Jerry Schaefer - Society for California Archaeology

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Figure 1. Lithograph of Old Town San Diego, based on the original 1850 sketch by H. M. T. Powell. View south from Presidio Hill. The arrow points to the Bandini Adobe (Pourade 1963:131). Other prominent families also likely brought household servants with them when they arrived in Old Town. Indians, however, were always a small segment of the pueblo population. Farris (2006) suggests that some Indians formerly at the missions likely sought employment by necessity or choice at the pueblo after the missions were secularized in 1834-1835, although a much larger number either found work on the ranchos, joined one of the Indian pueblos libres or took up residence in a rancheria. Farris found 26 servants and their families in 13 different households listed in the April 17, 1836 census of Old Town. In most cases, they are described as attached to the woman who was head of the household. Three Indian servants of Don Juan Bandini are listed: Juan Miguel; his wife, Juana; and a single man also named Miguel. Married couples were often listed as servants, sometimes with their children who also likely worked for the family. Farris mentions that the cook was sometimes a male because of his previous mission experience. Other jobs included housemaids, nannies, and gardeners. The types of manual labor performed by household staff included cooking, grinding corn and grains, slaughtering animals, and collecting firewood. Indian servants continued as household members in Old Town well into the American era. They can be identified in the 1860 San Diego County Census (San Diego Genealogical Society n.d.) as “domestic servants” or “servant” born in California and listed with only a first name, as are most of the people living in the Indian rancherias as enumerated in the census (Figure 2). Approximately 28 Indian servants can be identified in Old Town, about the same number as counted in the 1836 census. Quite a number of them were children and teenagers. By this time, Juan Bandini had died and the adobe was unoccupied. Indian alienation and poverty were getting worse by then, but the Indians continued to live in small camps in Mission Valley and elsewhere. The 1860 census lists 59 individuals distributed among 11 households at “San Diego Indian Village,” a location at Florida Canyon and Pershing Drive (S. Carrico 1986). SCA Proceedings, Volume 26 (2012) Schaefer, p. 138
Figure 2. Late nineteenth-century Kumeyaay rancheria in San Diego (commercial postcard in possession of the author). It is not known if Indian servants or workmen attended to the Albert Seeley household, although it is probable they were employed in the renovation and for various tasks in the hotel and adjacent stables. The 1870 and 1880 U.S. censuses list no Indians in residence at the Cosmo. As foodways and cooking technology changed with the conversion of the Casa de Bandini to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, it is likely that there was much less desire for the cooking staff to use traditional Indian pottery or other Native American tools for utilitarian purposes. Once a cast-iron stove was installed, round-bottomed cooking pots were probably not as practical. Susan Davis Tiffany reported in her memoirs of her time in residence at the Bandini Adobe (1898-1911) when it was a boarding house during the Ackerman and Tuffley era, that it was no trouble to acquire the services of Mexican and Indian girls and workmen who lived nearby. In fact, they had a “full blooded” Indian cook who prepared excellent Mexican dishes on their cast-iron stove (Tiffany 1973:8-9, 17). CERAMICS The archaeological record provides the clearest testimony to Indian participation in the Bandini household. A large sample of Tizon Brown Ware was recovered from the excavations, most of it in good SCA Proceedings, Volume 26 (2012) Schaefer, p. 139
Page 1: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF NATIVE A
Page 5 and 6: Table 1. Tizon Brown Ware ceramic c
Page 7 and 8: Figure 4. Tizon Brown Ware rim prof
Page 9 and 10: Figure 6. Range of Tizon Brown Ware
Page 11 and 12: CAT. NO. UNIT AREA ARTIFACT TYPE MA
Page 13 and 14: Figure 9. Typical Mexican kitchen a
Page 15 and 16: Figure 11. Representative sample of
Page 17 and 18: Kidd, Kenneth E., and Martha Ann Ki

Jerry Schaefer - Society for California Archaeology

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