desert calendar - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

tunas, or prickly pear cactus fruit, before
eating them. (May Desert Magazine
cover.)
This fruit is very palatable, but the
tiny spines which grow on the skin
make it difficult to handle. Apparently
the Indians have solved this
problem. The tunas were not ripe at
the time of our visit to Santa Catarina,
and I did not have the opportunity to
see how the bag serves as, a spineremover.
I want to learn more about
this utensil and its use.
The Santa Catarinas have only a
meager income — but they are fine
healthy-looking Indians. The men all
have riding horses. They run a few
cattle on the range, and do a little
farming in the arroyos where there is
moisture. They roast mescal buds and
gather seeds from some of the native
shrubs. Occasionally the men are
given work by Mexican cattle ranchers
in that area, and in the fall many of
the Indians ride 100 miles to the Colorado
delta and pick cotton for Mexican
farmers.
The Mexican government established
a reservation about three miles
square for these Indians — but they
range over the desert area for miles
without much regard for reservation
lines. At the San Miguel camp is a
school house—the only building on
the reservation made with saw-mill
lumber. But there is no teacher. And
that is the only grievance we heard
expressed while we were with these
Indians. They want a teacher for their
children. The Navajo Indians in the
United States have a similar complaint.
When I asked Juan about their religion
he answered, "Maybe little bit
Catholic." The priests seldom visit
this remote village—the last time having
been two years ago. Whatever
may have been the faults of their ancestors,
I had the feeling that these
unschooled primitives, far removed
from church and law, have worked
out for themselves a code of religion
and of social and economic intercourse
which is serving them well.
Aries had a big treat for these Indians.
He had loaded a portable generator
in the back of his jalopy, and
taken along a collapsible screen. After
dinner he gave the Indians an outdoor
picture show—probably the first that
had ever been presented at Santa Catarina.
Many of the pictures shown were
the 35 mm. Kodachromes taken on
his previous visit to Santa Catarina.
It was a strange experience for these
Indians — to see the faces of their
tribesmen on the picture screen. The
men smiled and whispered among
themselves. The women were less restrained.
They laughed and chattered
in wonder and delight.
This picture program in the evening
greatly simplified the problem of securing
what pictures we wanted the next
day. The taboos were all forgotten—
and we took several camera shots of
their sacred cemetery. And it is a
sacred place to these Indians. They
have built a strong barbed-wire fence
around it, and the graves are well kept
and decorated with flowers and tinsel.
Where they got the barbed wire and
tinsel I do not know.
Next morning with Chief Juan and
three of the tribesmen we walked up
the hill to where the mission had been.
Recently, the Indians, in searching for
clay for their pottery, had unearthed
a little kiln which they said had been
used for baking the bricks in the construction
of the mission. Also, they
thought it had been used for smelting
ore from a legendary gold and lead
mine a few miles away.
Judging from the dim outlines of
the walls, marked today only by low
ridges of earth and scattered stones,
the mission quadrangle must have
been about 180 by 225 feet, with three
entrances and a belfry tower in one
corner.
At the time North visited the site
in 1905 the old mission bell was still
there—housed in a little brush shack.
The Indians told us that a few years
ago one of their members got drunk
and sold it to a man in Ensenada.
A considerable part of the cemetery
enclosure is unoccupied, the recent
burials all being in one end. Time and
rain have levelled the remainder of
the cemetery to a smooth sandy floor.
The Indians say that beneath the sand
are the graves of the neophytes buried
here by the padres. Also, they believe
there is an underground tomb in which
are the remains of the priests who met
death here.
But whatever lies beneath the sand
and rocks in that little cemetery is
well guarded—these Indians will tolerate
no intrusion. We did not ask
to go inside the enclosure, but with
the consent of the chief took several
pictures from an outcropping of huge
granite boulders on one side. On this
outcrop I counted 48 grinding holes
in one slab, and 19 in another. These
Indians still use stone on stone for
grinding their meal, but they now have
portable metates in their huts.
Below the cemetery is the little
creek from which the padres got their
water. The creek runs dry during the
summer months, and the missionaries
with the help of their neophytes built
an earth and stone dam to create a
little reservoir. Part of the old dam
is still standing. A portion of it washed
away in a cloudburst storm a few
years ago and the Indians obtained
nine sacks of cement and replaced the
destroyed section with a stone and
cement wall. A more recent storm cut
through the rebuilt dam, where the
old earth and stone wall joins the new
construction—and today the dam is
useless. We made up a little fund with
which they could buy more cement.
While we were inspecting the dam
one of the Indians asked us very seriously
if we could tell them the name
of a water monster which according to
tribal legend came in periodically and
devoured their ancestors. They even
showed us the great boulder where
one of the tribesmen at some time in
the prehistoric past had slain the
dragon with a spear.
It was with genuine regret that we
bade goodbye to these people. Their
ancestors may have been ladrones —
but today they have virtues which we
like to find in our neighbors. There
are not many places in the civilized
world where the buyer sets the price
on the merchandise he wants.
From Santa Catarina we continued
south 11 miles to the Viejo ranch,
which as the name indicates, is one of
the early-day cattle camps in this region.
It is operated by Mexicans, who
share their range with the Indians. At
Rancho Viejo we returned again to
the Ensenada-San Felipe road. For
30 miles we wound through pinyon,
juniper and shrubs of the Upper Sonoran
zone. Then through a narrow
pass we looked down a thousand feet
on a lovely valley carpeted with green
— Valle Trinidad. At one time an
American cattleman, Newt House, operated
this ranch but it has now been
taken over by Mexican ranchers. The
floor of the valley, perhaps ten miles
long and four miles wide, was covered
with a lush growth of filaree, and we
saw a well-kept ranch house. It had
the appearance of a prosperous outfit,
and with such a range it should be,
despite the long rough road necessary
to get livestock out to market.
We dropped down a steep grade
over a rock road to the floor of the
valley and headed eastward toward
the Gulf of California, now about 50
miles away. To reach the coastal plain
the road goes through San Matias
Pass—between the southern end of the
Sierra Juarez and the northern end of
the San Pedro Martyrs, highest range
on the peninsula of Baja California.
Somewhere up in the timbered country
above Valle Trinidad is the San Jose
ranch of Mr. and Mrs. Salvador Meling.
{Desert Magazine, March '51.)
San Matias Pass provides a natural
trade route through the great mountain
barrier which forms the backbone of
the upper peninsula — giving access
between the Pacific and the Gulf of
California. From the days of the padres,
travelers in this region all have
10 DESERT MAGAZINE