http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-march19sep19,1,26582...

Retracing a Grim Past

Indians reenact march of California's 'Trail of Tears'

By Lee Romney

Times Staff Writer

September 19, 2004

ROUND VALLEY RESERVATION, Calif. - It is known, to those who know it at

all, as California's Trail of Tears.

In 1863, U.S. soldiers rounded up Indian tribes across Northern California

at Chico Landing in Butte County. Then they marched them across the

sweltering Sacramento Valley, over the rugged North Coast mountains, to

what was known then as the Nome Cult Reservation.

Of 461 Indians who set out under guard, only 277 completed the 100-mile,

14-day trek. Many were abandoned, too sick to continue. Some escaped.

Others were killed. For decades, some descendants tried their best to

forget. These days, they make a point of remembering.

On Saturday, several dozen members of the Round Valley tribes completed

their annual 100-mile commemorative trek along the Nome Cult Trail, which

cuts through what is now the Mendocino National Forest. They arrived,

blistered and bruised, to cheers, honking horns and a welcoming potluck at

tribal headquarters just outside the blink-and-you'll-miss-it northeast

Mendocino County town of Covelo.

"We're able to walk together and be a loose-knit family again," said Fred

"Coyote" Downey, 67, a Wailaki Indian whose grandfather, then 8 years old,

was herded across the mountains by U.S. soldiers, and who has walked the

trail annually since the ritual began in 1996.

"The positive thing from this walk is the healing," he said. "We can learn

a great deal, and our kids can learn a great deal."

The Nome Cult walkers departed Chico last Sunday. They were given a

send-off by the Mechoopda Tribe of Chico Rancheria. On the third night,

members of the Grindstone Rancheria played host to them with dances in

their round house, said to be the oldest Native American ritual house in

use in California.

And on they marched - from elders such as Downey with his long beard, wild

eyebrows and wise counsel to youths such as 13-year-old Larence Frease,

handpicked by Downey to lead the group out of their Eel River campsite

Saturday morning, holding a ceremonial walking staff adorned with eagle

feathers. Even toddlers and babies in strollers joined the march.

When the sun baked too hot and their feet gave out, they piled into the

pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles of relatives, who followed along

with homemade apple juice and saltine crackers.

Time has mostly erased the trail taken by the group in 1863, but U.S.

Forest Service officials have marked its approximate route along dusty

forest roads.

At Mountain House, just before the marchers' difficult climb to Mud Flat,

Bob Azbill heard the wind sweeping through trees, picking up leaves in its

twisting grip. It was, he thought, the voice of his ancestors. Farther

down the canyon, two golden eagles floated on an air current. Another

sign, he thought. Another reason to remember.

It wasn't always that way.

The journey known as the Trail of Tears from Chico to Round Valley was

forgotten not only by nonnative Californians, but by many members of the

tribes themselves, who found the memory too painful.

"It was so ugly," said Cal State Chico historian Lisa Emmerich. "We're

talking about state-sponsored genocide.. This in a way is like Holocaust

survivors coming together to talk about their experience. It's the same

kind of pivotal event in a culture, where people were forcibly ripped out

of their homes and taken to a completely different landscape."

As many as 11 tribes were thrown together by the U.S. government at Nome

Cult, derived from the Sacramento Valley Wintun's nome kechl, "western

tribe." They were Yuki, Wailaki, Nomlaki, Pomo, Pit River, Konkow and

Little Lake, among others.

They spoke no common language. Some were long-standing enemies. In time,

some dispersed. Others stayed on the reservation, renamed after the lush

grazing lands of surrounding Round Valley. They intermarried, mixing

bloodlines. But there was a tight lid on history.

"Most of us were assimilated into public schools," said Downey, who

gathered the walkers each morning at dawn to "circle up" and pray amid

sweet clouds of burning sage. "All of us were ashamed to be Indian. It

wasn't until my generation that we began to ask questions."

The generation of Downey's parents and some of his contemporaries were

shipped off to government boarding schools in places such as Riverside and

Stewart, Nev., where they were punished if they spoke their native tongue.

They were met with hostility when they returned.

As a young man in Covelo, Downey saw how his elders were disrespected, how

they spoke broken Spanish to pass for Mexicans.

Now, nine years into the commemorative walk, Downey and his extended

tribal family have found a salve for the wounds of the past and the pain

of the present. This year, the walk was dedicated to Downey's sister,

Phyllis Azbill, who died of cancer a few months ago. In 2000, they walked

in memory of Gaylan Azbill, the U.S. Forest Service employee who helped

launch the ritual in 1996, who also died of cancer. In 2002, it was for

Ben Wright, another cancer death at just 22.

"I know that each year, we're going to lose our people," said Wright's

mother, Charlotte Bauer, who, like Downey, is a direct descendant of

Charles Wright, the 8-year-old who made the original trek. "We're always

going to carry sorrow. But this walk helps us start thinking about our

children, about tomorrow."

At 33,000 acres, Round Valley is the state's second-largest reservation.

It was established in 1856 as the Nome Cult Farm, where Indian labor was

used to grow food for other reservations. Nome Cult became a reservation a

few years later.

As settlers streamed into California during the Gold Rush, tensions

escalated. Settlers and their livestock trampled native crops, muddied the

creeks and decimated acorns and clover, on which natives depended,

according to 1993 research by Forest Service historian Pamela Conners.

In the winter of 1858, more than 150 Indians on the reservation, including

women and children, were slaughtered by white settlers.

On the eastern side of the mountains, tensions ran higher. In 1862 and

1863, killings and retaliations left many dead, including five white

children from the Hickock and Lewis families.

The slayings of the children by "mountain Indians" outraged

white settlers. With the blessing of then-Gov. Leland Stanford,

they passed a resolution calling for the removal of every Indian

in the region to the reservation within 30 days. If they did not

report to Bidwell Ranch in Chico by Aug. 28, 1863, the decree stated, the

Indians would be shot on sight.

The forced march began Sept. 4. Many were ill with fever at the start. At

Mud Flat, more than 150 were left behind, too ill to continue. Accounts of

violence by soldiers vary, Emmerich said.

But some native recollections compiled by Conners describe

women bayoneted through the back when they failed to move on and the

skulls of babies cracked on tree trunks.

It was Conners' research that spurred the U.S. Forest Service to

commemorate the trail. In Round Valley's Gaylan Azbill they

found a willing partner. For months, tribal leaders met with

Forest Service officials to track the course of the walk. Members

of Chico's Mechoopda tribe participated too. By 1996 they were ready to

march.

"It touches you," said Alberta Azbill, Gaylan's sister-in-law

and the reservation's executive secretary, who was among the

early organizers. "Every time I go on the walk, I know I'm

coming home. But I look back into that valley and see Mt.

Shasta and a deep sadness comes over me. I know that [the

original marchers] were driven over these mountains. They

had no say."

This year, Alberta walked only part of the way, instead helping to set up

and break down camp for the others. The group shrank, then grew again as

about three dozen children from the charter school in Covelo joined in

Friday for the descent from pine-studded Anthony Peak.

Each morning for the past week, at 5 a.m., Iran Hoaglen honked the horn of

his turquoise Ford truck to wake the walkers. After breakfast and prayer,

they set off. Some days they covered 25 miles. On Saturday, they walked

only 12.

Participating for the first time was Hoaglen's son, 40-year-old Myron

Hoaglen. A recovering alcoholic, he never had much interest in the march.

Besides, he said, he was told to stay away. But four months into sobriety,

he was ready this year. At Mud Flat, the history hit him.

"They made the women lay the babies down," he said, as he wound down the

mountain Friday with his 7-year-old son, Tevin. "How can a person do that

to a baby? I knew it, but I didn't really know it until this walk. I

didn't know what my own people went through."

Downey has tried to temper the message for the children. "We try not to

make it too damning: 'They did this and they did that,' " he said of the

accounts he delivers along the way. "We tell them in a way that doesn't

enrage them and make them feel so incompetent and frustrated. That's

driven so many of our people to drugs and alcohol."

Instead, he said, it is a time for sharing. Every year, Alberta Azbill

said, she and others discover some missing genealogical link, unburying

family connections that tie Nomlaki to Yuki to Wailaki to Pit River.

Seated around the campfire Friday night, Bob and Leslie Azbill told Downey

of rock carvings and obsidian arrowheads they'd come across recently.

They were probably Yuki who had gathered at Clear Lake on an ancient trade

route, Downey told them. Downey gazed at the sky, recounting how their

ancestors navigated the land by constellations. "We're their children,"

Downey said, finishing off a bowl of acorn soup that other relatives had

delivered to the campsite. "That knowledge is there. All we have to do is

pick it up and use it."

Back at the tribal offices, Margaret Hoaglen was cooking for Saturday's

party. She and her husband, Iran, walked last year

partly for their son, who died in a car crash.

The struggles on the reservation have been many, the need for healing

never-ending. The walk, she said, has opened the door

to learning. Some here still resist it. But tribal leaders plan to

begin monthly workshops, not just about history and genealogy,

but about the land that sustains them.

"We need to educate people here," Hoaglen said of the estimated 1,500

tribal members who live on the reservation. "Some of them don't even know

what a watershed is."