1990s Fourth Grade Bicycle Trips to View Wuchumna Yokuts Indian Settlement Area

Twenty-three years ago I began teaching fourth grade in Woodlake, CA with Suzanne Bidwell, Donna Frasier, Karen Redfield, and Edna Ikerd.  This trip was one of the traditions they established, and I lucked into.  I've seen Wuchumna spelled both Wu and Wa, so if someone knows the real correct way to spell it, they can write in and inform me!

The pictures won’t win any awards, but when I post them on FB, people recognize their tia or tio (aunt or uncle), and other family members, and it’s a lot of fun.   Aren’t they adorable?

The pictures show the last bike trip we took before the helmet law for bicyclists went into effect around 1993 or 1994.

The goal was to get to location that hadn’t been disturbed by settlement, where a tribe of the Wuchumna Indians, a sub-tribe of  Yokuts Indians, lived in this area.  The Yokuts, yes the ‘s’ is part of the name, was one of the largest tribes in North America.  Food was plentiful, nutritious and easy to gather or hunt.  However, not even missionaries or Spanish soldiers ventured this far east more than once or twice.  Thomas Davis from South Carolina and his friends, Thomas Fowler and Jim Fisher discovered this area in 1853.

Kids enjoyed walking through a sort-of-cave and looking at the paintings left by the Wuchumna.

The owner of this property, who is in his 80s, remembers seeing them down by Cottonwood Creek.  It’s dry most of the year.  It probably was then, too.

Gary Davis can probably tell you about another time when his five-year-old daughter and I got stranded up on this rock, and he had to climb up and rescue us.  These kids didn't have as much problem getting down, but they didn't have to be lifted from ledge to ledge to get there.

Wuchumna women harvested the many oak trees in the area. Women of all ages sat around the large grinding rock and ground acorns.  You can tell who sat where by the size of the holes in the rocks.  Grandmas had very deep holes.  You can clearly see the deep hole on the back right.

Too soon it was time to bike back to school.

Drivers followed in trucks or vans to pick up stray bikes and bikers that broke down along the way.

I biked behind them taking pictures and hoping that no one would have problems.  And no one did.  :)

BOOK REVIEW: CO-OPERATIVE DREAMS A HISTORY OF THE KAWEAH COLONY BY JAY O’CONNELL

If you’ve never seen a tree so wide you can drive your truck through it, then you need to come to the Sequoia National Park. The Kaweah River surges down from the Sierra Nevada, through the Big Trees, forming the Delta where big agriculture lives in Tulare County.

The huge forests that attract thousands of tourists world-wide today, might have been wiped from the map before their secret was discovered were it not for the drama that unfolded in the mountains in the 1880s.  

I met author, Jay O’Connell, in the Pizza Factory in Three Rivers on the day Sally Pace and I made ad sales calls for the Kiwanis Magazine, “What’s Happening in the Foothills.”  I went home, and sure enough, I had his book, Cooperative Dreams A History of the Kaweah Colony, in my library, but to my loss, had never taken the time to read it.

Early tent colony where first Kaweah Colony residents settled.

“Three key issues of the nineteenth-century California history are illustrated by events at Kaweah.” The issues prominent in the 1880s, when the Kaweah Colony formed were: “land and its acquisition; labor and the organization of it; and conservation.  … They are personified by three major characters in the drama of the Kaweah.” Charles Keller found the land, and knew it would be perfect to start the perfect cooperative colony.  Burnette Haskell, son of none other than Eddie Haskell (not from Leave It To Beaver, but very much like him in personality) gave voice to the organized labor movement so prominent in those years.  Finally, Visalia’s own “Father of the Sequoia National Park,” George W. Stewart championed conservation so effectively that the results surprised even him.

More permanent dwellings afforded little protection from the winter weather.

What I didn’t know was that there was such a mysterious aura around the often-told story.  For fifty years even historians did not know how the park came to be included in a bill that originally reserved only a small portion of the trees for posterity.  Even more amazing was the reason for including the magnificent trees in the preservation act.

O’Connell gently unfurls the story, introducing each character, using primary sources including letters, newspaper articles, and interviews of survivors of the colonies conducted in the 1940s by Tulare County historical expert, Joe Doctor, to authenticate his narrative.

As a student of local history, I found this fascinating, but California’s history, its dream belongs to the world as did the settlers that came in the 1800s.