Standing Ground: Yurok Indian Spirituality, 1850–1990

Acknowledgments

This book offers my present understandings of Yurok Indians and of the neighboring native peoples with whom the Yuroks continue to be richly intertwined, culturally and historically. I write about them as they were between 1850, when the California gold rush erupted in their midst, and 1991, when I last did formal anthropological research in northwestern California . Now, in the year 2002, eleven years does not seem too many to have taken to consider just what I want to say about the American Indian people there. I lived in the lower Klamath River region in 1973–74 and returned there as a graduate student in cultural anthropology in 1976, coming back many times after that for weeks or months of research and, increasingly, simply to see my friends. In the years since 1973, almost everyone that I know, American Indian and non-Indian alike, has helped me in some way or ix Acknowledgments other to bring this book about. I greet and thank all of them. To some, however, I need to give special thanks by name. First, my respects to the memories of native Californian elders who welcomed and taught me in the 1970s and ‘80s. They have passed on now, but all continue to teach. Frank Douglas, Dewey George, Ella Norris, Calvin Rube, Florence Shaughnessy, all speaking Yurok as a first language, all took important, lasting places in my life and life-aspirations. Perhaps they did not know me quite so well, but Howard Ames, Aileen Figueroa, Sam Jones, Antone (Anafey) Obee, all Yurok, and Georgina Matilton (Hupa) were generous with their time and knowledge and remain welcomed presences in my life. I cannot imagine myself without the eleven years that I studied with my adoptive uncle, the late Harry K. Roberts (1906–81), a non-Indian raised Yurok. (I introduce him more fully in chapter 2.) Miss these elders as we must, we are all fortunate that later generations continue on in their spirit with intelligence, determination, and creative verve. Jimmie James and Walt Lara (Yurok) and Josephine Peters (Karuk) have been helpful to me, and sometimes much more. Over these many years Chris Peters (Yurok), Julian Lang and Brian D. Tripp (Karuk), Loren Bommelyn (Tolowa), Jack Norton (Hupa-Cherokee), and Kathy Heffner McClellan (Wailaki) have been both friends and the best colleagues I could ask for. Since long before my own first days on the Klamath River, another friend, Merk Oliver (Yurok), has been there—enduring, funny, wise to the world and generous with welcome and the fish that he is famous for catching and cooking. Ko wic’o, Merk. Among academic scholars, Raymond D. Fogelson, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, has been of inestimable help in all that is in this book. Erudite and constant, a compassionate mentor, a teacher in the best senses of the word, Ray has many students inAmerican Indian studies writing now only because he has supported us and our work from the very beginning. I hope that this book repays his efforts in some small part. If I have learned anything from the native people I’ve mentioned, it is to value my own family. My son Jesse (who started dodging bears with me in the Siskiyou Mountains when he was still riding in a pack frame) x a c k n ow l e d g m e n t s and my wife, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, to whom I dedicate this book, are at the center. How could I have lived or loved without you both? There are many others to thank: Audrey Jones for her big heart, Marcellene Norton (Hupa) for her hospitality, Bill Hunter, Victor Golla, and Alan Bramlette (Cherokee) for giving me home bases when I was on the river. Bertha Peters and Florence Walsh (both Yurok), Carol, Tom, and Lawrence O’Rourke (Yurok), and Grandma Ada Charles (Yurok) all shared their jump dance camps and tables with me at Pecwan in 1988 and 1990. The strong examples they set in performing their demanding duties have been as lasting, for me, as their warmth and humor. I also thank Paul Friedrich, Michael Silverstein, George W. Stocking, Jr., and Terry Strauss, a woman for all seasons, all at the University of Chicago; Joan Berman, Lee Davis, Victor Golla (again), Diana Heberger, Jean Perry, the late Arnold Remington Pilling, Yvonne Rand, Esther Roberts, and Ned Simmons, all devoted and energetic witnesses to...