KELSO CANYON/KELSO CREEK/KELSO VALLEY REGION – KAWAIISU FAMILY GROUPS

By David Earle

This region extends south from the lower, northerly end of Kelso Canyon, which intersects the valley of the south fork of the Kern River in Tubatulabal territory. About five miles to the south of this confluence, in the vicinity of Nichols Peak, is the reported traditional boundary between the Tubatulabal in the northernmost reaches of Kelso Canyon and the Kawaiisu farther to the south. In historic times, Kawaiisu families lived farther south in Kelso Canyon and along Kelso Creek. The upper or southernmost extension of Kelso Creek reached as far south as the settlement of Sageland. This community lies about ten miles south of Nichols Peak and the reported Kawaiisu—Tubalabal boundary. The Kelso Canyon and Kelso Creek areas were settled by both Whites and Kawaiisu (mixed with some other native people) as of the 1860s and 1870s. The mining camp of Sageland was situated in the area, and the mining areas of Claraville and Piute were located just to the west. Basque sheepherders also used the area in the late nineteenth century. We know virtually nothing ethnohistorically about the area before the Williamson Expedition of 1853. South of Sageland and the upper Kelso Creek drainage, a pass over a high mountain ridge leads southward into Kelso Valley, which is approximately seven miles long from north to south.

The region was the year-round territory of speakers of Kawaiisu, a Numic language very closely related to Chemehuevi/Southern Paiute. Families from this area harvested acorns in areas with higher rainfall to the south and west, and pinyon nuts in surrounding mountains in the autumn. Kawaiisu groups also traveled to the east into the Mojave Desert in the spring to hunt antelopes in areas like the southern Panamint Valley, where some permanent Kawaiisu settlements also existed. Mesquite, salt, and other resources were also obtained from the desert. The Kawaiisu appear to have incorporated elements of the lifeways of immediately neighboring Yokuts, Chumash, and Takic groups, and could be said to have possessed an amalgam of Great Basin and California cultural traits. The Kawaiisu do not appear to have been organized into corporate territorial or marriage-regulating lineages, clans, or moieties, unlike some interior Takic groups or the neighboring Southern Valley Yokuts. The exact nature of their territorial organization is unclear. There has so far come to light no evidence to suggest that the Kawaiisu possessed the patrilineally inherited song groups that regulated claims and access to hunting territories among the culturally related Chemehuevi of the Mojave Desert (Earle 2004:45-48).

Environment

The Kelso Canyon—Kelso Creek area and Kelso Valley farther to the south lie to the east of Piute Mountain and its outliers to the north and south. Both seasonal streams and springs in the area are fed by water flow from the snow pack and rainfall associated with the higher elevations of the Piute Mountain region. These valleys comprise a more xeric region than that to the west of the mountain, where blue oak woodland is better developed. The Kelso area features juniper woodland and open grasslands, but the vegetation is primarily Mojave mixed woody scrub. This intergrades into pinyon woodland in wetter, higher altitude areas. Riparian zones feature cottonwoods, willows, and oak species as well. As is true in some localities in the Tehachapi region, high winds, when occurring during the colder months of the year, can put a premium appropriately sheltered locations for camps and village settlements. Kelso Valley, for example, can experience very high winds.

Early Expedition References

No known early expedition references exist for this area.

Mission Register References

No mission register references are known for this area.

1840-1900 Historical References

Williamson 1853. Lieut. R. S. Williamson traveled up the South Fork of the Kern River in the fall of 1853, leading a party charged with surveying possible transcontinental railroad routes across the southern Sierra Nevada (Williamson 1856). His survey party explored eastward to the outlet of Walker Pass. While ascending Canebrake Creek toward the pass, he came across a group of Tubatulabal collecting sugar from Phragmites cane grass or carrizo grass (Williamson 1856:15-18). After backtracking westward down the South Fork of the Kern River, Williamson headed south up Kelso Canyon. About five miles up the canyon, which he called hum-pay-mup, he encountered another group of native people gathering carrizo-grass sugar. Given the name he gave to the canyon, a Tubatulabal term for carrizo grass, it might be inferred that the group of people he met in the canyon were Tubatulabal rather than Kawaiisu, contra the suggestion made by Twisselman (1967:180). The traditional boundary between the Tubatulabal and the Kawaiisu in the canyon has been placed in the vicinity of Nichols Peak, about five miles south up the canyon. Williamson and his party traveled up Kelso Creek and south into Kelso Valley without noting any further encounters with native people. In Kelso Valley, the party searched for native trails that could take them farther south, and then took a trail southwest to the Tehachapi Valley.

Sageland, on Kelso Creek, was founded in 1864 as a mining camp. Prominent mines in the area included the Burning Moscow and the St. John. A native cemetery on a hillside and a village site in a side canyon were located to the west of Sageland (Garfinkel and Williams 2009:37-38). By 1880 or before, several families of non-native miners married to Kawaiisu women were settled in the Kelso Canyon or Kelso Valley region (Bureau of the Census 1880:Caliente Twp:p. 13).

Classic Ethnographic References

Kelso Canyon and Kelso Creek. Maurice Zigmond carried out fieldwork among the Kawaiisu in 1936-1940 and 1970-1974. Stephen Cappannari also undertook Kawaiisu fieldwork, in 1946-1947, and Zigmond was later provided with field notes from this research. Zigmond was assisted at one point by Charles Hockett in assembling linguistic data. He worked with Emma Williams, John and Louisa Marcus, Setimo Girado, Bob Rabbit, and Refugia Williams in the late 1930s. In the early 1970s, Bertha Goings, Lida and Clara Girado, and Andy Greene were principal consultants.

Zigmond identified Kelso Canyon as peelakawi (Zigmond et al. 1991: 252). Bob Roberts, a Kawaiisu born at Caliente, lived just to the north of Rocky Point on the west side of Kelso Creek, where Kelso Canyon narrows, according to Powers (1974). He was famous as a shaman, curer, and rain doctor, and was commonly known as Bob Rabbit.

Zigmond identified Kelso Creek as muruna-vi-dї (Zigmond et al. 1991: 233). He visited and photographed the rancheria of Fred Collins and the Collins family in Kelso Creek in 1936, during Zigmond’s first period of fieldwork (Zigmond 1986:401). It was visited in October 1934 by Merriam as well, who also photographed it (Merriam 1898-1938b; Zigmond 1986:401). The homestead included a Euro-American style cottage with chimney and several shade structures around it. Garfinkel and Williams (2009:24) note that this place was occupied by Collins’ descendants as late as the 1970s. It was apparently established prior to the mid-1930s. Fred Collins may have lived farther to the south on Kelso Creek or in Kelso Valley in 1900, where he appears in the 1900 US Decennial Census (Bureau of the Census 1900:Twp. 1:Sheet 5B). The homestead was located about a mile southeast of Rocky Point on the Kelso Valley Road, west of the confluence of Pinyon Creek and Kelso Creek (Powers 1974:51).

In the same general area, Fred Butterbredt, a Euro-American miner, had homesteaded prior to 1902, when he received a homestead patent for 160 acres in the northwest and northeast quarters of Section 27, T27S, R35E, SBBM. He was married to a Kawaiisu woman, Betty, and had a number of children. This family is enumerated in the 1880 and 1900 US Decennial Censuses, and the homestead is shown on the 1908 Kernville, Ca 30-minute quadrangle (Bureau of the Census 1880: Caliente Twp.:p. 9; Bureau of the Census 1900:Twp. 1:Sheets 4B-5A; US Geological Survey 1908). C. Hart Merriam visited this family on October 12, 1902 (Merriam 1898-1938b).

The Scodie Mountains, located to the northeast of this settlement area on Kelso Creek, were an important area for gathering pinyon pine nuts.

Kelsey Census 1905-1906, US Decennial Census 1910. The enumeration of native people in the Kelso Creek and Kelso Valley areas indicates the importance of those areas for Kawaiisu settlement in historic times.

C. E. Kelsey was appointed a Special Indian Agent with responsibility for carrying out an enumeration of non-reservation Indians in northern and central California in 1905-1906. In his enumeration of Kern County, he lists "Kelso" (Kelso Creek and Kelso Valley?) as a native settlement location (Kelsey 1971:44). Noted as resident there were Guadalupe McGill and five children; Charley Haslam, wife, and child; and Pedro Manuel, his wife, and two children. Also enumerated were Indian Dick; Juan and his wife; Pedro Kasempta with his wife and four children; George "Booman" [Bowman] with his wife and three children; and Josefa, with two children.

A number of native people enumerated at locations outside of the Kelso Valley and Kelso Creek areas in 1905-1906 and 1910 had formerly resided at either "Sageland" or "Kelso."

Laferiza Williams, a 60-year-old man listed as a Kern River Indian, and his Kern River wife Sophie, were noted as living on Paris Road (Paris/ Loraine, on Caliente Creek, southwest of Piute Mountain) in the 1910 US Decennial Census. They had four daughters aged 22, ten, seven, and six, all born at Sageland on Kelso Creek. Lucia Balonta, a 30-year-old Kawaiisu born at Sageland, also lived on Paris Road, with an eight-year-old son born at Sageland, and a six-year-old son born on the South Fork of the Kern (Bureau of the Census 1910:Twp. 14:Sheet 12A).

Jim Manuel, a 40-year-old Kawaiisu man, was born at Paris, while his Kawaiisu wife Helen, of the same age, had been born at Piute Mountain. A 16-year-old son was also born at Piute Mountain, while a 14-year-old and a seven-year-old daughter were listed as having been born at Sageland, on Kelso Creek (Bureau of the Census 1910: Twp. 14: Sheet 12B).

An additional family was enumerated in 1910 on "Piute Road." This was 30-year-old Jenne [sic] Haslam, her brother Charlie, aged 33, and her sister-in-law Wiffle, aged 28. Charlie Haslam and his wife had been listed by Kelsey as resident at "Kelso" in 1906 (Bureau of the Census 1910: Twp. 14: Sheet 13A).

US Decennial Census 1920. The 1920 US Decennial Census listed native residents of Kelso Canyon Road, from north to south, as Bob Rabbit, the John and Fred Butterbredt families, and a household including George Bowman and his sons-in-law Buck Santo and Dewey Collins. Fred Collins and Charlie Butterbredt formed a two-person household living near George Bowman. The enumeration then appears to move on southward to Kelso Valley (Bureau of the Census 1920: Twp. 14: Sheet 1A)

Kelso Valley Region. Zigmond recorded a Kawaiisu term—paayaa-vi-dї=aka—as a designation for Kelso Valley.

Several native families of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lived in Kelso Valley, an area where White settlers also lived. A story attributed to John Marcus, grandfather of Kawaiisu elder Andy Greene, indicated that in his later childhood he had lived in Kelso Valley. Henry Weldon and his children also lived in Kelso Valley (Barras 1984:52).

The 1920 US Decennial Census listed the following native households which appear to have been located in Kelso Valley: Frank Apalatea and his wife Alice and son Frank, the Jack Weldon family, and Cayetano and Mary Duarte.

A number of native land allotments at the southern end of Kelso Valley were assigned by the US Government in 1893 (Bureau of Land Management n.d.). These were granted to Emma Williams and Billy Williams, and also to John Weldon and various members of the Haslam family. This Williams family was, however, based at Piute Mountain, to the west of Kelso Valley and Kelso Creek.

Zigmond recorded the following place-names in the greater Kelso Valley region (Zigmond et al. 1991:233, 251-252, 259, 266, 269-270, 290, 293):

• mutuwa-wa-di = site in Kelso Valley [mutuwa—bend, as in road]
• paayaa—vi-di = aka = Kelso Valley region [Paayaa ’surface, wall’]
• pe?ehara-va?a-di = Cottonwood Creek, south of Kelso Valley
• pono-pi = name of a mountain in Kelso Valley, where people coming for water turned to stone
• Šigaa-ga-di-ba?adi = name of a site in Kelso Valley
• sii-vi- pizi = area east of Cottonwood Creek [sii-vi = willow]
• soo-vi- pizi = name of a site on Cottonwood Creek—[soo-vi- pi = common Cottonwood]
• wehaani-zi = name of a spring in Kelso Valley

The traditional stories published by Zigmond (1980:202-203) and other sources indicate that Kelso Valley and Kelso Creek were important native settlement areas for the Kawaiisu. The story of the killer Pog^Witi, a story apparently set in historic times, mentions a family living at Kelso Valley that had traveled to Oak Creek Canyon southeast of the Tehachapi Valley to gather acorns. This story also mentions a Kawaiisu settlement at soo-vi- pizi, on Cottonwood Creek.