Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

ugly stories; Indian-on-Indian violence, husband
against wife as well as wife against husband;
children abandoned, killed in accidents of neglect,
dead of disease or abuse; terrible betrayals by
European, Mexican, and American government
officials, by trusted priests and employers. The loss
of land clearly presaged intergenerational trauma
with the accompanying loss of self-respect and selfesteem.
But the stories—Tom’s deep yearning toward Mt.
Diablo, the theft of El Potrero—the stories still exist,
and testify that our connections to the land live on
beneath the surfaces of our lives, like underground
rivers that never see the light of day, but run alive
and singing nonetheless. The stories call us back.
In my own fascination with these stories, I pored
over maps and historical land records until I could
locate El Potrero on a contemporary map of
California. My whole body leapt forward, the palms
of my hands tingled with a rush of blood, when I
learned that El Potrero, the last Esselen-owned land
in California, home to my immediate ancestors
Fructuoso, Yginia, and Estéfana and her children,
and once the village of Echilat where many of my
ancestors originated, might still exist.