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Purgatory and the Powerful Dead: A Case Study of Native American Repatriation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Johnny P. Flynn  and
Gary Laderman
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Extract

… what an enhancement of the power of the living there was in this hold over the dead.… And for the Church, what a marvelous instrument of power!… Purgatory brought the Church not only new spiritual power but also, to put it bluntly, considerable profit.

Throughout history, human communities have converted the dead into sources of living power by grafting symbolic structures onto them and their places of interment. The impact of these structures on society, however, indicates that the “dead” are understood as more than physical remains. The dead can be imagined also as memories, spirits, or deities, and the physical or spiritual locations where they reside are essential to the vitality of the symbolism. When the dead are symbolized and carefully integrated into cultural and/or religious systems, they can become a potent source of political power for those who control the meaning of the dead and their physical remains. For this reason, the dead—especially their tombs and remains—have historically been a valuable commodity in the religious and cultural marketplace.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , Winter 1994 , pp. 51 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 1994

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References

Notes

1. Le Goff, Jacques, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 12.Google Scholar

2. The relationship between the dead and social activities that Surround their remains is fertile soil for religionists. Our own interest in the subject was sparked through Seminars and discussions with Professor Richard Hecht of the University of California at Santa Barbara. We also sought comments and advice from Professors Richard Comstock, Michael Glassow, Robert Michaelsen, and Phillip Walker. Although their comments and assistance guided our research, the content and conclusions contained in this essay are our own. We would also like to thank the Graduate Division of the University of California for their support through the Graduate Humanities Research Program at the Santa Barbara campus. We offer Special thanks to Barbara Bromley and Elizabeth Hardcastle for their editing skills and comments. Published works that influenced our essay include: Ariès, Phillipe, The Hour of Our Death (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981)Google Scholar; Gill, Sam D., Mother Earth: An American Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Ragon, Michele, The Space of Death: A Study of Funerary Architecture, Decoration, and Urbanism, trans. Sheridan, Alan (Charlottesville: University Press of Virgina, 1983)Google Scholar; Huntington, Richard and Metcalf, Peter, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory.

3. See, for instance, Jack D. Forbes, “Religious Freedom and the Protection of Native American Places of Worship and Cemeteries” (MS, Native American Studies Center, University of California, Davis, January 1977); Owsley, Douglas M., “Human Bones from Archaeological Context: An Important Source of Information,” Tennessee Anthropologist 8, no. 1 (Spring 1983): 20–27 Google Scholar; “Indian Burial Grounds: Who Owns Our Past,” National Geographic 175, no. 3:375-93; Wayne Deucheneaux, President, National Congress of American Indians, Memorandum, “Repatriation, Reburial, and Grave Protection Legislation,” February 16, 1990 (copy in possession of the authors); Walter, R. and Echo-Hawk, Roger C., “Repatriation, Reburial, and Religious Rights,” in Handbook of American Indian Religious Freedom, ed. Vecsey, Christopher (New York: Crossroad Press, 1991), 63–80.Google Scholar

4. Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, 7.

5. The notion of “exemplum” is taken from the introduction to Smith, Jonathan Z., Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xi.Google Scholar The authors believe that the activity surrounding the dead at Hammond's Meadow is related to a much larger and more universal process of politicizing the dead as a method of gaining religious identity and social power. In this case, religiosity for some Native Americans in the contemporary period can be traced to specific events that grew from the Hammond's Meadow incident.

6. We became interested in the connection between Hammond's Meadow and Native American repatriation when the issue resurfaced in the Santa Barbara newspapers in 1987 while we were graduate students at Santa Barbara. During the course of his work as an environmental impact analyst for a private firm, author Flynn was hired to do an ethnohistoric analysis of Hammond's Meadow. Other than mention in the Santa Barbara Mission Baptismal records of the nearby village of Shalawax, no reference could be found in the historic record regarding the cultural significance of the location of Hammond's Meadow. Johnny P. Flynn, “Hammond's Meadow Ethnographic Report to the Planning Corporation of Santa Barbara,” November 1987.

7. Michael Glassow, “The Evaluation of the Significance of Two Archaeological Sites, SBa-19 and SBa-1213, in Montecito, California,” January 1977, 4 (copy in Anthropological Archives, University of California Santa Barbara). See also Santa Barbara News Press, January 18, 1973, B-1.

8. The translation of the placename “Shalawax” is author Flynn's from Ken Whistler, ed., “An Interim Barbareno Chumash Dictionary” (MS in possession of the authors). See also Richard Applegate, “An Index of Chumash Placenames, ” San Luis Obispo County Archaeological Society Occasional Paper no. 9 (1975), 19-46.

9. For an argument that Hammond's Meadow is the location of the village of Shalawax, see Bob Whitney, “Shalawax: The Last Remaining Village and Burial Ground of the Quabajai Chumash” (MS, Montecito, California, May 1978, in possession of authors). For an argument against Hammond's Meadow as the site of Shalawax, see Professor Brian Fagan to John Armetta, August 22, 1978, copy on file at Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara.

10. Steve Craig, Principal Investigator, “Ocean Meadows Phase II Cultural Resources Technical Report” (Santa Barbara: Planning Corporation of Santa Barbara, February 1988).

11. Michael Glassow, “Archaeological, Ethnographic, and Historical Data Pertaining [to] the Presence of a Chumash Indian Cemetery at the Hammond's Estate Site” (unpublished report, copy on file at the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara).

12. Santa Barbara News Press, January 18, 1973, B-l. See also Santa Barbara News Press, February 4, 1973, B-l; February 7, 1973, B-l; and Santa Barbara News and Review, February 9, 1973, 3.

13. Santa Barbara News Press, January 16, 1973, B-3.

14. Environmental Impact Report on Ocean Meadows, Interface Planning and Counseling Corporation, prepared for the county of Santa Barbara Department of Resource Management, January 1984, 220-22; hereafter cited as “Final 83-EIR-16.” Copy of report is in the possession of the authors.

15. Ibid., 220-21.

16. Who is or is not genealogically or culturally Native American is a constant source of factionalism among Native Americans and anthropologists in the repatriation issue, and the Chumash are no exception. The United Chumash Council, composed of organizations with boards and officers who are closely related within a Single family, is the principal organization receiving money for archaeological monitoring. At least five separate genealogies have been conducted on the principal family that composes and controls the United Chumash Council. The genealogies reveal the family has a Native American ancestor from Santa Gertrudis mission in Baja, California, who came with the Spanish colonial expedition sometime after 1769 and settled in Santa Barbara. United Chumash Council members have consistently argued in public hearings and the press that they are the only traditional Chumash left because their ancestor did not go into the mission System. Such an argument is plausible in cases where there is doubt or gaps in the genealogical tracings. In this case, however, this family's connection is to the Spanish and Mexican colonial pioneers with no Chumash ancestry. The only published genealogy of this family is “Draft Cultural Resource Technical Inventories for the Permanent Vista Del Mar School at Las Cruces Santa Barbara County, California,” prepared for the Planning Corporation of Santa Barbara, prepared by Larry R. Wilcoxon and others, December 31, 1986, 199-219. See also John R. Johnson, “Chumash Social Organization: An Ethnohistoric Perspective” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1988); Rich Alcott, “Old Bones, Big Money,” The Santa Barbara Independent, March 26, 1987, 10; and Miles Corwin, “Heritage of Indians Questioned,” Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1987, 3.

17. Final 83-EIR-16, 221.

18. Michael A. Glassow, “The Evaluation of the Significance of Two Archaeological Sites, SBa-19 and SBa-1213, in Montecito, California,” 7.

19. Hultkrantz, Ake, Belief and Worship in Native North America, ed. Vecsey, Christopher (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1981), 91.Google Scholar See also Lowell John Bean and Sylvia Brakke Vane, “Cults and Their Transformations,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 8: California, ed. Robert F. Heizer (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 662-72.

20. Hultkrantz, Ake, The Religions of the American Indians, trans. Setterwall, Monica (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 138 Google Scholar; see also note 19.

21. Deloria, Vine, God Is Red (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1973), 186.Google Scholar

22. Rogers, David Banks, Prehistoric Man on the Santa Barbara Coast (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 1929), 377 Google Scholar; Harrington, John P., “Culture Element Distributions: 19 Central California Coast,” in Anthropological Records 7, no. 1(1942): 37.Google Scholar

23. See, for instance, Hudson, Travis and others, eds., The Eye of the Flute: Chumash Traditional History and Culture (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 1977), 47–48 Google Scholar; and Blackburn, Thomas, “Ceremonial Integration and Social Interaction in Aboriginal California,” in Antap: California Indian Political and Economic Organization, ed. Bean, Lowell John and King, Thomas F., Ballena Press Anthropological Papers no. 2 (Ramona, Calif.: Ballena Press, 1974), 93–110.Google Scholar

24. Rogers, , Prehistoric Man, 377 Google Scholar; Orr, Phil C., Customs of the Canalino, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Occasional Papers no. 6 (Santa Barbara: Museum of Natural History, 1943; repr., 1956), 10Google Scholar; Michael Glassow, personal communication to the authors.

25. Interview with Phillip Walker, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, March 31, 1988; see also King, Linda B., “The Medea Creed Cemetery (LAN-243): An Investigation of Social Organization from Mortuary Practice,” Annual Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey, no. 11 (1969): 23–68.Google Scholar

26. King, “The Medea Creed Cemetery”; see also Applegate, Richard, “Native California Concepts of the Afterlife,” in Flowers of the Wind: Papers on Ritual, Myth, and Symbolism in California and the Southwest, ed. Blackburn, Thomas C., Ballena Press Anthropological Papers no. 8 (Socorro, N.Mex.: Ballena Press, 1977), 105-19.Google Scholar

27. Hudson, Travis and Blackburn, Thomas, The Material Culture of the Chumash Interaction Sphere, 5 vols. (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 1986), 4:69–83.Google Scholar

28. King, “The Medea Creed Cemetery,” 47.

29. Ibid., 47-48; see also Williams, Walter L., The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (Boston: Beacon Press), 1986.Google Scholar

30. There is a paucity of sources on Chumash retention of their ancient cultural practices. For the role of women in burying, see King, “The Medea Creed Cemetery”; see also Nancy Lloyd, “The Chumash: A Study of Assimilation of a California Indian Tribe” (Master's thesis, University of Arizona, 1955), 30, 92-93, 127-29.

31. Liminality, as a stage of ritual and Status in society, has been under active discussion since the publication of Arnold van Gennep's Rites de Passage in 1909. Sources for this paper are Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969)Google Scholar; Turner, Victor, On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, ed. Turner, Edith L. B. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Eliade, Mircea, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969)Google Scholar, chap. 7; and Huntington and Metcalf, Celebrations of Death.

32. Williams, , The Spirit and the Flesh, 84 Google Scholar; Blackburn, Thomas C., December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 98–100 Google Scholar; see also Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964), 509.Google Scholar

33. An examination of the mission records concerning the village of Shalawax can be found in Whitney, “Shalawax.” See also Merriam, C. Hart, Studies of California Indians: California Mission Baptismal Records (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), 188–226.Google Scholar As to the effects of European diseases, see Cook, Sherburne F., The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 13–55.Google Scholar

34. Gardner, Louise, “The Surviving Chumash,” in Annual Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey, vol. 7 (Los Angeles, 1965), 277–302 Google Scholar; and Rawls, James J., Indians of California: The Changing Image (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984).Google Scholar

35. Gardner, , “The Surviving Chumash”; and Heizer, Robert F., “A Chumash Census of 1928-1930,” in University of California Archaeological Research Facility Contributions, vol. 9 (Berkeley, 1970), 23–28.Google Scholar

36. Geiger, Maynard and Meighan, Clement W., As the Padres Saw Them: California Indian Life and Customs as Reported by the Franciscan Missionaries, 1813-1815 (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Mission Archive Library, 1976), 97.Google Scholar

37. Abbott, Mamie Goulet, Santa Ines Hermosa: The Journal of the Padre's Niece (Santa Barbara: Sunwise Press, 1951), 43–44.Google Scholar

38. Gardner, “The Surviving Chumash,” 281.

39. Lloyd, “The Chumash,” 207.

40. Gregory Schaaf, “Kashwa at Cieniguitas: The Church Indian Village of Hope Ranch” (Santa Barbara: Indian Center of Santa Barbara, 1981).

41. Geiger, and Meighan, , As the Padres Saw Them, 142 Google Scholar; see also the Santa Barbara News Press, February 10, 1952, 1; and February 12, 1952, 3.

42. See, for instance, Wallace, Anthony F. C., The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973)Google Scholar; and Cornell, Stephen, The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

43. Heizer, Robert F., “A California Messianic Movement of 1801 among the Chumash,” American Anthropologist 43, no. 1 (1941): 128-29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; from among many accounts of the Mission Revolt of 1824, the only Indian account is Hudson, Travis, “Chumash Canoes of Mission Santa Barbara: The Revolt of 1824,” Journal of California Anthropology 4, no. 2 (1977): 5–15.Google Scholar As for the later movements, see Hudson and others, Eye of the Flute.

44. See Harrington, “Culture Element Distributions,” 5; see also Walsh, Jane MacLaren, John Peabody Harrington: The Man and His California Indian Fieldnotes (Ramona, Calif.: Ballena Press, 1976).Google Scholar As to the reintroduction of Harrington materials among the Chumash, see Nabokov, Peter, Santa Barbara Magazine 6, no. 3 (1986): 42–57.Google Scholar

45. There are a number of major works that detail various tribal and pan-Native American revival movements after World War II. Some of these are: Steiner, Stan, The New Indians (New York: Dell, 1968)Google Scholar; and Josephy, Alvin M. Jr., Red Power: The American Indians'Fight for Freedom (New York: American Heritage Press, 1971).Google Scholar For a more recent analysis of this time and a compelling view of the difference between “ethnic” and “tribal” Native Americans in the struggle for identity, see Deloria, Vine Jr., and Lytle, Clifford M., The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).Google Scholar

46. M. Annette Jaimes, “The Pit River Indian Claim Dispute in Northern California,” Akwesasne Notes (Early Winter 1985): 20-21. See also Forbes, Jack D., Native Americans of California and Nevada (Healdsbury, Calif.: Naturegraph Publishers, 1969), 103-10Google Scholar; Omar C. Stewart, “Litigation and Its Effects,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 8: California, ed. Heizer, 705-12; and Costo, Rupert and Henry, Jeannette, Indian Treaties: Two Centuries of Dishonor (San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1977).Google Scholar

47. Deloria, God Is Red; Earl Caldwell, “Alcatraz: Taken Back, ‘Silent Too Damn Long,’” New York Times, December 10, 1969, 1; Akwesasne Notes, a sometimes quarterly Indian newspaper published from Rooseveltown, New York, covered the Alcatraz takeover in some detail. See vol. 2, no. 4 (Winter/Spring 1969-1970), and vol. 3, no. 1 (Spring 1970); both issues are primarily about the Alcatraz incident.

48. Deloria, God Is Red, 18.

49. Linking the geography of the sacred to non-land-based, non-federally recognized Native Americans like the Chumash is an issue that has yet to be explored. Our own research was buttressed by Sam Gill, Mother Earth; Tuan, Yi-Fu, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Turner, Victor, “The Center Out There: Pilgrim's Goal,” History of Religions 12, no. 3 (1973): 191–230 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dunne, John S., The City of the Gods: A Study of Myth and Mortality (London: Sheldon Press, 1974).Google Scholar

50. Easton, Robert, Black Tide: The Santa Barbara Oil Spill and Its Consequences (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972), 221.Google Scholar

51. For an early history on legislation that followed the disaster, see Easton, Black Tide, chap. 19. There are few published sources that detail its impact on Native Americans. For a brief discussion of the subject, see Shipek, Florence Connolly, Pushed into the Rocks: Southern California Indian Land Tenure, 1769-1986 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 148.Google Scholar

52. Coggins, George Cameron and Wilkinson, Charles F., Federal Public Land and Resources Law (New York: Foundation Press, 1981), 726.Google Scholar

53. California Health and Safety Code, Section 8100; Forbes, Jack D., Religious Freedom and the Protection of Native American Places of Worship and Cemeteries (Davis, Calif.: Native American Studies Tecumseh Center, 1977).Google Scholar

54. Michaelsen, Robert S., “We Also Have a Religion: The Free Exercise of Religion among Native Americans,” American Indian Quarterly 7 (Summer 1983): 118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55. Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 24.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., 3.

57. Wilson, Stephen, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 28.Google Scholar

58. Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory.

59. Interview with Michael Glassow, February 23, 1988.

60. The question of what constitutes “true” Native American identity is critical to our discussion. Deloria and Lytle argue that there are two types: tribal and ethnic. Tribal Native Americans are those whose identity is tribally based, with tribal lands, and with some type of native religious practice that exists only in their homeland. Ethnic Native Americans are mainly urban based, with tenuous or no ties to a tribal land base, whose native religious practice is either nonexistent or pan-Native American in nature. It appears that many of the Chumash of the United Chumash Council are ethnic Native Americans who assert a tribal identity. See note 16. Deloria, and Lytle, , The Nations Within, 232-43Google Scholar; and Deloria, Vine Jr., “The Popularity of Being Indian,” Americans Before Columbus 14, no. 1 (1986): 3.Google Scholar

61. Hammond's Meadow, National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, 5. Copy in possession of authors.

62. Site Nomination Form filed with Native American Heritage Commission, August 11, 1981, copy in possession of authors. Steve Craig argues that Hammond's Meadow should be removed from the Sacred Lands Inventory “because the nomination is not accurate, and … the purported religious significance of the site is exaggerated.” Steve Craig, “Native American Concerns and the Hammond's Estate” (Comments to the Santa Barbara Planning Commission, October 1983), 2.

63. Craig, “Native American Concerns,” 11-12.

64. Johnny P. Flynn, “Hammond's Meadow Ethnographic Report to the Planning Corporation of Santa Barbara” (November 25, 1987), 9.

65. Ibid.

66. Final 83-EIR-16, 28-42.

67. In the course of doing research for this paper, the authors encountered a number of rumors and hearsay regarding burials on the property. While no one admitted to relocating burials on the property, one UCC member who wished to remain anonymous alleged to author Flynn that he was at the UCC meeting when the issue of reburials at Hammond's Meadow was discussed. Apparently, in 1978, when Professor Glassow delineated the boundaries of the Hammond's Meadow site, some members of the principal family that would make up the United Chumash Council were concerned that the development would proceed on the property outside the archaeological site boundaries. At least four burials were given to the Santa Barbara Indian Center by someone who found them in a garage on property they had inherited. The burials were given to a UCC member to rebury, and he allegedly buried them on the Hammond's property outside the boundaries of the archaeological site. Such an incident, true or not, points to the major assertion of this paper. The “ancestral dead” have become a powerful political commodity whose sacrality has been enhanced and reinforced as a contemporary political tool.

68. By the time these events took place, both authors were fully engaged in interviewing people for this article. In the course of the Interviews, we discovered there was much animosity between Native American factions, and duplicity, even among family members, was normal behavior. Quite simply, most of the problems stemmed from who was getting paid and who was not.

69. David Stone (Staff Archaeologist, Environmental Review Division), “Native American/Archaeological Monitoring Workshop Report to the County of Santa Barbara Resource Management Department” (February 17, 1987), 9. Some have alleged a higher figure for UCC monitoring fees. See, for instance, Ziegler, Chris, “Non-Chumash Group Still Monitoring Sites: UCC's Claim to Chumash Heritage Criticized,” Daily Nexus (University of California, Santa Barbara), May 20, 1988, 1.Google Scholar

70. Stone, “Native American/Archaeological Monitoring Workshop Report,” 9.

71. Shipek, , Pushed into the Rocks, 148.Google Scholar

72. Both authors conducted a number of interviews with people involved in the monitoring programs, including archaeologists, Native Americans, environmental planners, and developers. With the exception of some Native Americans who participated directly in the economic windfall, all condemned the monitoring program as a good idea gone terribly awry.

73. See, for instance, Timothy O'Meara, “Native American File Data” (unpublished interviews with Native Americans from the Tri-Counties, on file with the United States Forest Service, Goleta, California, 1981). O'Meara contends that members of the Chumash Community who exploit cultural resources for profit have become “power brokers… [who] don't have the knowledge themselves but control access to people who do” (44-45). O'Meara also concludes, after extensive interviews with people who are Chumash and those who are not but claim to be, that “burials are also important for their Strategic value in stopping land development” (56).

74. See, for instance, Ariès, , The Hour of Our Death, 76 Google Scholar; and Brown, , Cult of the Saints, 31.Google Scholar