AUSTIN ABBOTT: Yeah they got up on the river with most of them after they blew those …… from the woods.

REX STROMMES: Where did they come from? These loggers where do they mostly come from?

ABBOTT: Well a lot of them stayed around Sonora there they go to those room and boarding houses down there and uh

STROMMES: Jamestown and Sonora?

ABBOTT: Oh Jamestown and Sonora some would go to Sacramento and uh their credit was good and they’d be in debt when they went up in the spring

STROMMES: …and they’d come down rich.

ABBOTT: Well I don’t know about the first checks, by golly, the guy that was running the hotel, he had a bootleg …. At times, and that was after it went dry. Well, he’d get there to get their first checks so he’d be sure to get his money. Whenever they’d come down they’d go to save their money all summer long….wear their socks and when there was a hole in the heel they’d turn it over and…

STROMMES: What kind of men were these loggers? Did people know that they were loggers?

ABBOTT: They were pretty rough old guys. They just wore a woolen undershirt and a pair of overalls and a pair of logging boots. Ha ha.

STROMMES: The Paul Bunyan types.

ABBOTT: Yeah, they were all pretty…

STROMMES: Did many have families up here?

ABBOTT: Few of them had families. Yeah, a few of them had families. Back in the woods, yeah, they has shacks for them.

STROMMES: Where did they live during the logging season?

ABBOTT: Well, they had cabins for them.

STROMMES: they had cabins built right at the sites?

ABBOTT: Yeah, and they had some little houses for people that has families. But some of the places up there were so lousy up there with bed bugs that you’d go out under a tree. You didn’t have white sheets or anything like that. You packed your own bed.

STROMMES: And how did they eat? Was it more or less they had to cook?

ABBOTT: They all had cooks, they had plenty of grub. It was pretty good grub.

STROMMES: Did they have a lot of Chinese laborers and oriental people around here in the mining or the logging?

ABBOTT: Yeah, the Chinamen come after the big mining was over, they worked that all over again, you know?

STROMMES: they mined it themselves?

ABBOTT: Yeah, they just took what was left, you know?

STROMMES: there wasn’t too much left though…?

ABBOTT: No, they could live off of little to nothing. Chinamen had the patience to work it anyway. A lot of that gravel, they got down in those crevices, you know, and spooned it out and packet it to when there was some water so that they could pan it. The water would go on then and they took the water out.

STROMMES: By panning by sluice box, what did you mean by sluice box? Is that one of the later methods?

ABBOTT: No, that was one of the first ones.

STROMMES: …that was one of the very first ones.

ABBOTT: It’s kind of build like a square box with a bottom and sides and they put a ladder—they call it—at that bottom of that. And the gravel, they’d shovel the gravel into that. And the gravel go down and settle to the bottom and these pleats would catch the gold. And then they’d port the heavy ones out and throw them out into the cave.

STROMMES: was that a pretty popular method?

ABBOTT: It was about the only thing they had. You have two of those rockers, those prospecting thing—rockers. And small scale stuff, you know?

STROMMES: Was panning a popular method too?

ABBOTT: Yeah. There was panning…slow.

STROMMES: That was just an individual going out and just chancing it?

ABBOTT: Yeah.

STROMMES: you said that you knew some Indians when you were younger, around the area.

ABBOTT: Oh yeah, there are lots of those old timers around here. That flu in 1918 just about…they couldn’t take it.

STROMMES: (______) this time?

ABBOTT: Well, when I was real small kid, there was a lot of then in Twain Harte—where Twain Harte Lake is now. But then they moved out of the (_____) right off there off of Belleview Falls—what they call Crystal Falls now. There was quite a settlement of them n there.

STROMMES: In Twain Harte they lived in a…it wasn’t a reservation then?

ABBOTT: No.

STROMMES: It was just a gathering.

ABBOTT: ,,,just a gathering.

STROMMES: what kind of housing did they have?

ABBOTT: Well, the one’s seen weren’t very good. Some of them had some bark teepees, some had some old shacks.

STROMMES: what kind of Indians were they?

ABBOTT: Well, we called them diggers in those days, but later on they called themselves MiWoks.

STROMMES: MiWok, that was up by the town, by the city, of MiWok.

ABBOTT: Yeah, they named it after them. Well, they named it after a chief that went up there that gave them a lot of Indian names for different streets up there. They used to have them from up there, you know?

STROMMES: Who’s Chief Whooly?

ABBOTT: Well, he’s dead now. His father was an old Indian that lived in a teepee down there where Hutchins lives now. And (_____) living in a house there and he was quite a worker—he and his boys.

STROMMES: Didn’t he work for your father once?

ABBOTT: Oh, he worked for my father for about 12 years.

STROMMES: Where at?

ABBOTT: Up here in Florence Ridge, that’s why that ridge is named after him.

STROMMES: Was that at the mill?

ABBOTT: No, that was right up here across the ridge. He cut a cord of wood and lagged it and everything for the mines.

STROMMES: This was actually was actually Chief Whooly himself?

ABBOTT: Yeah.

STROMMES: why did they call him Chief Whooly?

ABBOTT: Well, he was kind of had man, you know?

STROMMES: Of the Indians up near MiWok?

ABBOTT: Yeah, he was the head man from around here. There is one thing I’ll say, by golly, no Indian ever went hungry, by golly, you could see them coming, by golly, when we got to his place we knew we was going to get a good meal and stay there as long as they wanted.

STROMMES: Were most of them pretty well off in that manner? Did they always have a lot of food…

ABBOTT: Well, I can’t say that they had a lot, no. The real old ones, there were a lot of them that would go from house to house every day they had their (____) and their basket on their back and somebody would give them a part of a loaf of bread and pepper and salt and small potatoes, and one thing or another.

STROMMES: this was the wise that would do this? The squas?

ABBOTT: Yeah, the squa’s would do that. The old fellows, the Indians, were too damn vicious as far as I’m concerned. The squa’s, for instance, they would go out and pick up acorns and there were fellows that we out hunting squirrels or something…quail. Lots of quail and game…

STROMMES: what year is this that you are talking about?

ABBOTT: Oh, that goes way back to 1906 and they faded out into 1918 and that was the last of the Indians went far as I know.

STROMMES: 1918 was that flu that you were talking about?

ABBOTT: Yeah, that’s the flu that got me too.

STROMMES: did it get a lot of people around?

ABBOTT: Oh, they died like flies all over the country.

STROMMES: So this is a country epidemic?

ABBOTT: Huh?

STROMMES: This is an epidemic all over the country?

ABBOTT: Oh yeah, San Francisco, every place. That Spanish Influenza. Oh yeah, that just killed people right and left. Wiped out families of people some places.

STROMMES: And I guess the Indians because they weren’t really that…medical facilities that we have. They probably got it worse than everybody.

ABBOTT: No, the old people died (____). They’d be dead before they knew it. They’d get sick and first thing you know they’d get double-pneumonia and that was the end of them.

STROMMES: Did they believe in going to the doctors and buying from stores?

ABBOTT: Oh yeah, they bought from stores. When they had any money to buy with?

STROMMES: Did any of them work?

ABBOTT: Well, they Indian guys; yeah, they worked. Some of them Indians were darned good workers.

STROMMES: Do you remember some of them that worked for your father?

ABBOTT: Yes.

STROMMES: what did they get paid?

ABBOTT: What did they get paid? Oh, they got paid whatever the wages were those days. You could get more than a dollar a day working on the ranch.

STROMMES: A dollar a day…

ABBOTT: (_______), because there weren’t many jobs.

STROMMES: they were able to raise their families on that small of an amount?

ABBOTT: Well, yeah, but they hunted quite a bit. And they had a big garden and they got acorn-bread and stuff like that.

STROMMES: I guess as the years went on they started mixing with the white people.

ABBOTT: Oh yeah.

STROMMES: and becoming civilized.

ABBOTT: Yeah, that was all miners and wood cutters would marry these squas and had big families—very big families. They weren’t very good to them either, as far as I can remember.

STROMMES: What were they like with their kids and their families?

ABBOTT: Believe me, they were happy. They were good to their kids. You’d never hear kids crying all of the time with them. They are kind to their little kids. They put then in a basket and they packed them on their backs and set them up against a tree and you’d never hear then crying.

STROMMES: did they have their own language?

ABBOTT: Oh yes, yes. Yeah.

STROMMES: Did most of them speak English also?

ABBOTT: Yeah, you’d have to listen very close to understand what some of them said. I’m amused when I look at a television at some of those pictures they have, as far as imitating Indians. My gosh, it will make you laugh. Yeah, they never talk like that. They never used college language, but golly, when they talked. It was more like a pigeon English as far as I can remember.

STROMMES: Were most of them outspoken or were the pretty quiet?

ABBOTT: pretty quiet people, they were pretty quiet people.

STROMMES: But they were proud. They were kind of proud people.

ABBOTT: Yeah.

STROMMES:

STROMMES: What did the people around here think of them—think of the Indians? Did they treat them…?

ABBOTT: My grandfather, he loved the Indians, come right down to it. And they liked him too. They talked a world of them. Yeah.

STROMMES: Did most people felt h same way about them?

ABBOTT: Well, some people thought that they were so much better than the Indians. Those old Indians, you know, t was pitiful. Like, sometimes if they’d come to work they would go to eat out on the porch here. Well, (________) and got off the porch and went home. He was highly insulted. They would come to table washed and combed their hair, and they would have the manner, by golly. They were the best men you’d want to see anybody have. They never had their elbows on the table and they’d eat slow.

STROMMES: Did you go to school?

ABBOTT: Oh yeah.

STROMMES: How were you in school? Did you have many friends?

ABBOTT: Oh, of course. We were all friends. We were like sisters and brothers; all of us. Oh sure.

STROMMES: What was the school that you all went to?

ABBOTT: Well, I went to Belleview school and then Little Camp school was the north end of Redwood now. Yeah, I got a picture someplace of a group up there with some of the kids that were going to school. We never did have a very big school. But some were awful fine kids.

STROMMES: Are there any real Indians left around here?

ABBOTT: Very few. I now one—I think old Frank Dick is the only one. He was born and raised in Yosemite Valley.

STROMMES: Frank Dick

ABBOTT: Frank Dick. He’s around Sonora there someplace. In a cabin down there some place. You might think he was colored of you look at him.

STROMMES: Can you tell me a little bit about him?

ABBOTT: Well, I remember him back from when he used to work on the section up there for Standard Lumber Company on the railroad. And he used to work for then a lot. (____) Poles, and everything else because they had a contract too. And he worked here, there, and everywhere. He’s picked apples for me for several years.

STROMMES: Why do you say that he is the only real Indian left around?

ABBOTT: Well, that’s the only one I know. The rest of them is al half-breed, quarter-breeds, and stuff like that.

STROMMES: But he’s pure MiWok.

ABBOTT: Well, I don’t know if he is pure MiWok, but he calls himself Yosemite Tribe.

STROMMES: …Yosemite Tribe…

ABBOTT: Yeah. And some people say that they actually belong to the Pyoots, I don’t know.

STROMMES: Do you know any other Yosemite Valley Indians?

ABBOTT: No, that’s the only one that I know of. But the MiWoks, I can’t say that I know a full-blooded MiWok right now.

STROMMES: they are all mixed with other races?

ABBOTT: They are all mixed up with whites.

STROMMES: Why did you cal then diggers?

ABBOTT: Well, they used to dig root, you know, and mushrooms. They dug a lot of things out of the ground, you know, wild onions, and stuff like that. Now the Indians turn around and call us the diggers now because they said “you fells are diggers, you dig for gold.” Haha.

STROMMES: Were they pretty good farmers. Did they raise much of their own food?

ABBOTT: Yeah, they had a place to raise it. Yeah, they raised good gardens, yes.

STROMMES: Corn?

ABBOTT: Yeah, vegetables.

STROMMES: Are they pretty good hunters?

ABBOTT: Yeah, they had some primitive guns, they had to be good shots.

STROMMES: About the apple crops around you now. Is it a pretty big business in this area?

ABBOTT: No. No, the apple business has gone backwards. There used to be, I figure, thirty baring orchards in this county, and now I think there s about [counting]. I don’t believe that there is six orchards to step up in the county anymore.

STROMMES: When was it at its peak—the apple growing business?

ABBOTT: the apple business is as far backs as I can remember they had orchards and was keeping then up right along until subdivision fever hit people and they could get so much more for the land that they sold it for subdivisions.

STROMMES: Who did you sell your apples to?

ABBOTT: Oh, we used to sell them sometimes to big buyers come up from down bellow in the valley towns and buyer would come up with trucks and get loads and sell local what you could to people that would drop in. But you can’t depend…stores don’t buy much from people here in the..and they get apples from Watsonville and Washington and every place else but up here.

STROMMES: What kind of apples grow best up here?

ABBOTT: oh, I don’t know, most anything will grow good up here.

STROMMES: Is there a particular type of apple that would grow better in the mountains and the higher elevations?

ABBOTT: No, I can’t say there is. Except that Lady Apple. That lady apple, that call it that Christmas Apple. They export a lot of them.

STROMMES: And that grown better in the higher…

ABBOTT: yeah, just this (___) in here. At about 4000 foot elevation they do well. But the rest of them do good in most any place—any variety. But the popular varieties is, of course, Delicious, Double Delicious, Golden Delicious, Wine Sap, and Rolling Beauty.

STROMMES: Your grandfather was the first one to grow..to start his orchard on this land.

ABBOTT: Oh yeah, for sure.

STROMMES: Did you have to replant many times since then?

ABBOTT: No. We didn’t replant a terrible lot—some. But after WWII, when my son got the old place when I was bored and my grandfather’s place, he cleaned house. And he took out all of the old trees and left, oh, I don’t know, maybe half-a-dozen, and replanted all of new varieties, which should have been done years ago. But he was a young man and had better ideas, I guess. He could see that handwriting on the wall where those old varieties was going out on the trees too.

STROMMES: In those days, how did you haul your apples down to Sonora?

ABBOTT: Oh, horses and wagons.

STROMMES: horses and wagons…

[Tape splice]

ABBOTT: The old Gus Michaels, always going to strike it rich, but never did. Bert Clarke, he owned the old whistle place where (______). Old Fred Keiser.

STROMMES: Who’s Fred Keiser?

ABBOTT: Oh, he’s an old fellow that lived up here in Keiser Springs there where they join Cedar Ridge. It’s where they get their water now—part of their water for the subdivision. But all of those little fellows, they lived in hopes and died in despair. They never made anything. These characters were all up here.

STROMMES: did nay of the people from this area ever make it pretty big?

ABBOTT: What do you mean? Mining?

STROMMES: In a business up here, or any kind of business or in another city?

ABBOTT: did they get rich? Well, there was a few really prosperous men. They made a good living, you know? My father was one of them and there were several other men that had good ranches and there was a lot of in-between. Work didn’t bother him much. It didn’t have it any more than the law alive. He could have (___) if there was something to sell or something and steal a bag of groceries and buy booze. I see guys that each have a quart of whisky and no groceries for their families.

STROMMES: What do you think about the area abound you now as compared to the old days?

ABBOTT: Well, sometimes I wish it hadn’t happened. One day you’d walk and find something all broken up or a hole shot through something, or something stolen, you kind of disgusted when you think about the olden times when you went away and left the house wide open, you never had to worry about anybody hurting you. If they did come it, they got something to eat, they would shut the door and wash the dishes. That was customary. Yeah, but it’s not like that no more.

STROMMES: Nowadays there is a lot of people moving in. there are subdivisions around.

ABBOTT: Subdivisions, that’s what’s done it.

STROMMES: And recreational areas.

ABBOTT: …and recreational areas.

STROMMES: Well, Mr. Abbott, I guess that’s about it for our interview. Well, I hope there is something good.

ABBOTT: Okay, I want to thank you very much for doing it.

STROMMES: You’re welcome.

END OF TAPE

General Information:

Interviewer:  Strommes, Rex

Interviewee: Abbott, Austin

Name of Tape: Mining, Lumbering and Indians (abbott_a_1)

When: 11/28/1972-12/5/09

Where: Twain Harte, CA

Transcriber: Naomi and Ariella

Transcribed: 10/15/09