them, give them advice. We don't know what the the
exact relationship was between the Nicolanos Indians and the jente terizon
on the Mexican or American or European godparents but it was it was supposed to
be respectful and and beneficial, particularly for the child. (indistinguishable murmuring) Uh not not
not ostensibly exploitative but it could have been that way we just don't
know in this case. All right well we would like to thank Susan Morris for
today's lecture.