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Martin Rizzo-Martinez discusses who the Indigenous people in the Santa Cruz region were and how they survived through the nineteenth century.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 29, 2024

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The speaker discusses their motivation and experiences in writing a book about the indigenous history of California, particularly focusing on the Santa Cruz area and the impact of Spanish colonialism. They reflect on their family history in New Mexico and their curiosity about indigenous communities in Santa Cruz, where they discovered a significant lack of written history.

Through extensive archival research and collaboration with local indigenous communities, particularly the Amam Watson Tribal Band, the speaker uncovered crucial narratives that were previously overlooked. They highlight the importance of oral histories and indigenous perspectives, emphasizing that their work centers on the stories of resilience and resistance among indigenous peoples.

The book aims to dispel myths surrounding California missions, which were often portrayed positively by earlier historians. The speaker highlights the influence of indigenous women in maintaining leadership roles despite patriarchal structures imposed by the colonizers. They recount a specific incident involving a woman named J Kenat, who orchestrated a plan to assassinate a cruel padre, demonstrating indigenous resistance strategies.

The speaker advocates for a deeper understanding of colonial histories and their ongoing effects on contemporary indigenous communities, encouraging readers to learn from and support these communities. Ultimately, they hope that their work will inspire greater appreciation for indigenous resilience and provoke inquiries into local histories of colonialism in various regions.

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I guess the, the motivation

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for writing it came from a couple things.

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Uh, my own family history, my grandpa is from,

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New Mexico, and I grew up around the stories of his own kind

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of long or our own family.

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Long history in New Mexico,

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tracing back to Colonial New Mexico.

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Uh, it was always kind of fascinated by themes

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of indigeneity colonialism, wanted to understand more.

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Uh, found myself living in Santa Cruz,

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some years back, quite a few years ago.

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And, was curious about the history there

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and realized that very lit little was written there.

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Uh, I was fortunate to get to know some

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of the local indigenous community, become friends

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with them and start learning from,

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and realized that there was so much missing from

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that history, when I asked around.

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And so when I decided to go on to graduate school

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and, you know, pursue my own studies, I, I realized that,

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there was a, there was a gap there,

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there was a lot missing.

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And I, I thought, you know, a lot of it was, kind

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of motivated by the, the local native friends that I had

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and people that I was learning from.

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And I thought, you know, I wanted to kind of dig deep.

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And, when I started looking in the archives, I realized

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that there was a ton of stuff, that there was a lot

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of information, there was a lot of stories.

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Um, and, you know, I just kind of compelled me to,

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I wrote my dissertation about this, and then,

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after that, I, I ended up, spending some time kind of,

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you know, changing it into a book, adding a bunch to it,

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you know, working closely with the tribe.

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And, yeah, I'd say that's

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what motivated the writing of this.

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As far as the research goes in a, you know, i,

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I scoured archives.

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There's deep, deep archival work that went into this.

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So I spent a lot of time in,

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archives all throughout California, including, you know,

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Santa Barbara, Sacramento,

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but also, archives down in Mexico.

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Uh, quite a few archives down there where a lot

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of the letters from this kind

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of colonial California were sent down there.

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So it's a lot of archival work.

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Um, but I'll say probably the most important source,

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that I really drew upon in this book were,

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were the California Mission Chancery Records.

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And these are the baptismal records, burials,

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marriages, confirmations.

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Uh, the, the Padres

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of the missions kept detailed records of everyone.

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Unfortunately, gosh,

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probably in the early two thousands, a lot

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of these records were digitized.

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Uh, for many years. They just sat at the various archives,

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but they became digitized.

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So when I started doing this research,

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because of the work that people had done

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to get these digitized, I was able to then kind of

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pull all these thousands

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of records together into my own databases.

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And that allowed me to really kind of triangulate

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and look at specific families

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and, you know, look at the, the detailed notes

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that are in there, which is really rich.

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Um, but I should also add

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probably the most important element of this.

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After doing this all archival work

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and kind of creating my dissertation, I shared it with,

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a lot of the members of the Amam Watson Tribal Ban,

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which is the, the biggest, band,

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tribe in the area. Uh, and in particular,

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The tribal historian is Ed Ketchum,

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who's a wealth of knowledge.

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And he poured through my dissertation page by page

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and, wrote me, you know, annotated notes.

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Basically every page told me everything I got wrong,

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and, some of the things I got right.

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And, and offered a lot of his own insights into things.

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So a lot of that turns up in the book.

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Uh, if you read the book,

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you'll see Ed Ketchum s name all the time.

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Uh, and I'll cite him and say, you know, this is,

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Ketchum s theory, but, he offered a lot.

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So I did that.

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I shared it with the tribal chair, Valenti Lopez.

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Um, and so getting feedback from, members of the tribe,

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kind of trying to get their perspectives,

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interpretations of some of these historical moments.

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Uh, I tried to add that I really tried to center,

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the book on, oral histories

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and indigenous, perspectives.

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Um, and I also looked through, one

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of the hugely important, sources was, a bunch of,

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written records interviews with, Maria Il

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and Solaro, who was one of the ancestors

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of the Al Muttin Tribal band.

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Uh, and she was interviewed, by JP Harrington in 1930.

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Uh, and there's thousands of pages from those interviews,

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and a lot of that ends up in the book,

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'cause I was able to kind of look at her stories as well.

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So, really did try to center on indigenous voices

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and oral histories.

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Uh, to interpret these historical records,

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Santa Cruz is part of the Monterey Bay, which is part

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of the kind of larger San Francisco Bay area.

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And, you know, prior to Spanish arrival in 1770s,

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these tribes today, we know them collectively

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as the Ohlone is one of the names.

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Um, but back then, they all went by their own names.

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There's about 50 independent,

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different tribes throughout the larger Bay Area,

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that they went by their own,

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they had their own political systems,

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they had their own kind of autonomy,

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and yet they were interwoven into a much larger,

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society, right?

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This, very complex, advanced society

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that they shared these linguistic ties, economic ties,

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political ties, social interrelation,

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and they came together for, spiritual ceremony, right?

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Uh, often across tribal lines.

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They'd have rivalries, of course, at times.

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Um, but they had a lot of alliances as well.

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And at the time that the Spanish arrived in 1770,

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the Bay Area was really a thriving, society, right?

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There was a lot of, these different tribes.

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So I focus in on the tribes

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that were there in the Santa Cruz area

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that were originally there.

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Um, but when the missions come in, the missions really,

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impact people, native people in a, in a very,

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negative way, right?

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Uh, in terms of demographics,

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people start dying off in huge numbers.

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Uh, and the Spanish Colonial Project is dependent upon

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native labor, right?

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And so they're constantly trying to pull in.

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Uh, at first it's a little bit of this push pull thing

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that some people have explored.

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But certainly by, you know, 10, 20 years into it,

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it becomes much more of a militaristic kind

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of capturing people and bringing 'em back.

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Uh, but eventually the people

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who end up at Mission Santa Cruz

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ends up being about 35 different tribal members

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ranging geographically all the way out

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to the San Joaquin Valley.

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So quite a distance.

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Uh, it's a mix of the local is the speaking lon,

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but further inland is the Motin speaking Elone.

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Uh, and then further,

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inland into the San Joaquin Valley are a completely distinct

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group called the Northern Valley Kutz.

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Uh, and they're a bunch of different tribes,

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so they all kind of end up in this, this kind of diaspora,

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right, in this, indigenous world.

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Uh, but then on top of that too,

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because the book extends beyond the mission era,

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there is a diaspora of indigenous Californians

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who move throughout California after the mission's closed.

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So there are some Chumash people who come up into the area.

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There's different people coming in.

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Uh, and I follow those stories as well.

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Uh, and I should say too, that I try to look at kind

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of the diversity of Spanish and Mexican settlers as well.

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And, you know, it's not this, kind of, we think

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of this binary of like settler and indigenous,

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but a lot of people who are coming up from Mexico

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are indigenous to different regions in Mexico, right?

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And coming up. And so, I try to look at it through

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that lens of trying to understand, you know,

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who are this kind of diversity of indigenous peoples

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that are in this world together, right?

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That are, you know,

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find themselves in this very complex, diverse,

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indigenous society.

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I think it's really important to realize that in this,

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the history of California, in general,

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the history of a lot of places, right?

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Indigenous peoples are fighting back.

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They're challenging kind of the colonial violence

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that they're experiencing, in indigenous California.

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Um, one of the, the stark differences

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between Spanish colonial society

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and the indigenous Californian is that,

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women in indigenous California often are political

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and spiritual leaders, right?

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They're in these roles of leadership.

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And, that's one of the things in

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that I see in these stories that I write about, is

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that the Spanish world is this patriarchal world, right?

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So it's very different. It has a different kind of, like,

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women are allowed or not allowed to, to kind of go up

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and rank and these types of things.

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But what I found when I looked at this is that,

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there are different examples of women, indigenous women

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who are able to maintain power

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and influence within the mission.

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And one of the best examples of this is,

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in my third chapter, I talk about the assassination of,

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this, sadistic Padre Padre Andres Quintana.

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And Quintana is known at the time for,

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he had just created a whip fashioned with iron tips

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so that it would cut deeper.

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Uh, and after nearly killing two young men, a group of,

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about 20 men and women get together to try to figure out

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what are they gonna do about this.

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And this persists because there's an oral history recorded

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in the 1870s where they give detail about this.

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I was able to dig into the, the oral history

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and try to trace out who the people were involved.

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And what I found was at the center

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of this story was really this woman,

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this indigenous woman named J Kenat.

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Um, she gets baptized and renamed as fta.

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Um, but she's the one

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who actually comes up with the strategy.

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She proposes that

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what they're gonna do is they're gonna tell the priest

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that her husband is dying

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and that he needs to administer last rites.

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Uh, and so she's at the center, she comes up

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with the strategy, she's the one who gets the priest.

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And actually when at the first try, the young men

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who are supposed to then, jump

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and kill him, they don't do it.

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She eventually threatens to reveal the plot if,

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if they don't actually carry through on this.

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So she's really the central figure

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who makes sure that this happens.

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Uh, and she, when I started looking at her story, she is a,

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most likely a spiritual, if not a political leader

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of a tribe that was taken in there.

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Um, and, so it's a example of how she is able to kind

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of maintain this power and influence there.

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She's one of the, she's not arrested.

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They eventually arrest nine men.

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Um, my theory is that they, the Spanish couldn't conceive

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that a woman would've come up with this plan, right?

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They just didn't see it. Um,

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but the story also, in addition to showing us

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how indigenous women are able to maintain power

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and influence, it also shows us the ways in which,

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indigenous strategies are, are carried across these lines.

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She actually, the strategy she comes up with

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to call him into, administer last rights,

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a very similar thing happens up about 50 miles, north of

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where her tribe was, about seven years earlier when she was,

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before she came into the mission.

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So I was able to put it together

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that she actually had seen this work,

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effectively in San Jose,

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and then she brings it in, says, Hey, this worked out there.

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Let's use this here. And so what we see when you look at it

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through this way, is you see this network of communication,

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the way that strategies are kind

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of conveyed across these lines, resistant strategies.

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Uh, and you see this consistently.

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People are fighting back, they're challenging, colonial

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violence imposition.

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I think that the story stories

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of the California missions have unfortunately been

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mythologized, right?

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There's, because of the way that these were told

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by some Franciscan, historians back,

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in the early 19 hundreds, for reasons to kind of,

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sell tourism to California through the missions,

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the story of the missions has kind of been this one

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that these, beneficial, beneficent, California,

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missionaries, the Franciscans, came here,

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and that they uplifted native peoples, right?

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And of course, we know that isn't true.

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Uh, but it's only recently that California Indians have,

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are being listened to, right?

11:18.915 --> 11:21.075
People like Deborah Miranda,

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and other, there's so many,

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really brilliant California Indian scholars

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and community leaders out there.

11:27.015 --> 11:29.115
Uh, but they're just now being listened to, right?

11:29.115 --> 11:30.515
For a long time, they've been ignored.

11:30.695 --> 11:33.075
Uh, and these stories of, kind

11:33.075 --> 11:35.355
of romanticized California missions have been out there.

11:35.455 --> 11:37.955
So I think that the book does a good job of kind

11:37.955 --> 11:39.755
of dispelling some of these myths,

11:39.755 --> 11:41.115
and trying to put that to rest.

11:41.895 --> 11:44.755
Um, also, you know, a lot of the studies that up

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to this point on the California missions have tended

11:47.075 --> 11:49.035
to be these kind of broad demographic studies.

11:49.095 --> 11:51.235
And part of this is because we haven't had

11:51.235 --> 11:52.635
access to the archives

11:52.735 --> 11:55.605
In such a way to look at individual stories.

11:55.665 --> 11:58.125
But that's what I tried to do, is push beyond these kind

11:58.125 --> 11:59.685
of broad demographics to tell stories.

11:59.925 --> 12:02.525
I mean, there's so many amazing stories of resistance

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and, just humanity, right?

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Uh, and ingenuity that were happening back then.

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So, the book contributes in that way, to,

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but I think it, it ultimately is, is trying to,

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you know, the same methodology that I used, in trying

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to trace out these stories,

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looking closely at these records,

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I think other scholars could apply.

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Those other people could apply those,

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to other areas in California, right?

12:27.205 --> 12:28.405
They're very similar methodologies.

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So I think that the book contributes, by offering a,

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a way of looking at these records, right?

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A way of reading them, to find these stories.

12:36.905 --> 12:39.285
Um, so I, I think it can contribute to a,

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a better understanding of, California history and,

12:42.185 --> 12:43.965
and a way to better understand

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and appreciate, indigenous California

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and, ingenuity and brilliance.

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I hope the readers of the book, will, first

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and foremost, I, I hope

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that they will appreciate the ingenuity, the resilience,

12:57.945 --> 13:00.645
of indigenous peoples, of Santa Cruz, of Monterey,

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of the San Francisco Bay area of California.

13:03.385 --> 13:06.565
Uh, and, and I hope that they'll get a better understanding

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of the violent colonial histories,

13:09.585 --> 13:12.885
and how indigenous communities work so hard to persevere

13:13.065 --> 13:14.285
and to survive in these times.

13:14.625 --> 13:16.445
Uh, I hope that that understanding,

13:16.475 --> 13:18.285
will lead people then to, you know,

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hopefully ask similar questions about the indigenous

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histories, colonial histories

13:21.685 --> 13:22.765
of wherever they might be living.

13:23.145 --> 13:25.685
Um, but I think most importantly, I hope that

13:25.805 --> 13:28.325
by learning these histories, that readers will be inspired

13:28.385 --> 13:31.325
to then go out, listen to, to learn from

13:31.625 --> 13:32.765
and to work in solidarity

13:32.835 --> 13:34.725
with contemporary indigenous community members

13:34.745 --> 13:38.405
and appreciate, so how, how hard their ancestors worked to,

13:38.585 --> 13:40.405
to survive these really difficult times.

00:00 - I guess the, the motivation for writing it came from a couple things. my own family history, my grandpa is from, New Mexico, and I grew up around the stories of his own kind of long or our own family. Long history in New Mexico,

00:15 - tracing back to Colonial New Mexico. it was always kind of fascinated by themes of indigeneity colonialism, wanted to understand more. found myself living in Santa Cruz, some years back, quite a few years ago. And, was curious about the history there and realized that very lit little was written there. I was fortunate to get to know some of the local indigenous community, become friends with them and start learning from,

00:40 - and realized that there was so much missing from that history, when I asked around. And so when I decided to go on to graduate school and, you know, pursue my own studies, I, I realized that, there was a, there was a gap there, there was a lot missing. And I, I thought, you know, a lot of it was, kind of motivated by the, the local native friends that I had and people that I was learning from. And I thought, you know, I wanted to kind of dig deep.

01:04 - And, when I started looking in the archives, I realized that there was a ton of stuff, that there was a lot of information, there was a lot of stories. and, you know, I just kind of compelled me to, I wrote my dissertation about this, and then, after that, I, I ended up, spending some time kind of, you know, changing it into a book, adding a bunch to it, you know, working closely with the tribe. And, yeah, I'd say that's what motivated the writing of this.

01:30 - As far as the research goes in a, you know, i, I scoured archives. There's deep, deep archival work that went into this. So I spent a lot of time in, archives all throughout California, including, you know, Santa Barbara, Sacramento, but also, archives down in Mexico. quite a few archives down there where a lot of the letters from this kind of colonial California were sent down there.

01:52 - So it's a lot of archival work. but I'll say probably the most important source, that I really drew upon in this book were, were the California Mission Chancery Records. And these are the baptismal records, burials, marriages, confirmations. the, the Padres of the missions kept detailed records of everyone. Unfortunately, gosh, probably in the early two thousands, a lot

02:17 - of these records were digitized. for many years. They just sat at the various archives, but they became digitized. So when I started doing this research, because of the work that people had done to get these digitized, I was able to then kind of pull all these thousands of records together into my own databases. And that allowed me to really kind of triangulate and look at specific families

02:38 - and, you know, look at the, the detailed notes that are in there, which is really rich. but I should also add probably the most important element of this. After doing this all archival work and kind of creating my dissertation, I shared it with, a lot of the members of the Amam Watson Tribal Ban, which is the, the biggest, band, tribe in the area. and in particular, The tribal historian is Ed Ketchum,

03:01 - who's a wealth of knowledge. And he poured through my dissertation page by page and, wrote me, you know, annotated notes. Basically every page told me everything I got wrong, and, some of the things I got right. And, and offered a lot of his own insights into things. So a lot of that turns up in the book. if you read the book, you'll see Ed Ketchum s name all the time. and I'll cite him and say, you know, this is,

03:24 - Ketchum s theory, but, he offered a lot. So I did that. I shared it with the tribal chair, Valenti Lopez. and so getting feedback from, members of the tribe, kind of trying to get their perspectives, interpretations of some of these historical moments. I tried to add that I really tried to center, the book on, oral histories and indigenous, perspectives. and I also looked through, one

03:48 - of the hugely important, sources was, a bunch of, written records interviews with, Maria Il and Solaro, who was one of the ancestors of the Al Muttin Tribal band. and she was interviewed, by JP Harrington in 1930. and there's thousands of pages from those interviews, and a lot of that ends up in the book, 'cause I was able to kind of look at her stories as well. So, really did try to center on indigenous voices and oral histories.

04:16 - to interpret these historical records, Santa Cruz is part of the Monterey Bay, which is part of the kind of larger San Francisco Bay area. And, you know, prior to Spanish arrival in 1770s, these tribes today, we know them collectively as the Ohlone is one of the names. but back then, they all went by their own names. There's about 50 independent, different tribes throughout the larger Bay Area, that they went by their own,

04:43 - they had their own political systems, they had their own kind of autonomy, and yet they were interwoven into a much larger, society, right? This, very complex, advanced society that they shared these linguistic ties, economic ties, political ties, social interrelation, and they came together for, spiritual ceremony, right? often across tribal lines. They'd have rivalries, of course, at times.

05:09 - but they had a lot of alliances as well. And at the time that the Spanish arrived in 1770, the Bay Area was really a thriving, society, right? There was a lot of, these different tribes. So I focus in on the tribes that were there in the Santa Cruz area that were originally there. but when the missions come in, the missions really, impact people, native people in a, in a very, negative way, right?

05:34 - in terms of demographics, people start dying off in huge numbers. and the Spanish Colonial Project is dependent upon native labor, right? And so they're constantly trying to pull in. at first it's a little bit of this push pull thing that some people have explored. But certainly by, you know, 10, 20 years into it, it becomes much more of a militaristic kind of capturing people and bringing 'em back.

05:55 - but eventually the people who end up at Mission Santa Cruz ends up being about 35 different tribal members ranging geographically all the way out to the San Joaquin Valley. So quite a distance. it's a mix of the local is the speaking lon, but further inland is the Motin speaking Elone. and then further, inland into the San Joaquin Valley are a completely distinct

06:17 - group called the Northern Valley Kutz. and they're a bunch of different tribes, so they all kind of end up in this, this kind of diaspora, right, in this, indigenous world. but then on top of that too, because the book extends beyond the mission era, there is a diaspora of indigenous Californians who move throughout California after the mission's closed. So there are some Chumash people who come up into the area. There's different people coming in.

06:42 - and I follow those stories as well. and I should say too, that I try to look at kind of the diversity of Spanish and Mexican settlers as well. And, you know, it's not this, kind of, we think of this binary of like settler and indigenous, but a lot of people who are coming up from Mexico are indigenous to different regions in Mexico, right? And coming up. And so, I try to look at it through that lens of trying to understand, you know, who are this kind of diversity of indigenous peoples

07:11 - that are in this world together, right? That are, you know, find themselves in this very complex, diverse, indigenous society. I think it's really important to realize that in this, the history of California, in general, the history of a lot of places, right? Indigenous peoples are fighting back. They're challenging kind of the colonial violence that they're experiencing, in indigenous California.

07:34 - one of the, the stark differences between Spanish colonial society and the indigenous Californian is that, women in indigenous California often are political and spiritual leaders, right? They're in these roles of leadership. And, that's one of the things in that I see in these stories that I write about, is that the Spanish world is this patriarchal world, right? So it's very different. It has a different kind of, like,

07:57 - women are allowed or not allowed to, to kind of go up and rank and these types of things. But what I found when I looked at this is that, there are different examples of women, indigenous women who are able to maintain power and influence within the mission. And one of the best examples of this is, in my third chapter, I talk about the assassination of, this, sadistic Padre Padre Andres Quintana. And Quintana is known at the time for,

08:24 - he had just created a whip fashioned with iron tips so that it would cut deeper. and after nearly killing two young men, a group of, about 20 men and women get together to try to figure out what are they gonna do about this. And this persists because there's an oral history recorded in the 1870s where they give detail about this. I was able to dig into the, the oral history and try to trace out who the people were involved. And what I found was at the center

08:48 - of this story was really this woman, this indigenous woman named J Kenat. she gets baptized and renamed as fta. but she's the one who actually comes up with the strategy. She proposes that what they're gonna do is they're gonna tell the priest that her husband is dying and that he needs to administer last rites. and so she's at the center, she comes up

09:09 - with the strategy, she's the one who gets the priest. And actually when at the first try, the young men who are supposed to then, jump and kill him, they don't do it. She eventually threatens to reveal the plot if, if they don't actually carry through on this. So she's really the central figure who makes sure that this happens. and she, when I started looking at her story, she is a, most likely a spiritual, if not a political leader

09:32 - of a tribe that was taken in there. and, so it's a example of how she is able to kind of maintain this power and influence there. She's one of the, she's not arrested. They eventually arrest nine men. my theory is that they, the Spanish couldn't conceive that a woman would've come up with this plan, right? They just didn't see it. but the story also, in addition to showing us how indigenous women are able to maintain power

09:56 - and influence, it also shows us the ways in which, indigenous strategies are, are carried across these lines. She actually, the strategy she comes up with to call him into, administer last rights, a very similar thing happens up about 50 miles, north of where her tribe was, about seven years earlier when she was, before she came into the mission. So I was able to put it together that she actually had seen this work, effectively in San Jose,

10:22 - and then she brings it in, says, Hey, this worked out there. Let's use this here. And so what we see when you look at it through this way, is you see this network of communication, the way that strategies are kind of conveyed across these lines, resistant strategies. and you see this consistently. People are fighting back, they're challenging, colonial violence imposition. I think that the story stories of the California missions have unfortunately been

10:46 - mythologized, right? There's, because of the way that these were told by some Franciscan, historians back, in the early 19 hundreds, for reasons to kind of, sell tourism to California through the missions, the story of the missions has kind of been this one that these, beneficial, beneficent, California, missionaries, the Franciscans, came here, and that they uplifted native peoples, right? And of course, we know that isn't true.

11:13 - but it's only recently that California Indians have, are being listened to, right? People like Deborah Miranda, and other, there's so many, really brilliant California Indian scholars and community leaders out there. but they're just now being listened to, right? For a long time, they've been ignored. and these stories of, kind of romanticized California missions have been out there.

11:35 - So I think that the book does a good job of kind of dispelling some of these myths, and trying to put that to rest. also, you know, a lot of the studies that up to this point on the California missions have tended to be these kind of broad demographic studies. And part of this is because we haven't had access to the archives In such a way to look at individual stories. But that's what I tried to do, is push beyond these kind

11:58 - of broad demographics to tell stories. I mean, there's so many amazing stories of resistance and, just humanity, right? and ingenuity that were happening back then. So, the book contributes in that way, to, but I think it, it ultimately is, is trying to, you know, the same methodology that I used, in trying to trace out these stories, looking closely at these records, I think other scholars could apply.

12:23 - Those other people could apply those, to other areas in California, right? They're very similar methodologies. So I think that the book contributes, by offering a, a way of looking at these records, right? A way of reading them, to find these stories. so I, I think it can contribute to a, a better understanding of, California history and, and a way to better understand and appreciate, indigenous California

12:46 - and, ingenuity and brilliance. I hope the readers of the book, will, first and foremost, I, I hope that they will appreciate the ingenuity, the resilience, of indigenous peoples, of Santa Cruz, of Monterey, of the San Francisco Bay area of California. and, and I hope that they'll get a better understanding of the violent colonial histories, and how indigenous communities work so hard to persevere and to survive in these times.

13:14 - I hope that that understanding, will lead people then to, you know, hopefully ask similar questions about the indigenous histories, colonial histories of wherever they might be living. but I think most importantly, I hope that by learning these histories, that readers will be inspired to then go out, listen to, to learn from and to work in solidarity with contemporary indigenous community members

13:34 - and appreciate, so how, how hard their ancestors worked to, to survive these really difficult times.

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