Toppenish Cactuses
n most of my adventures there are no rattlesnakes to count.
My last disaster experience was another on the West Coast. This time it was at about the farthest distance I would drive to a FEMA deployment. Often, as was the case in New York, the FEMA response is headquartered in the state's capital. Tacoma, Washington is almost 800 miles from home. I still had my 4 X 4 Jeep pickup with a mobile phone installed, so I would save on telephone and car rental charges, and FEMA would pay me so much per mile to drive to Tacoma and then back home.
The site of the response was in the Yakima Valley 150 miles East of Tacoma. There is a chain of beautiful Mt. Fuji-like snow covered volcanic peaks that extend from California's Mt. Shasta up to Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker near Seattle. It's about 100 miles inland of the coast, where the Pacific plate slides under the continent.
Mt. Adams sits majestically at the Western end of the Valley. It's one of those classic snow-covered volcanoes, this one at 12,307 ft. Thirty miles farther west sits Mt. St Helens, which had famously erupted in 1980, 16 years earlier, blowing off the entire top of the mountain. The Yakima Valley had experienced a large fallout from the explosion and as a result the valley's agricultural output benefitted from the ash and minerals that rained down. But what was the valley's big crop? I could see where something obvious was grown but the fields were bare. There were cables stretched about 20 feet off the ground between poles in rows about 16' apart. They covered vast 100-acre fields, over much of the valley.
In the mid-1990s the Yakima nation renamed itself "YAKAMA", more closely reflecting the proper pronunciation in their native tongue. Almost the whole valley west of the Yakima River is the Yakama Indian Reservation, and most of my inspections were on reservation land. The administrative tribal center is in the historic town of Toppenish. Toppenish is the term the Yakama use to refer to themselves.
When my appointments took me through Toppenish, I was treated to the entire history of the valley and found out what the heck grew there. It's a common practice today, but this was the first time I'd seen murals painted all over a town that told its story.
It was hops! The murals showed what the valley looked like when there were hops growing on tall vines on the vast network of trellises. At harvest time all this vegetation was pulled down and loaded onto horse drawn wagons with big gin poles; and the hops being plucked off the vines by Native American women and crushed. Turns out 75% of the nation's hops were grown in this valley at this time.
Growing up in Southern California I had never met a member of the indigenous tribes of my hometowns. The culture and the people were virtually exterminated by European diseases and the extension of the Spanish Mission system. But the chain of missions up the 17th century California coast came to an end at the Mission San Francisco de Solano on the town square in Sonoma, north of San Francisco.
For tens of thousands of years humans have existed on this relatively dry plateau in central Washington. The Cascade Mountains to the West shelter the valley from the heavy rains common along the Pacific Coast. The snow-covered peak I referred to as Mt. Adams, named after President John Adams, is the sacred mountain Pahto. Her creeks flow down from the Cascades eastward across the valley until they join the Yakima River, descending from the Northwest, which in turn empties into the Columbia River.
Before European contact, the indigenous peoples did a seasonal migration from the lowest spots in the valley to the uplands, and back. They spent the coldest months in their winter villages, located on the valley floor along the Yakima River where the climate was relatively moderate, with reliable sources of wood and water, and shelter from the cold winds. Along the small tributaries villages were rich with food sources including deer, elk, rabbits and waterfowl; riparian and desert plants, and of course; the salmon!
In the spring, when the first edible greens appear, people would spread out across the valley to harvest them. The receding snows would lead them upslope, and edible roots were collected as they matured. Some people would congregate by the rivers to fish. Others would remain in the mountains, following the maturing plants into higher elevations, ending with the huckleberry harvest in the fall.
In October huge spawning runs of the large Chinook salmon provide an abundance for all carnivores, including the people. It was common to eat salmon 4 or 5 times a day when that was happening, and preserve the plenty in smoky drying sheds. In November, there would follow a big run of the smaller Coho salmon. With winter approaching, people carried their bounty back to the winter villages and would settle in, once more living on stored foods and occasional fresh meat until the next spring.
This valley in the South Central part of what is now Washington State, was one of the last areas of the North American continent to be reached by white explorers, first contacted by the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1806.
Like the Portola Expedition in California, their expedition was the vanguard of pioneer expansion that eventually overwhelmed the ancient tribes with the cultures and technologies of white settlers, their armies and their religion. Before 1848, the Oregon and Washington territories were claimed by the US, Great Britain, Spain and Russia. Through various treaties and acts of congress, by 1853 the Washington territory had become a separate entity and integral part of the United States of America.
The territorial governor's task was to negotiate with the various tribes; the Cayuse, Umatilla, Wallawalla, Nez Perce and Yakama, and make agreements to cede much of their land, allowing pioneer settlers and mining interests to operate without native harassment, and creating reservations and rights that the indigenous would hold in perpetuity. Governor Stevens signed a treaty 1855 with fourteen tribal chiefs from the Columbia River North to Canada that defined the boundaries and guaranteed fishing, hunting and gathering of traditional plants in the ceded areas as well as the reservations; and allowed two years for the various tribes to migrate to and resettle in their new lands.
Like so many treaties Native Americans made with the US government, this treaty was betrayed just 12 days after signing when Governor Stevens, through northwest newspapers declared that all ceded lands were open and available for white settlement.
A Yakama chief, Kamiakin, called on the tribes to take up arms to resist these duplicitous actions. The 4 years that followed came to be known as the Yakima War, marked by raids, counter raids and atrocities on both sides. This uprising continued until 1859, when hostilities came to an end and the Yakama Nations accepted their reservation.
The Yakama that moved onto the reservations soon tired of the restrictions and arduous tasks imposed on them by their white guardians. Few of the economic and social benefits promised them ever materialized as they depended on the premise that the Indians would become "civilized", become farmers and cattlemen and attend church. Religion was forced upon them with punitive measures. Even their long hair was ordered cut by an Act of Congress: the Dawes Severalty Act, of 1879, a blueprint for stealing the lands and ignoring the treaties' provisions for tribal rights and the smoking gun of what today we would call "cultural genocide".
The tribes entered into these treaties with the United States government in exchange for education and health care. The government hoped they would turn away from their native beliefs. The leaders of spiritual ceremonies were often imprisoned and hobbled with ball and chain. While teaching the Ten Commandments, many of their white Christian guardians swindled them out of their lands, and the government goods sent to the reservations were diverted for their own use and profit. With their simple ethics, the Yakama expected actions to agree with teachings, and saw through the contradictions. Many rejected Christian double talk and left the reservations to return to their old ways along the river.
Altogether this arrangement amounted to subjugation. It was a similar pattern as the enslavement of my hometown's native Chumash and other California tribes by the Spanish Missions. Their lands had been stolen and they had become wards of a foreign culture, under the thumb of an advanced military.
As on many other aboriginal homelands, the white settlers took every spot of land along the banks of the rivers providing cultural collisions between the Indians who returned to the river to fish. The lands adjacent to the Indians' fishing locations were deeded to the settlers, making it necessary for the Indians to cross settlers' parcels to get to their fisheries. They also set up their teepees and drying sheds on these lands. Since many brought their horses with them, they grazed their horses on their traditional lands that were now ceded to the white settlers.
In the decades that followed, the railroads were established, mining companies dug into every promising hillside, and timber was harvested. The new settlers brought with them the whole 19th Century Euro-American culture, displacing every part of the Yakama way of life. The arid landscape was difficult to farm but suitable for grazing cattle. In about 1865, someone discovered it was ideal for hops. Huge acreages of hop farming fields were put to use, and just like the plantation formula everywhere, the indigenous Yakama people became the seasonal farm labor for vast holdings of wealthy farmers, a pattern that continues today.
The disaster in this FEMA deployment was a flood and ice event, similar to the Steuben County ice storm. Few of the homes had major damage, though one family's crude housing located near a streambed that overflowed its banks, was swept away so that no buildings remained on the property. Another claimant lived higher in the snow covered foothills and the driveway at the time was not navigable without four wheel drive. We met on the road, where she had arrived in her car. We drove in my truck the 150 feet up to the house. Which I shouldn't have done, but it would expedite her claim if I could get to the house, and fortunately I was able to get in and out of there without getting stuck.
The last house I inspected sat on a low foothill at the NW corner of the valley, overlooking the whole reservation and sloping plateau with the green belts along the Yakima River and its smaller tributaries off in the distance. The Toppenish woman who lived there led me into her house and of course to the kitchen table to do our paperwork.
I recognized the small bulbous fuzzy succulents in a growing in a shallow bowl on the table in the little sunroom alcove where we met to look over her documents. "Little cactuses!" I said. "Yes", she said, "That's peyote which we are allowed to grow as our sacred tradition." With an agent of the US government in her home, she was making clear she was within her rights. I would have loved to shared my experiences and visions with mescaline and peyote; and the web of existence that joins us all. But for the moment, I was Uncle Sam, and I just nodded approvingly.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
My last disaster experience was another on the West Coast. This time it was at about the farthest distance I would drive to a FEMA deployment. Often, as was the case in New York, the FEMA response is headquartered in the state's capital. Tacoma, Washington is almost 800 miles from home. I still had my 4 X 4 Jeep pickup with a mobile phone installed, so I would save on telephone and car rental charges, and FEMA would pay me so much per mile to drive to Tacoma and then back home.
The site of the response was in the Yakima Valley 150 miles East of Tacoma. There is a chain of beautiful Mt. Fuji-like snow covered volcanic peaks that extend from California's Mt. Shasta up to Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker near Seattle. It's about 100 miles inland of the coast, where the Pacific plate slides under the continent.
Mt. Adams sits majestically at the Western end of the Valley. It's one of those classic snow-covered volcanoes, this one at 12,307 ft. Thirty miles farther west sits Mt. St Helens, which had famously erupted in 1980, 16 years earlier, blowing off the entire top of the mountain. The Yakima Valley had experienced a large fallout from the explosion and as a result the valley's agricultural output benefitted from the ash and minerals that rained down. But what was the valley's big crop? I could see where something obvious was grown but the fields were bare. There were cables stretched about 20 feet off the ground between poles in rows about 16' apart. They covered vast 100-acre fields, over much of the valley.
In the mid-1990s the Yakima nation renamed itself "YAKAMA", more closely reflecting the proper pronunciation in their native tongue. Almost the whole valley west of the Yakima River is the Yakama Indian Reservation, and most of my inspections were on reservation land. The administrative tribal center is in the historic town of Toppenish. Toppenish is the term the Yakama use to refer to themselves. When my appointments took me through Toppenish, I was treated to the entire history of the valley and found out what the heck grew there. It's a common practice today, but this was the first time I'd seen murals painted all over a town that told its story.
It was hops! The murals showed what the valley looked like when there were hops growing on tall vines on the vast network of trellises. At harvest time all this vegetation was pulled down and loaded onto horse drawn wagons with big gin poles; and the hops being plucked off the vines by Native American women and crushed. Turns out 75% of the nation's hops were grown in this valley at this time.
Growing up in Southern California I had never met a member of the indigenous tribes of my hometowns. The culture and the people were virtually exterminated by European diseases and the extension of the Spanish Mission system. But the chain of missions up the 17th century California coast came to an end at the Mission San Francisco de Solano on the town square in Sonoma, north of San Francisco.
For tens of thousands of years humans have existed on this relatively dry plateau in central Washington. The Cascade Mountains to the West shelter the valley from the heavy rains common along the Pacific Coast. The snow-covered peak I referred to as Mt. Adams, named after President John Adams, is the sacred mountain Pahto. Her creeks flow down from the Cascades eastward across the valley until they join the Yakima River, descending from the Northwest, which in turn empties into the Columbia River.
Before European contact, the indigenous peoples did a seasonal migration from the lowest spots in the valley to the uplands, and back. They spent the coldest months in their winter villages, located on the valley floor along the Yakima River where the climate was relatively moderate, with reliable sources of wood and water, and shelter from the cold winds. Along the small tributaries villages were rich with food sources including deer, elk, rabbits and waterfowl; riparian and desert plants, and of course; the salmon!
In the spring, when the first edible greens appear, people would spread out across the valley to harvest them. The receding snows would lead them upslope, and edible roots were collected as they matured. Some people would congregate by the rivers to fish. Others would remain in the mountains, following the maturing plants into higher elevations, ending with the huckleberry harvest in the fall.
In October huge spawning runs of the large Chinook salmon provide an abundance for all carnivores, including the people. It was common to eat salmon 4 or 5 times a day when that was happening, and preserve the plenty in smoky drying sheds. In November, there would follow a big run of the smaller Coho salmon. With winter approaching, people carried their bounty back to the winter villages and would settle in, once more living on stored foods and occasional fresh meat until the next spring.
This valley in the South Central part of what is now Washington State, was one of the last areas of the North American continent to be reached by white explorers, first contacted by the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1806.
Like the Portola Expedition in California, their expedition was the vanguard of pioneer expansion that eventually overwhelmed the ancient tribes with the cultures and technologies of white settlers, their armies and their religion. Before 1848, the Oregon and Washington territories were claimed by the US, Great Britain, Spain and Russia. Through various treaties and acts of congress, by 1853 the Washington territory had become a separate entity and integral part of the United States of America.
The territorial governor's task was to negotiate with the various tribes; the Cayuse, Umatilla, Wallawalla, Nez Perce and Yakama, and make agreements to cede much of their land, allowing pioneer settlers and mining interests to operate without native harassment, and creating reservations and rights that the indigenous would hold in perpetuity. Governor Stevens signed a treaty 1855 with fourteen tribal chiefs from the Columbia River North to Canada that defined the boundaries and guaranteed fishing, hunting and gathering of traditional plants in the ceded areas as well as the reservations; and allowed two years for the various tribes to migrate to and resettle in their new lands.
Like so many treaties Native Americans made with the US government, this treaty was betrayed just 12 days after signing when Governor Stevens, through northwest newspapers declared that all ceded lands were open and available for white settlement.
A Yakama chief, Kamiakin, called on the tribes to take up arms to resist these duplicitous actions. The 4 years that followed came to be known as the Yakima War, marked by raids, counter raids and atrocities on both sides. This uprising continued until 1859, when hostilities came to an end and the Yakama Nations accepted their reservation.
The Yakama that moved onto the reservations soon tired of the restrictions and arduous tasks imposed on them by their white guardians. Few of the economic and social benefits promised them ever materialized as they depended on the premise that the Indians would become "civilized", become farmers and cattlemen and attend church. Religion was forced upon them with punitive measures. Even their long hair was ordered cut by an Act of Congress: the Dawes Severalty Act, of 1879, a blueprint for stealing the lands and ignoring the treaties' provisions for tribal rights and the smoking gun of what today we would call "cultural genocide".
The tribes entered into these treaties with the United States government in exchange for education and health care. The government hoped they would turn away from their native beliefs. The leaders of spiritual ceremonies were often imprisoned and hobbled with ball and chain. While teaching the Ten Commandments, many of their white Christian guardians swindled them out of their lands, and the government goods sent to the reservations were diverted for their own use and profit. With their simple ethics, the Yakama expected actions to agree with teachings, and saw through the contradictions. Many rejected Christian double talk and left the reservations to return to their old ways along the river.
Altogether this arrangement amounted to subjugation. It was a similar pattern as the enslavement of my hometown's native Chumash and other California tribes by the Spanish Missions. Their lands had been stolen and they had become wards of a foreign culture, under the thumb of an advanced military.
As on many other aboriginal homelands, the white settlers took every spot of land along the banks of the rivers providing cultural collisions between the Indians who returned to the river to fish. The lands adjacent to the Indians' fishing locations were deeded to the settlers, making it necessary for the Indians to cross settlers' parcels to get to their fisheries. They also set up their teepees and drying sheds on these lands. Since many brought their horses with them, they grazed their horses on their traditional lands that were now ceded to the white settlers.
In the decades that followed, the railroads were established, mining companies dug into every promising hillside, and timber was harvested. The new settlers brought with them the whole 19th Century Euro-American culture, displacing every part of the Yakama way of life. The arid landscape was difficult to farm but suitable for grazing cattle. In about 1865, someone discovered it was ideal for hops. Huge acreages of hop farming fields were put to use, and just like the plantation formula everywhere, the indigenous Yakama people became the seasonal farm labor for vast holdings of wealthy farmers, a pattern that continues today.
The disaster in this FEMA deployment was a flood and ice event, similar to the Steuben County ice storm. Few of the homes had major damage, though one family's crude housing located near a streambed that overflowed its banks, was swept away so that no buildings remained on the property. Another claimant lived higher in the snow covered foothills and the driveway at the time was not navigable without four wheel drive. We met on the road, where she had arrived in her car. We drove in my truck the 150 feet up to the house. Which I shouldn't have done, but it would expedite her claim if I could get to the house, and fortunately I was able to get in and out of there without getting stuck.
The last house I inspected sat on a low foothill at the NW corner of the valley, overlooking the whole reservation and sloping plateau with the green belts along the Yakima River and its smaller tributaries off in the distance. The Toppenish woman who lived there led me into her house and of course to the kitchen table to do our paperwork.
I recognized the small bulbous fuzzy succulents in a growing in a shallow bowl on the table in the little sunroom alcove where we met to look over her documents. "Little cactuses!" I said. "Yes", she said, "That's peyote which we are allowed to grow as our sacred tradition." With an agent of the US government in her home, she was making clear she was within her rights. I would have loved to shared my experiences and visions with mescaline and peyote; and the web of existence that joins us all. But for the moment, I was Uncle Sam, and I just nodded approvingly.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com