061: The Attack on Mission San Diego: Interview with Richard Carrico (Part 2)

In Part 2 of our conversation, we delve into the 1775 sacking of Mission San Diego de Alcalá, a pivotal event in California's history. Richard's detailed research challenges mainstream historical accounts and highlights the specific involvement of the Tipai subgroup of the Kumeyaay people in the attack. 

Richard discusses the complex motives behind the sacking, including religious conflicts, cultural grievances, and retribution for abuses by Spanish soldiers. 

We also explore the nuanced aftermath of the event, the Spanish military's response, and the broader implications for Spanish-Kumeyaay relations. 

This episode offers a deep dive into the anthropology and ethnohistory of the Kumeyaay, providing a richer understanding of their complex relationship with the Spanish, Mexican and U.S. governments. 

00:00 Introduction to the 1775 Sacking of Mission San Diego
00:57 Excavation and Historical Research
02:32 Anthropological Insights and Clan Dynamics
04:46 Motives Behind the Attack
05:34 Aftermath and Spanish Military Response
11:56 Cultural and Religious Implications
31:27 Long-term Effects and Legacy
44:43 Modern Reflections and Career Advice

Transcript

Richard Carrico 0:00

All the Kumeyaay, all 18, 000 Kumeyaay, were not involved in the sacking of this mission. It was a very clan specific sacking, and it was all, it was the villages, the warriors, south of the San Diego River. So, for years, while people knew about it, people didn't address the differences between the group called the Ipai, which is a northern branch of the Kumeyaay, slightly linguistically different, and the Tipai, south of the San Diego River. What my research led me to believe was that only the Tipai took part in the sacking. Because they had the grievances and also it was clan oriented and the clans in San Diego and the alliances go east to west.

RODECaster Duo Main Stereo-2 0:49

I'm really pleased to offer part two. I have my conversation with archeologists, Richard Kericho. In this half of the discussion. We're going to talk about the research that Richard has done. On one of the key events. In the history of the Spanish presence in Alta, California. Which was the 1775. Sacking and burning of mission San Diego, they all call up the first mission founded in Alta, California.

RODECaster Duo Main Stereo-3 1:21

And because of the nature of the events that took place. The topics we're going to discuss are fairly mature. Involve violence and abuse. And I think that this is an episode that is probably not appropriate for younger listeners. So take that as you will.

RODECaster Duo Main Stereo-2 1:44

But. For mature listeners. It is really fascinating. And I think you're going to find it very interesting. So without further ado, let's get into the conversation.

Damian Bacich 1:56

So maybe we could transition into, The topic that we talked about, which was the, the sacking, the 1775 sacking of Mission San Diego de Alcala, which, which is a very foundational event in the history of San Diego and the history of California for that matter. And as you mentioned, we're up against, I guess it's the 249th. year anniversary of that event. Next year will be the 250th and it also coincides with

Richard Carrico 2:29

Yep,

Damian Bacich 2:30

arrival of the second ANZA expedition in Alta California, etc. So you had a very interesting study on that event and I'd love to hear if you could recap what you spoke about at the California Missions Conference and anything else you'd like to talk about along those lines.

Richard Carrico 2:53

sure. Well, back in. Let's say 1990 ish, uh, having, we'd closed out the Presidio excavation and I had started, I had done the excavation at Mission San Diego that ultimately got closed down. It was to build a parish hall and everyone told the Monsignor there in 1989 88 to not build it there because there were probably burials and, and the first and second mission were on, on that site were out there, but he persisted and I got the contract to go do it. And in doing that, I wanted to really delve more into the mission records and what was going on. So this was 1988. The dig was 89. We dug out there for almost six months and ultimately the tribes closed the excavation down and the hall got built where it should have been built, in a vacant parking lot basically. But that led me to looking at a lot of records of the time period when that mission was there. And I was reading about the sacking of the mission and what Bancroft has said about it, H. H. Bancroft, what local historians had written over the years. And I found a lot of inconsistencies and things that just didn't anthropologically make sense to me about it. So the history, I mean, the dates were right. The mission was sacked by Kumeyaay people. Three people were killed, Spanish people. So the history was accurate, but the anthropology of it, the ethno history or anthropology, wasn't. So what I came up with and wrote one of my first papers in, um, the Journal of San Diego History, I think it was, in late 90s, was All the Kumeyaay, all 18, 000 Kumeyaay, were not involved in the sacking of this mission. It was a very clan specific sacking, and it was all, it was the villages, the warriors, south of the San Diego River. So, for years, while people knew about it, people didn't address the differences between the group called the Ipai, which is a northern branch of the Kumeyaay, slightly linguistically different, and the TIpai, south of the San Diego River. What my research led me to believe was that only the Tipai took part in the sacking. Because they had the grievances and also it was clan oriented and the clans in San Diego and the alliances go east to west. They run along the river and the Tipai clans are different than the Ipai clans and the intermarriage and all that. So once I, I got into this diary of the commandant of the Presidio in Spanish, he lists the villages. He tells you every village based on. torturing people, torturing TIpai, he tells you the villages that took part in it, and he tells you which villages did not. And this interrogation, kind of like, you know, Abu Ghraibs or something, went on for months and months and months and months. So I started making a list, At the same time, I was doing a paper on where were the Kumeyaay villages of San Diego County, and I could do a map and put a dot and go, this one sacked the mission, this one didn't. And when I was done, I stood back and looked at it, and none of them were north of the river, even though they had had rapes, and they had had killings, and they, two women at one of the villages north of the river hanged themselves. Because they'd been molested by Spanish soldiers. And so that led to me writing one of the first papers that really got into, here's the villages and not the Native American view necessarily, but here's why they said they did it. It wasn't a military operation. It was to kill Father Jaime, Luis Jaime, because they perceived him as a devil. Somebody who was undermining and undercutting their native religions. And, yes, they killed two other people at the same time. But it was really to kill Jaime and destroy that religious center. Wasn't much talked about in some of the journals prior to that. Kumi Amen, TIpai Amen had surrounded the Presidio. And if the guards would have come out of the Presidio that night, they would have killed them. There were only 25 people to Presidio that night, maybe 30. There were hundreds of Kumeyaay, but the guard was asleep, didn't call the alarm, and nobody came out of the gates of the Presidio, so they didn't even know about the sacking until the next morning. So, that paper that you heard me present was taking a look at it, what was really going on, what were the motives, You know, and in the military or life in general, you look at, was your mission successful? And so your mission is successful based on the goal of your mission. If their goal was to kill Father Jaime and burn the mission to the ground and take those artifacts, crucifixes, baptism fonts that they perceived to be sacrilegious to them, the Kumeyaay, and destroy those things, then they succeeded. Some historians would see it as a failure because it didn't stop Spain from missionizing San Diego and rebuilding the mission. But that, I believe that wasn't their goal. It was, I don't think they thought the Spaniards were going to run away just because they sacked the mission. So that, that paper I gave that you heard followed up on it and said, well, what happened after that also? And what were the interrogations? And, and, you know, they flipped the Indians. They gave them 40, 50 Azotes, you know, and they tortured them. Some died in the prison. So I wanted to follow up on, yeah, that wasn't the ending of this, this. This thing, this theme, it was the middle, you know, they fomented it, they did it, and then some of them paid the price for it.

Damian Bacich 8:57

can c can I stop you there for a

Richard Carrico 9:00

amazing topic.

Damian Bacich 9:01

So, going back, so just to recap, the Tipai who lives south the, the of the San Diego River were the ones who carried out the attack on the mission, and the main goal was to execute Father Jaime, who was the, the Padre mission at the missionary, at the mission, which they accomplished, uh, because they felt it. He was attacking their traditional religious beliefs. So, why didn't the Epi north of the river participate in that attack? Did they have the same view vis a vis the priest there?

Richard Carrico 9:48

I think they had the same view. Um, some of the villages north of the river, because they were more isolated, hadn't been contacted as much. So the original mission was at the Presidio of San Diego, 1769. And for the first couple of years, there were no baptisms, no Native Americans came in and got baptized. So now we're up to 1771. And in about 1774, Father Unepero Serra and Luis Jaime, who took over for him in San Diego as Serra went up the coast, agreed that the mission should be moved. That the Native Americans were not going to come into a military institution and get baptized. They, they did, they were afraid of the military in some cases. And even if they weren't afraid, they didn't like them. They didn't like those men. And also that Presidio mission wasn't very successful in growing crops and having gifts to give to the tribes. And that's of course a big selling point. And so they prevailed, Jaime and, and Sarah prevailed and the mission was moved in 1774. Literally, I mean, they took the baptism font and they took the dados and they took what they needed and they moved them up the mission to Mission Valley, where it is today. And once they were there, Father Jaime then started being successful and went out and baptized, I'm not sure converted, but baptized hundreds of Indians. Most of those, many of those, were south of the San Diego River. There were a lot north of the river, probably more south because the terrain was more accessible to go baptize people. The villages were a little closer together. But I want to stress, many villages, like the village of Poway, here in San Diego, and those along the coast had a lot of contact. We found trade beads, you know, on those villages. We see them in the mission records. We see baptisms. We see deaths. Some of them even got buried at the mission, came in, some of the Kumeyaay from the coast near La Jolla, came in and stayed at the mission. So it wasn't a complete lack of contact, but I think there was a mentality amongst the religious leaders. of the Tepei, the Cuyasay, that they should be wIpaing out the mission. And maybe the people in the north felt that as well, but I think the organizational skills were a little bit different. The villages down here were a little more populated. And a friend of mine who works a lot with the Cuitzan, used to be called the Yuma Indians, on the Colorado River. When you look at that east west, Those Kwitsan people were a lot more aggressive. I don't want to use the word warlike, but they were more aggressive, and they didn't put up with a lot. I mean, they're going to close off the trails into San Diego in 1781. So I think there's a cultural thing. There's a difference there culturally. I think the Southern people were more militaristic, and I think their Kwisai, from what I can tell at least, were more influential in influencing the headmen and the military men to go do this sacking. Because again, it's not, I think it was a religious war in that sense, I think it was a sacred war, or a sacred battle, to get rid of that problem, and for whatever reason, the people south of the river did it. And about 12 villages were involved and not thousands of soldiers, thousands of Kumeyaay warriors, like people used to say, you know, some, some hundreds for certain. So that's my take on it. And a couple of different scholars, you know, Steve Hackle and Sandos and some other people that I've worked with, as I ran drafts of this idea past them, they said, that makes perfect sense from a cultural perspective.

Damian Bacich 13:49

So would you say,

Richard Carrico 13:50

enough, I'm sorry.

Damian Bacich 13:53

would you say then that the, that the abuses that we hear about by the soldiers, especially these being native women, uh, didn't play a role or, or played a more minor role in the, uh, in the attack?

Richard Carrico 14:11

I think it, I wouldn't call it a minor role. I think if you look at it culturally, it's, it's for the Kumeyaay, as well as some other native people throughout what's now the United States. The abuse or molesting or raping a woman is actually a sacrilegious thing to do. you're taking their spirit away from them. You're, you're tainting them. You're making them not so much an unwanted woman like you would hear in some other cultures. It's not that. It's that the woman is perceived to be a very sacred being, and they see things and they hear things and they know things and they give birth and they, many cases, no plants that a man doesn't know how to use. So to somehow deface or abuse a woman actually has a sacred element to it. And you're, and you're desecrating them. So it's very intertwined. It's not just the physical abuse. And we all know, in the times that we live in, that rape is used as a method of warfare to, to degrade people and, and to cause morale problems and all that. So I think there was a religious tone to the rapes, if you will, if you look at it from the Native American perspective. It's also, I think, and you know. This is not exactly a feminist approach, clearly, but for many Kumeyaay men and other native men, those women, be it their wife, their daughter, their sister, at some level belong to the men, not in a chattel or property way, but spiritually and culturally belong to those men. And so you're, you're also then harming the man by this process. So I think it was, I think it's a very nuanced, it kind of all fits in together, and I think moving the mission right into the heart of Kumeyaay TIpai territory also was an offense to them. Okay, you're on the coast. You've got this mission inside of a Presidio. A lot of our people aren't coming in and being baptized. Maybe you'll go away. Maybe you'll start getting some goods we can trade with you. Okay, stay there. But once they moved six miles east and got right on top of a major village called Nipawai and literally built the mission. on top of it. In fact, when I excavated it, once we got below the floor tiles, there was a village for five more feet. So I think it's, it's very complex. And that's what I was trying to get into. This was not just a battle or a singular event driven by warriors or by military to take out the Spanish colonial. It's, it's much more interlaced than that. I still don't, I still don't have all the answers. that's for sure.

Damian Bacich 17:03

I see that, that's really interesting. And that makes, that makes Well, of course, when, when you start, um. Complicating something it makes more sense because People are complicated people's motivations are complex and there are always layers to things So that's that's very interesting and very helpful So you were gonna talk before I interrupted you you were talking a little bit about the aftermath of the of that sacking and how the, how the, uh, the military, Spanish military dealt with the, uh, the guys who carried it out or the ones they captured.

Richard Carrico 17:42

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm working on a piece on that and by going through ADA's diary, he was the Commandant of the Presidio, so Fernando Ada, so this is 1775.

Damian Bacich 17:57

And Rivera,

Richard Carrico 17:57

writes his diaries in

Damian Bacich 17:59

um, brought the group to populate, um, uh, Los Angeles, Pueblos Los Angeles in 1781.

Richard Carrico 18:08

Yes, yes. He was one of those guys who constantly, not constantly, but often went back down across the Colorado River down into Sonora and recruited people, or they'd already been recruited. Then he brought them back up. He brought soldiers from Sinaloa. He brought women up for the first time, a lot of women with soldiers as their wives and daughters, who then became the populations of San Diego and Los Angeles. And he doesn't know it in 1775 or 1776 when he's interviewing these, uh, these warriors, these Cabasillas. He only has five years to live. He's going to come across the Colorado River, one time too many in 1781, and the Quetzal are going to kill him, and Father Garces, and everybody with him. Except for some hostages. So he, I think he was a pretty astute military man. I think in his own way, he understood the native people pretty well. Having worked with them a lot, he, he, he sends soldiers out to the villages that he knows about. And they, they, they arrest people. He did it under Spanish law. And he writes this in his diary. He's obviously writing this so the viceroy and everybody else will see it in the future. But he's saying, following the laws of the, of the Indies and following the viceroys, blah, blah, blah, I did this. He wants, he doesn't want to be seen as a rogue and unlike some other people like Anza and some others, he doesn't want to go out. He doesn't have the people to do it anyhow. He doesn't want to go out and attack villages for revenge or go out and do a military action. He's not capable of doing it for one thing, but he doesn't think that's going to be productive. And the more military people want to want to do that very much. So instead he sends people out and in his diary, and then in other articles written by Ortega, who was his lead sergeant, and we've got all his documents from the Bancroft library. Um, they brought the leaders back and they interrogated them. And they had a couple of guys that were very good Spanish Kumeyaay speakers, one of whom was named Diego. I think actually he was playing both sides. I think he was a double agent. But Diego is the interpreter, and when you compare his interpretations, literally translations, and another interpreter, they're very similar. So it's not like people are making stuff up entirely. And what you get is Here's the leaders. Here's who the leaders are. Here's what villages they were from. Here's villages that didn't take part in it. And when asked why they didn't take part in it, Poway for instance, or Istawa along the coast, simply say, I'll paraphrase, we weren't invited. We just weren't invited. So that goes back to your question earlier of why they weren't, because the alliance, that wasn't their alliance. Now, even if some of the clans were similar, it wasn't part of their alliance. So they weren't invited to come to that war or that battle. You could kind of think about it. You know, the French, the British, the Spanish back in the 16, 1500s, constantly making new alliances. And so sometimes you weren't, Spain wasn't invited to join France to go do this or that. Right. So it's that on, on that kind of political scale. So he, he, he had the authority, he, Fernando Rivera Moncada and Ortega to whip these men, if they, if they, if they were obdurant and didn't want to talk, he was allowed to whip them. Uh, there were prescriptions. You were only supposed to do 40 lashes a day. You were not supposed to do any more than that in his diary. He says, I did, I did more than 40 sometimes because he was, he was being recalcitrant and what develops is you can see who the leaders were, um, both self identified, some of them were proud to have done this, others kind of turned on, you know, somebody, especially some of the people from the EPI, frankly, who knew who the leaders were. They said, Oh, well, we heard. Because remember, they're not there. We heard it was Francisco from El Capitan, or it was this person or that person. So we got pages and pages, and when you line them all up and you look for discrepancies, you can see the major villages that took part in it. And back to our earlier discussion, the major village for one part of the county was the Bancroft Ranch House site. It was Mette, that's where they all grouped up. That's where four or five of the villages met the night before, got their act together, got their bows and arrows, got their clubs, got a good night's sleep. Then the next night went out and took out the mission. So we have all that good information. A neat thing for me is Moncada sent a couple sergeants down by the south end of San Diego Bay, not too far from T'Quan, down there by the San Diego Bay to go find the Calviseas, the leaders down there. The sun was rising and the soldiers are moving in toward the village to make the capture. The captains of the village saw this and got in their canoes and went out to, went out to the ocean and escaped, basically. And Somebody at the village said, yeah, you won't catch them. You won't catch my leaders because they're in their boats and they're a long way away now and you can't sneak up on us. We have patrols. So again, that adds a whole other element to it, right? This is not just a one off and it's very organized. Very organized. Uh, Paul Chase gave a good paper and has written about a guy named Naguasso, who was a major leader, and he was brought in and interrogated and refused to answer. Wouldn't even speak to people. Father Sarah actually came down from up north and interrogated him and said, you know, We, we are going to give you the benefit of Jesus here, and if you convert, he will give you the And if you become a good Spaniard here, nothing bad will happen to you. You're clearly a strong, intelligent leader. I want to help you. And Noguaso said, go away and chased it a good article on that. And then the next day, Noguaso hanged himself in his prison cell and not by a He actually had to kneel down to hang himself and pull his legs up off the floor of the Presidio prison. So that's, that's the aftermath. Another guy probably died from his wounds, another Kumeyaay. The priest describes his wounds as so bad when he saw him from the whippings that there were maggots crawling out of his skin. So, that's the aftermath. It didn't just end November 5th or 6th of 1775. It went on for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks.

Damian Bacich 25:03

Can I ask you a question?

Richard Carrico 25:04

And, yeah,

Damian Bacich 25:07

You know, um, like some of the names that you're mentioning, one, one man was named Francisco, but the other was named Nahuaso, if I remember correctly. So were some of these, uh, baptized? Kumeyaay, who, I assume if he has a Spanish name, that he was probably, had been baptized. So were some of these, uh, neophytes who attacked the mission?

Richard Carrico 25:36

I'd say probably 80%.

Damian Bacich 25:37

Mm hmm.

Richard Carrico 25:38

80 percent of the leaders. And I don't know what percent below that because we don't have their names. But I suspect many of them were, because I think that might have been part of the, the recruitment is you've been to the, you've been to the mission, you see how they can't feed us, they're promising us food, and they're saying this is good, and Jesus is, you know, good, but they can't even feed themselves. They allow us to go back in the mountains and gather acorns to, to feed ourselves at the mission. You've seen the diseases. I think that's another subtext that was going on, but I think it had a religious implication too, is by this time something, maybe smallpox, maybe malaria, maybe measles, was starting to kill the native people at an increased rate. And I think the religious leaders and everyone else in the village knew that. And they associated it with the mission. So I, I think probably, I don't even know the number of warriors that would have been baptized already, but I, I think it was probably a very high percent, I think it was a very high percent and the leaders, at least 80%. Oh, and big leaders, big leaders of big villages because Father Jaime. Like they always tried to do, the Franciscans or anyone, tried to baptize first the elders and the leaders of the village. Religious, cultural, military, political, tried to get them first. Sometimes, it looks like for me, to me, many of the village leaders took the gifts, got, quote, got baptized as a way of kind of knowing more about the Spaniards. And sure, hey, if you're going to give me a bag of blue and red trade beads. So that you can sprinkle some water on my forehead and call me Christian. Absolutely, I'm going to do that. So when I go through the baptism records, that's also who they baptize first, if they can. They go to the leaders and try to get them to baptize first, hoping that then the tribe or the village will follow along. But when I look at the records after the baptisms, I don't see those leaders showing up for Mass, right? I don't, being baptized is not the same as being converted. Yeah,

Damian Bacich 27:57

How many warriors did you, maybe I missed it, but how many warriors would you say participated in the sacking of the mission?

Richard Carrico 28:09

I'd say. Between 200 and 300, both meaning probably half of those were at the mission and the other half were at the Presidio. They'd surrounded the Presidio. They were at the base of the hill. So, I can't imagine it being more than 300. Some of the early

Damian Bacich 28:27

that's quite, that's quite a

Richard Carrico 28:29

and some of the others talk about 1800. Yeah, that's just not possible.

Damian Bacich 28:34

How many soldiers would you say were there and what was the, what was the response, the Spanish response in the moment in terms of, of defending the, the mission? Did

Richard Carrico 28:57

not looked at that lately, but there are only four or five at the mission, one of whom was killed and at the Presidio itself. And this goes to the planning, I think. This is not just some random night. The Kumeyaay knew that a lot of the soldiers were up north. They weren't at the Presidio. They'd accompanied other people to go do other missions going up north. I believe there were less than 30. Soldiers at the Presidio. 27 is something that sticks in my mind. And it's hard for me to tell exactly because in the documents, they don't always talk about troop movements or, or who went, they'd say Sergeant so and so took six people with him north, where they'd just say, took his better soldiers or took his leather jacket soldiers. So you don't get a good enumeration, but based on what I think the regiment size was at the time, and where I know some of the soldiers were, November 5th, 1775, there can't have been more than 30, I think 27. And so what happened afterward? Well, that morning afterwards, uh, the survivors. Came up to the Presidio. Walked the six miles to the Presidio. And as they were approaching the Presidio, the guards saw them, who'd been asleep, or at least a guard had been asleep the night before, and sent people down to help them. And then they could look up the valley, because you can see the mission from the Presidio Hill, and they could see the smoke. They could see the smoldering ruins and all that. So, uh, What they basically did is they started building, throwing up pickets around the adobe walls that were not quite finished at the Presidio. They got their rifles out. They got the few cannon that they had ready to go if they needed them. But they're mounted and one's pointing towards the harbor and one's pointing somewhere else. So they basically sounded the alarm and many people, based on Moncada, thought at the time they were going to be killed. That that was the beginning of an onslaught and depending on how the sacking of the mission went, the Presidio would be next. So that's, that's, that was their reaction. Then they sent runners, uh, up north to try to get Anza and other people, other military back to defend the Presidio. But they were, they were in fear of their life. Absolutely. Positively. Uh, they did capture a couple, um, Kumeyaay from another village and one of them said, yeah, you're next. We're going to kill all of you, which I think was just an idle boast because I don't think that was ever the plan, but it sure scared the heck out of the, out of the military at the Presidio. They then went out a couple of days later and, and, uh, went to the mission and got Father Jaime's body. And the other two people killed, the blacksmith and a soldier, and brought them back up to Presidio Hill, Presidio Hill, where they proceeded to bury them in the chapel at, on Presidio Hill. And then some years later, Father Jaime was excavated out of the altar and taken back to Mission San Diego and Mission Valley and reburied there. I believe, and this is going to be in my, my book, that we excavated, uh, One of the individuals who was killed by the, by the Native Americans that day because he matches all the descriptions and he was, he was killed by an arrow point to the chest, to the left side of his chest and two in the groin and then he bled out. And we found a Spanish person of the genome, you know, body type artifacts, and he still had an arrow point in his chest. So I think we know, I think we found that guy. I'm sorry, for some reason I can't hear you right now.

Damian Bacich 33:20

Yeah, I, I was, I muted myself. Sorry about that. Um, the mission doesn't go away, and the, it's rebuilt, and, and the Presidio doesn't go away. The soldiers are still there. What is then the legacy over the next decades of Spanish presence in San Diego in terms of relationship between the Kumeyaay and, and the mission, the Presidio, the, the Spanish presence there?

Richard Carrico 33:55

I think it's, it's multi layered, but I would begin by saying it looks to me, based on baptism records after that, for instance, that, that more E Pi, were baptized than Te Pai after that, and I think it was a very conscious effort of both the priest, although I think the priest probably went out and tried to do Te Pai south of the river, but it looks like the E Pai were still more accommodating. It looks as if they married into the culture a little bit more. And so they kind of went along to get along. South of the river, what it looks like, because you have the mountainous regions that start a lot sooner, is basically many of the mountain regions went untouched by Spanish colonial efforts. So 40 miles from the mission, up in the Cuyamaca Mountains, You've got a huge village up there, Ahakwiamak, and it only had eight baptisms, but there were probably 300 people living there. When you go to other villages that are further remote, like Hamul, Hamul, it's not on a major trade route. It's right by the border. It'll be a major trade route later. There were only five or six people who baptized from there. So it looks to me like it was sort of a detente that took place. The priest probably sensed and sized up. Can I get some converts from this village or not? They tried when they didn't, they didn't go back. And so you have entire villages that went largely untouched by the conversion process. Doesn't mean they weren't affected by soldiers coming through the area. Running cattle off their land and, and in the case of alcohol, raping some women, it doesn't mean diseases. You know, it got passed from one tribal member to another tribal member. So it's that old story of infectious diseases. Somebody up in the mountains who never saw a Spaniard could still get measles or smallpox, right, by contagion. So I think there was sort of a balance that took place. Although, although, um, I think it was Ortega. One of the sergeants, And his diary says, we don't go east of El Cajon very often. We don't go east of El Cajon because it's too dangerous. So El Cajon is only 15 miles from the mission. And it's called that because it's a valley, it's a box. And after that, you're up in the mountains and you're up where the leaders of the insurrection live and still lived at that time. So when they had to go out towards Yuma, they went south. Way south towards T'Kwan and came back around that way, or they went way north. So there's a level of accommodation going on there in the 1830s. Uh, the Kumeyaay, again, almost all T'pie are going to basically sack almost every rancho in San Diego, in San Diego County. They're going to go out and take hostages. They're going to burn them to the ground. They're going to steal cattle. So this would be 1835. So this is 1835 through 37. So it's right after secularization, right? And it's after the Mexican revolution. And so the Kumeyaay see that new soldiers aren't coming in, new supplies aren't coming in, and a lot of the soldiers from the Presidio had retired from the military and got their ranchos, got their land grants, built adobe houses, and live, you know, in quite a distance from where the military could help them anyhow. So the one that's most famous down here is Rancho Jamul, where the rancho was set on fire and hostages were taken by the Kumeyaay and never seen again. They sent parties out to try to, you know, repatriate them, but they were gone by then. So, Uh, Mike Conley, Mike Conley Mishquish, who's Kumeyaay, working on his PhD right now up at UCSD, I think, uh, he, he calls that the Zorro period, but it's also a period of unrest. People in Old Town, San Diego, um, were living in fear and they had guards around their house at night at the Bandini house for fear of the Kumeyaay and ultimately there was going to be an insurrection in 1835. Somebody ratted them out in Old Town and they took, they rounded up what they thought were the leaders in Old Town, they the Mexicans, by then Californios, and took them down by the San Diego River and executed them and they're buried down there somewhere. Um, so it was an ongoing process. The Kumeyaay would say, they never gave up. They never gave up, you know.

Damian Bacich 38:49

Is that,

Richard Carrico 38:50

some went

Damian Bacich 38:53

sorry,

Richard Carrico 38:53

to work as vaqueros, right? Some married in, some did this, so it varied by your village. And, and, you know, just because you became a vaquero for the Carrillo family doesn't mean you still didn't believe in your Kumeyaay religion, or you didn't still do bird songs, or you didn't go off on, on your days off. back to your village and, and participate in very traditional cultural things. So when I hear people say, and sometimes the Kumeyaay do this, and they don't mean to, they'll say they came in and destroyed all of our culture. I go, no, actually, clearly they didn't. You still do certain things and there are native speakers and, and on and on. So it was more of, you know, accommodation, I think, on both sides. Absolutely. The priest, a couple of the priests that were here were better, quote, better priests. They were more humane. They'd gone, you know, they were a result of the Enlightenment, and that was kind of catching on. But it was definitely a thing of, I'm going to approach your village, I'm going to try to get you to convert, but if you don't want to, I'm probably not going to come back. I'm going to go elsewhere. Yeah,

Damian Bacich 40:04

Today, do you do those, um, I don't wanna call'em divisions, I dunno what you'd call it, but the distinction say between the different families and even the, the different, let's say the EI and the tea pie at that time, do those, um, distinctions or groups still mean something to the kumeyaay today?

Richard Carrico 40:31

they, they do. And they, and they, and they did even back in during the American period, but it was breaking down a great deal, um, partially because they were losing their traditional lands from, let's say the Pacific ocean inland for 10, 12 miles. They were being, as Florence Shipwick said in her book, pushed into the rocks. So as given villages were being abandoned, let's say the village of which was right on the coast, and they're north, they're Ipai, they moved basically into Powai, which is a mountain village. So in doing so, they gave up their coastal land and, and you know, certain traditions associated with fishing and coastal livelihood and moved up there. But now they're going to be near some other people and some other clans and families, so the intermarriage is going to change. I think a woman named Catherine Luomala talked about Kumeyaay flexibility. in their sibs, in their clans. So, whereas before you could not, if you were the fox clan, you were prohibited from marrying into the raven clan. In this time period starting then, because the population's falling and because you're living in a different circumstance, they started being more flexible about who you could marry. At the mission, if you came into the mission and did actually get somewhat converted, the priest decided who you should marry basically. And then that's going to break down that whole clan organization. So I would say elements of it continued. So when you go and work with, let's say 30 years ago, when I was working with some 80 year old elders or 10 years ago with Leroy Elliott from, from, The Manzanita Reservation, he and members of his family still practice a lot of tradition in terms of sweats, in terms of certain days on the calendar that meant something. So, like, in about a month, the constellation Orion will start coming up right after sun, sunrise, sunset, sunset. And that's, that's the beginning of winter. It's actually for them, it's a bighorn sheep, by the way, called Emu. So Leroy Elliott would still 30 years ago, 20 years ago, know when winter was starting and do a ceremony in honor of winter starting, because it's going to affect your food supply. It's going to affect the water temperature in the ocean and what fish are going to be there, right? You've already done your acorn harvest. So certain families did, other families, either because they got sent off to boarding schools. Or because, interestingly enough, they joined the military, especially in World War II. As young men, when they came home, many of those men were dissatisfied with going back on a reservation. You know, they'd seen another world out there. Maybe they came not directly home and married a white girl or a Mexican girl. And now they're going to be disengaged to some degree from their family. So you almost have to look at it, first of all, on a reservation by reservation. Uh, basis, and then you have to look at it on a clan and family basis. So anytime one of my pet fetishes, I suppose, or peeves is when somebody starts something saying the San Diego Indians, that makes no sense to me. You know, I think we just learned that in an election talking about the Latino population. It's not identity politics. It doesn't work that way. And so certain reservations, probably those more remote and those that were set up earlier. Let's say in the 1870s, probably retained a lot more of their culture than those reservations set up in the 1800s, early 1900s, because by then, they had acculturated a lot. And they are going to be moved to a piece of land that was not part of their clan traditional ownership. The plants are going to be different. The environment's going to be a little bit different. And so they're going to, they're going to do more amalgamation and accommodation. It's extremely complex.

Damian Bacich 44:47

Sorry, you meant so that the reservations that were formed later, the people there would, would be changing more, adapting more, or the earlier reservations were the ones where there would be more change.

Richard Carrico 45:04

I think there'll be more change in the later ones because those people lived closer to the non native civilization culture, and when those reservations were set up, I don't know which one, one up in the back country. Those people are going to be amalgamated. They're going to be taken from small villages and settlements that still remained like on the edge of downtown San Diego, but those people living on the edge of downtown San Diego in 1880s, they'd helped build the Hotel Del Coronado. They worked on the rail when the rail was coming into San Diego. They had become wage laborers. They probably spoke really good Spanish. And because they're living on the, literally on the margins of San Diego, they're probably not doing as many cremations and traditional ceremonies and girls puberty rites. But somebody who got a reservation in 1875, like, um, El Capitan, now it's a lake, but El Capitan, they were still practicing their traditions in the 1870s, many of them. So they got moved somewhere, but they can, there's a more of a continuum. Whereas for somebody who grew up in the village on the edge of San Diego, the kids might not even speak Kumeyaay anymore. They just speak Spanish because it was not good to speak your native language. So when they finally get their reservation and are moved to Saquon or Barona or somewhere, it's not going to be the same.

Damian Bacich 46:36

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, I've kept you for a long time. This has been a massive treasure trove of information. I mean, this is really, really interesting stuff. And you have put in a lot of years and have a lot of experience doing and thinking these things. And I really appreciate that. One last question. What's, would, uh, would you. encourage somebody, a young person, to go into archaeology these days, especially in California? Is it a viable, uh, way forward, a viable career path? Okay. I

Richard Carrico 47:24

is first answered by geography. You know, we've got over 80 some tribes, if you will, in California, and some are extremely small, some are huge, some, as you can well imagine, are more receptive to anthropology and archaeology based on how they've been treated by anthropologists and archaeologists. Others are very resistant. They, they perceive us to be culture vultures and desecrators and want almost nothing to do with us. So I guess my first answer would be you need to know the tribes that you intend to study and where you think your graduate work might be or your work as an anthropologist archaeologist. So if you start with that and then I know this sounds, you know, whatever, you need to start by being an anthropologist who does archaeology. Because in America, archaeology got divorced from anthropology in some areas, and so you can get a degree in archaeology and take very little anthropology. And if in fact, you know, I think it was, I can't remember, the famous scholar back in the 1890s 1900s said that archaeology is the handmaiden of anthropology. It's a tool. It's a tool. It's not even a discipline in and of itself. It's a subdiscipline of anthropology. So I think if you're the kind of person who wants to know more about people and not artifacts, I think you could have a good career, especially if you are a humanist and you want to deal with living people. There's a whole set of both archaeologists my age and younger, and now coming up even younger, who frankly don't want to work in California. They want to work in South America or Mexico, where Native Americans are not allowed. dealt with in some cases. If you cross across the border here, because I give papers down there and work with INA down in Baja California, you will see a PowerPoint that will show burials. And even the Native Americans in the room do not seem to be, I don't know truly, but don't seem to be disturbed by that. In fact, they want to know more about their past. And seeing a burial on a screen doesn't seem to cause the same emotional issues that it does up here. So, I have students and past students who are working down in Baja, California and in Sonora, because they don't want to deal with the politics.

Damian Bacich 50:21

think that's the best position to be in, right? Well, thanks so much. Uh, once again, I know you, you do a lot of things and I really appreciate your, your giving up What is it? An hour and a half or more of your time to talk with me. But I think everybody who hears this or watches it is going to find it really interesting. And I want to thank you for, for everything you've done. And I hope, you know, at some point in the future, you would be willing to come back and talk a little bit more. I'd appreciate that. I love it. Well, thank you, Richard. And, uh, until, until the next time.

51:15

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