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Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION BY BILL BROYLES
What was it like to talk frontier history with a legend who lived it? Here is one such session, with Alberto Celaya being questioned by Paul H. Ezell and Henry F. Dobyns, who recalls that they stood in the open with the bulky wire recorder sitting on the hood of an automobile, in Sonoyta, Sonora, January 30, 1952. The hopscotch nature of the questions and occasionally disjointed replies--at once rewarding and frustrating--will be familiar to anyone who has ever conducted or given an interview. You may feel yourself wanting to nudge Ezell and whisper, "Ask Don Alberto about the Hia C'ed O'odham camps, or their traveling routes, or how they endured the heat and cold." And in several spots Dobyns intervenes and does just that. Each answer begs for more questions, and no interviewer can gather them all in one session, so today we are left with some answers and many lingering questions. Some of Ezell's questions clearly were intended to recapture, on tape, previous conversations; at other times he cut Celaya short, perhaps indicating he already had that information on paper. Even today we want more, but we must be grateful, for this is what we have.
Henry Dobyns recalls, "Paul and I were hot on the trail of anything we could get from Alberto Celaya about Carl Lumholtz, and from our perspective now, we knew nothing then about the Hia C'ed O'odham. We were trying to rediscover the past. Bob Thomas was over along the Gila River interviewing people, (1) and Paul and I dug around down along the border. No one in the academic community really knew anything about the Hia C'ed O'odham then." (2)
About the event Ezell's day book records only this:
Sunday, Jan. 27. Left Tucson 2:40 p.m., arrived OPC [Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument headquarters] 5:20 p.m., to find Hank Dobyns here noon Saturday to noon today--I muy avergonzado [very embarrassed]. Went to Sonoyta and arranged with Alberto Celaya for next Wed. & for Thursday. Wed Jan. 30.... Hank Dobyns arrived [at Organ Pipe headquarters] at noon; went to Sonoyta & collected Alberto Celaya, spent until 9:30 p.m. getting tape recording. Thurs. Jan. 31, 1952. Hank left about 10:30 [a.m.].... " (3)
This interview, conducted largely in Spanish, was about 130 recorded-minutes long, with some apparent breaks in the session. We do not know who transcribed it, but the person(s) knew enough Spanish to insert accent marks where needed. However, they heard "bura" (mule deer) as "burro," Thomas Childs as Tomas Chaels, and storekeeper Mikul G. Levy was rendered as Layvi or Leyvi. In the transcription, "collotes" is used for coyotes, "Illitoy" for I'itoi, "La Jalada" for La Salada, "Jinacate" for Pinacate, "Mojack" for Mohawk, and "sienna de agua" for cienega. The Spanish typescript can be found in the Paul H. Ezell Collection at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library and the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument archive. We do not know if the recording still exists or if it would be retrievable.
The transcript was translated to English by Lupita Cruz (University of Arizona's Southwest Center) and court translators Alberto and Sally Bravo (Arizona Language Specialists, Phoenix). Alberto, the grandson of Don Alberto, was born and raised in the Sonoyta region. Thanks also to Alberto's cousins Diana Celaya de Felix and Frascuelo Celaya. Matters concerning plants were reviewed by botanist Richard S. Felger. Specific sections were improved by David A. Yetman, and Donald Bahr was consulted on others. The interview has been edited to correct obvious spelling and transcription errors, perhaps attributable to variables such as the clarity of the recording, sticking typewriter keys (remember those!), and the attunement and attentiveness of the transcriber's ear. Too, the typescript itself may have been made from imperfect shorthand or longhand notes. We have retained some local or regional words in brackets next to the translation for clarity and your convenience (e.g., camaleon for 'horned lizard'), but some words or strings of approximate sounds remain unexplained and await explanation, perhaps yours. These are noted with [?]. Where Celaya used Quitobaca and Quitobaquita, we use Quitovac and Quitobaquito, spellings used on modern maps. In many places the dates were spoken as "the '80s or '90s" and we have added the appropriate century to avoid confusion. The sections are indicated in the transcript, perhaps noting segments of the recording session. We have lightly annotated the text with endnotes, mostly to clarify places or to cross-reference further information and sources. We especially thank the Ezell family for permission to print the interview and Henry F. Dobyns for reviewing and honing the translation.
For thirty years this interview lay in Ezell's filing cabinet gathering dust. A copy also was stashed in the administrative archive at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Ezell thought he would publish it one day, along with the fullness of his Papaguerla research conducted between 1949 and 1956, but in 1956 he received a position at San Diego State University. Classes and fieldwork in southern California drew him away from the desert. Although he published "An Archaeological Survey of Northwestern Papagueria" (1954), he did not complete the full, final report. (4) He noted, "My original hope was to write up an archaeological survey of the entire area. The most that I was able to do was that article which was published so long ago in The Kiva" (Ezell, letter, 1968). (5) Likely this interview with Celaya would have been incorporated within that final report or spun off as a separate publication, along with a complementary interview with Alberto Celaya eventually printed in Randall McGuire's Ethnology of Northwest Mexico. (6) In that session Paul Ezell interviewed Alberto Celaya (then age sixty-two) during a trip to Tinajas de Emilia and Tinajas del Cuervo, Pinacate, Sonora, Mexico, on December 28-31, 1951; the language used was Spanish. Also present were George Bradt, Alan Olson, and photographer Tad Nichols, whose photos of that December session we share here today.
Celaya died in 1962, Ezell in 1988. Today, fifty-five years after they recorded this conversation, you can listen in.
INTERVIEW: PAUL H. EZELL AND HENRY F. DOBYNS WITH ALBERTO CELAYA, JANUARY 30, 1952
Section A
Celaya: They always made this drink called tesguin for their feasts. They made it with herbs and added other things. They made it to drink at their feasts. There was a Papago who said he was a witch. He would sing a song to the Papagos who made the feasts, and he would ask them why they made the tesguin [win (7)], then the tesguin would spoil. He told them a tortoise [tortuga] had come from the mountain and dropped horned lizard [camaleon] hairs in it, but as you know, the horned lizard has no hairs. He would tell them that hairs were dropped in the wine [vino] and that is why it spoiled, but the Indians wanted to kill him.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Ezell: It is said that the Papago did not like to kill or eat the quail. They did not like to kill or eat any bird that has something on its head, believing that if they did they would become blind. Do you know something about this?
Celaya: No, I don't know if they ate all that. You know, before, they did not want to eat pork meat or shellfish because they said those were Spanish foods, but now they eat them.
Ezell: Do Papago have beliefs about snakes, rattlesnakes or any kind of snake?
Celaya: Well, if we remember, they were very superstitious. They had thousands of beliefs. They made their own medicines for snake and rabies bites, and they cured them just with herbs.
Ezell: Do you remember, Don Alberto, if the Papagos in Quitobaquito harvested saguaro fruits, like the pitaya [pitahaya (8)] and others, for their own use or to sell at the market?
Celaya: Yes, there in Quitovac they used to gather the saguaro fruit and also the pitaya. They fixed them, ate them, and sold them too.
Ezell: Did the Arenenos do the same thing?
Celaya: Well, I did not know about this, but when they were here, I understand that, yes, the Arenenos picked the pitaya and saguaro fruit.
Ezell: Do they still do that?
Celaya: Yes, they still do but very little.
Ezell: Is that type of fruit still being sold?
Celaya: Yes, they still are. They gather a lot of pitayas. When they have the feast of Vikita at Quitovac, (9) they cook it, bring it, and sell it. Yes, it is very good. Have you eaten it?
Ezell: Yes, it is very good.
Celaya: They also made syrup and strained it. They always harvested the pitaya.
Dobyns: And what was the price, more or less, of that fruit?
Celaya: Oh, they sold it, something like for a peso. A little clay pot [sotijita de tierra] for one peso or one peso and fifty cents but today, I believe, they sell it for five pesos per pound. It is very expensive.
Ezell: Do you know if they still use the pechita [mesquite bean pods]?
Celaya: Well, I think just a little. It's a very delicious thing. The pechita is cooked and milled, and something delicious comes from it. Some Mexicans still make it but they do not sell it. The Indians made pinole also, but that was made of barley.
Ezell: What kind of grinding stone did the Papagos use, round or squared?
Celaya: It was round, (10) more or less like that one over there. They picked it up and used it just like that.
Ezell: Do you remember that last one, Carbajal [Juan Caravajales]? Did he go to the gulf or to the Gila River to fish?
Celaya: He went to the gulf because the guaya del burro [? (11)] was there. He fished and brought salt, and by then Carbajal knew how to eat tortillas, and fish and coffee also. He sowed corn, squash, (12) teparies, and white beans. Under a very big paloverde tree he put his corn and his squash.
Ezell: Do you know if he used the fish?
Celaya: I think he did because there were fish bones there, mullets especially.
Ezell: Do you remember some of the fishing customs of the Papago?
Celaya: No, I never saw how they fished
Ezell: But they did use it?
Celaya: Yes, because there were a lot of fish bones, and they did not have too much to eat, so they fished.
Ezell: Do you know if they dried the fish to eat it?
Celaya: No, I don't know if they dried it.
Ezell: Did they dry other foods?
Celaya: Well, yes. They dried mule deer meat and bighorn sheep, too.
Ezell: The squash, too?
Celaya: Yes, they cut them lengthwise and dried them. I did know that. They dried the small squash and ate them.
Ezell: Do you remember telling us about the river [Rio Sonoyta] and about the starting of the ravine? Can you tell me again?
Celaya: In the 1890s, that brushland [monte] you see was not there yet. All of that was water, a wetland [cienega], grasses [sacatones], hierba del manso, (13) and cattails. (14) The gully began there and all the water passed through the hacienda. All the water went down and the ravine was formed. There were a lot of cattle.
Ezell: What about the mill that used to be there?
Celaya: Oh, that modern mill? Nacho Quiroz put it there.
Ezell: Did it have a motor?
Celaya: Yes, it had a motor. They milled wheat and other things.
Ezell: And what of that mill in Santo Domingo you told me about?
Celaya: Yes, that one had grindstones [poleas] and it milled a lot of flour. It milled a lot, like five sacks of wheat per day.
Ezell: And what of that mill that used donkey power in Quitobaquito? What did they mill there? Wheat?
Celaya: Yes, wheat. They also milled wheat here in Sonoyta. At that time, each house had its own mill. Nobody brought flour from other places. They brought coffee and sugar from other places but flour, wheat, eggs, meat, milk, and fruit were produced here; also onions and chiles. They did not bring them from other places. They brought coffee and sugar from a Tucson store, and each house [in Sonoyta] had their own mill.
Ezell: And they didn't use these as sifters to mill gold?
Celaya: Yes. They used them there in Santo Domingo. They used a very modern one with four blades and a motor. Mr. Levy was there and worked a gold smelter.
Ezell: Do you remember when was the last time they used that mill in Quitobaquito?
Celaya: Quitobaquito? It was when Juan Jose was there. Well, I think not since 1910.
Ezell: When was Nacho Quiroz's mill in operation?
Celaya: Nacho Quiroz's mill was between the 1920s and about 1928, because in the 1930s they took the mill, and they didn't work anymore.
Ezell: Was the mill for metal?
Celaya: No, it was for flour.
Ezell: Do you remember, Don Alberto, the time when Santo Domingo was the larger town, bigger than Sonoyta? When was that?
Celaya: It was before 1900, because in 1903 its owner, Don Cipriano, died and it was not anything anymore. But before, in the 1890s and around 1895, all of that was opulence. Santo Domingo was not an hacienda--it was a town.
Ezell: Do you remember if there was a mission there?
Celaya: Yes
Ezell: When was that?
Celaya: That was like the 1890s about 1895, that's because they made it ...
Ezell: What did they call it?
Celaya: Well--what did they call it? It was just a shrine and nothing else. I don't remember what they called it; I was there when they blessed it.
Ezell: There's a story of a bell? Somebody stole it?
Celaya: I believe that bell is here in Sonoyta, that Jose Leon had it.
Ezell: He was saying that somebody had stolen the bell and took it to Mohawk [Mohawk, Arizona, on the Gila River].
Celaya: No, he had it here.
Ezell: Can you tell me who Cipriano Ortega's wife was?
Celaya: She was Concepcion's sister: last name ... Totarina.
Ezell: And Cipriano Ortega was your grandfather's brother?
Celaya: No, he was my grandmother's.
Ezell: You told me Cipriano was in the posse that followed the Arenenos, after the robbers. About when was that?
Celaya: That was ... I don't remember well. It could have been when I was born, around 1880 or 1885, I don't remember it well.
Ezell: And when did he die?
Celaya: Cipriano died around 1903.
Ezell: Do you remember telling me about the murder of the Arenenos following the attack against the Soap Maker [El Jabonero] and Suastegui and the others? Did it happen around the 1860s, more or less?
Celaya: Yes, because my father was born in 1855. My father would have been eight years old then. It would have been around 1863 or 1864, more or less. That individual came from California. My grandfather, on my father's side, lived in Quitobaquito, and that man also lived there. He showed my grandfather the rocks he carried with him--half gold and half rock, that's what my grandfather said. The man told him he was going to Ures, (15) that he was from Ures. He was to meet some friends there, and they would go again to the mine where they found the rocks. He returned by foot with two friends, and the Soap Maker and a Mr. Suastegui went past where my grandfather was. They came and stayed in La Salada [on Rio Sonoyta]. They ate and stayed all day, and when they left, they said they were going to the mine the next day at noon. But instead of going there, they were attacked and killed with rocks and sticks by Indians who took everything from them. That happened about three miles from La Salada where there was a gully. I don't know how the one was killed, but Suastegui and the Soap Maker did not die; the other one did. I do not know if Santo Domingo or Sonoyta existed then, but they left. Afterwards there were a lot of expeditions trying to locate the mine of the Soap Maker but in reality it wasn't the Soap Maker's, it [belonged to] the other one who died. (16)
Ezell: And nobody followed the Arenenos at that time?
Celaya: No, not at that time. The people who were to follow did not have weapons or anything, but when these men brought up the stones, it was like two to three days.
Ezell: What kinds of weapons did the Arenenos use?
Celaya: Only bows and arrows [aros] and sticks [palos].
Ezell: They did not have...
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