Dyer: This interview is with Mr. Frank Coleman. It is being conducted by Richard L. Dyer at Frank’s home in the Chicken Ranch area near Jamestown, CA. Today’s date is the 25th of August 1972, and this interview is one of the series.
Dyer: Ok, well, Frank, why don’t we start at the beginning? Why don’t you tell us a little bit about where you were born and when you were born?
Coleman: I was born in Carmel 1894.
Dyer: 1894…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: So that would make you 78 today.
Coleman: Yeah
Dyer: Seventy-eight years old.
Coleman: In April.
Dyer: In April and how about brothers and sisters? How many?
Coleman: One brother and two sisters; and one brother lives in (___) (___).
Dyer: And one of your sisters (___)…
Coleman: (___) (___) married to Eddie Webb.
Dyer: What was her name?
Coleman: Maude.
Dyer: Maude, huh?
Coleman: Uh-huh.
Dyer: They lived in Shaws Flat for…
Coleman: They lived in mops and they live in Coulterville. He operated in Coulterville and they…(___) went on a date so he got a job at Moccasin and he drove a truck in Moccasin. He drove it regularly, retired now. It’s just what year he retired, but he (___) (___) retired. Then they (___) reasons…same reason. He liked it and sold and he bought that place out in Shaws Flat, so he could get into Shaws Flat, and he was born and raised on that. He had a stage station down on the old 49 gap treatment; the 49 gap and Merced homes. They called it the Webb Station. It was a halfway house, changed stages to (___) stages out of Merced run into Coulterville.
Dyer: How about your other sister? Did she live in the area?
Coleman: Yeah she married the kids here in town.
Dyer: She lives in Sonora now?
Coleman: No she’s dead. She got killed in Monterey, but her kids are around here. (___) kids; George…he goes by the name of George; wildest, ominous guy in Tuolumne County. Two (___) no better. (___) (___) Mrs. Nelson lives right down here, and she has a daughter named Angels.
Dyer: And where is your brother living?
Coleman: He lives in Carmel.
Dyer: Well what about your father and mother? Do you remember, as a boy, stories that they used to tell you about the early days in Mariposa, Coulterville?
Coleman: Well, my father didn’t tell us much as my mother used to tell us. See, her father in her younger days used to (___). He had his own train, park train, from Snelling down there at the old drug of flower mill to Bodie and Tioga and the place is long gone, dilapidated and the call it “May Lundy.”
Dyer: “May Lundy” huh; is that near Bodie?
Coleman: No, that’s between Tioga and Bodie. Do you know where the old Mono Lake is?
Dyer: Yeah Mono Lake area.
Coleman: Well you come out there and you set up the Hanaway Grades, you know, climbing out.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: Right up there you go left is where May Lundy was; mining town I think. It was a county of road but I certainly wouldn’t go up there if I’ve never…never made (___) to go up and right at the of it…I (___) (___).
Dyer: Was that a gold mine?
Coleman: A gold and a (___) (___), yeah, so was Bodie. It was the same. It’s about the same as that.
Dyer: You must’ve had some stories to tell about that old Tioga Road?
Coleman: Oh yeah, yeah.
Dyer: How long did it take them to get across the mountains there on that Tioga Road?
Coleman: That took some (___) (___). It’d take the best part of a week to go across because I’m the one who free across with the horses. Of course they never have any place to feed the bull; they just grazed him as they went, you know, new (___) nature going across, and they never haul any green for him because they didn’t have green in those days; they just had regular seed valley. It wasn’t grown or nothing.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: And during that period of time, they started crushing for them millet, you know, and they can grow barley out of it. Before it used to be whole barley, seed barley; you can take it out of the cycle, plant it or you could feed it to the animal, and the same with oat hay and oat hay has only been on the market, I guess, 50 years. I guess before that they didn’t even know what oat hay was. They have a great argument here with the cattlemen and (___) barley…well I know when I was a youngster; they used to feed barley meat to the oxen and these cattlemen claim that it’s no good for them it’s like handing a beer to cattle. Well that’s the only kind to feed the yak. Barley and greeted to the oxen and they worked those oxens in those days. They worked them hard.
Dyer: Maybe they were tougher in those days.
Coleman: Maybe.
Dyer: Well now did your father have his own back animals?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: Mules?
Coleman: No all donkeys. Donkey burrows. All burrows, yeah.
Dyer: Well they don’t carry too much do they?
Coleman: We had some there a pretty good size; take all of 200 pounds.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: 150 small (___).
Dyer: Would the carryover the over…
Coleman: Over (___) general.
Dyer: Mining machinery?
Coleman: Mining machinery, small parts and big parts, but they took that in later on a contract thing. They contract that; they would hauled that by the pound. I think we used to get three cents a pound for hauling merchandise and groceries, you know, food stuff from the mill over there.
Dyer: Now did he work for someone else then, or did he just work out of contract with the miners?
Coleman: There had no contract just…you had to stop where they write you and tell you or send a man over, a messenger-like, and tell you to bring so many (___) loads of flour and so many barrels of flour. They didn’t say sacks or (___) (___) barrels, and they used the keg system for pickles and (___) (___) that, and that’s where they…corn beef was shipped in barrels.
Dyer: Well that must’ve been back in the 1870s or so?
Coleman: Oh it must’ve been (___) (___) earlier than that…
Dyer: 1860s then maybe right after the gold rush.
Coleman: I remember of them saying that…they had a great saying in the winter of ’77 you know?
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: It was a real, tough winter; stock died and everything else, and whether there was feed the stock couldn’t get out and graze because of the (___) (___) they’d bolt you know. (___) down and stay there ‘til they died. And I remember it was in ’74…I mean ’77, so it must’ve been back about that time.
Dyer: Uh-huh. Did he talk about any of the early people in the area like Jim Savage?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: An old mountain man. Did he know Jim Savage?
Coleman: I don’t know whether he knew him personally, but he knew when he was in the country. And like I said about other guys he used to mention to me like all (___) we saw. We never paid much attention to it and my mother would tell us stories.
Dyer: What about Captain Walker. Walker was supposed to be the first white to see Yosemite Valley back in something before the gold rush time.
Coleman: Well I’ve never heard of him most (____).
Dyer: Juaquin Marietta?
Coleman: Oh Juaquin Marietta (unintelligible 9:26-9:35). He operated right in these foothills like Angels and Hornitos and Columbia here.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Columbia was a great steak out for him. Sacramento, and Sutter, you know, you just stayed low and you never run into any ghouls was (___) (___).
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: And my father used to say about him he said he was a very nice man. I guess he’d known him, and he said that he was like everyone else. He was a bad man, but the people thought it was him during all these (___) and it was his henchmen; you know that old three-fingered Jack. He’d known him (___) (___) three-fingered Jack. He was the henchmen and the murderer.
Dyer: That was long before your time.
Coleman: Oh yeah before my time.
Dyer: Your mother would tell you these stories.
Coleman: Yeah she’d tell us a story.
Dyer: Did you tell you about Captain Love?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: The California Ranger.
Coleman: Uh-huh you see they make a California Ranger after the troops moved out of Yosemite. Harsh Lenard and…what was that gator? There were only two rangers there that took care of the ole Yosemite Park; of course they’ve added some acreage to it since then, but they were the two that took care of it then. This…there weren’t any rangers. Later on was cancer and then he had to take care of it himself, and this man was married to an Indian woman and he had some kid (___) (___).
Dyer: Did he talk about Chief Tenaya or…
Coleman: Yes.
Dyer: …from the Yosemite tribe.
Coleman: He can talk about Chief Tenaya, and then, see, my mother’s related to the old Captain and of course they (___) let him call him “Chief” nowadays I guess, but they didn’t have no chiefs in the Indians; you were either a captain or…that was it, see, he was the captain. He’d like…like a present of a union. Every morning he took his tribe and he placed them and told them what to do and how to do it, see, he didn’t want a war with them and he sent them off to work for the white people and he preached to them every day (___) (___).
Dyer: Was that Captain…
Coleman: (___) box speech and his name was Paul…
Dyer: Captain Paul…
Coleman: …(___) (___).
Dyer: Captain Paul?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: And your mother was related to him?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: So your mother is Yosemite Indian?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: Are you Yosemite then?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Oh I thought you were MiWuk?
Coleman: No.
Dyer: Oh.
Coleman: (___) (___) change the name of Yosemite and combine them altogether, and I don’t know why we…just make a long story short we’re MiWuk too even. (___) (___) Yosemite tribe (___).
Dyer: Did your mother talk about her father, Captain Paul?
Coleman: Well quite a bit and we saw him when we were kids he’s still living and (___) (___) (___) how old he was. But he was one of them old preserved kind, and went on his own power of (___). He died right there in Yosemite. I don’t know whether he’s buried there or not. They had quite a (___) (___) about burying him. I don’t know whether he’s buried there or not. (___) (___) (___) Mariposa then he moved down in there and a lot of them lived in Coulterville district and they try to put out that the old Captain was buried in that. I don’t know whether they took him in there or not. I think he died at (___) Creek horse grazing…know where he’d move to.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: (___) (___) (___).
Dyer: Oh did they stay there in the wintertime too?
Coleman: Oh yeah, yeah year round.
Dyer: They lived in the valley in the wintertime and year round?
Coleman: And they traveled year round, and they used to get a good kick out of this old medicine man (___) (___). I never did know any whether they went by an Indian name or not, but he’s the one that killed the vigilantes when they come in; two of them…swarm the valley. He snuck up on them and killed them right away just when they hit the (___) (___). I don’t know how he killed them whether they were asleep or he’d camp or something. He got rid of them anyway.
Dyer: Now these were vigilantes going after some of the Indians in the valley?
Coleman: Well they were…no they were just exploring it.
Dyer: Just exploring?
Coleman: Yeah, so that’s why I was thinking maybe they were the first people in Yosemite; maybe they were the first white man to explore Yosemite. I can’t explain it because I don’t know. I don’t even know what their names were. I think some of the names is (___) down there since they got the history going (___) Yosemite, but I’ve been 1,000 times (___) (___) (___). We used to fish here and sit in the hotel and have a name of cook (___); (___) (___) (___) trails and Nevada (___) trails and all them trails, Yosemite Falls trails; $2 a day and we’d make (___) a kid with a little fish pole, we’d catch fish for the tourists. We used to catch a dozen and (___) get smothered on (___) half a dozen and we’d tell it to people just Kicks and me. We through…go to the store and spend it all.
Dyer: That must’ve been big money?
Coleman: Cream soda (___) (___) and some of the soda they had.
Dyer: Two and a half would be a lot of money for a youngster.
Coleman: A lot (___). You should’ve seen some of them.
Dyer: What about the Fremont family? You surly must’ve heard the stories of…
Coleman: Well I heard a lot of stories about them but nothing that I could clearly remember. I just remember the name “Fremont” and people talked about them down on the grand…grapples of grand and all that stuff. I never knew nothing much on them. I guess I heard a lot but I never listened.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: They never interested me.
Dyer: Now the Chinese…did your father or mother talk very much about the Chinese living in and around Mariposa (___)?
Coleman: Yeah, yeah when we were kids, we’d use that Chinese. In fact, my saddle I was almost raised with the Chinese. It was a Chinese General Merchandise Store in Coulterville and after I got up around 12 years old I slept and ate and lived there. During vacation time of school, I was there a lot of times there at school. One of the best buddies I ever had was a Chinese boy. He was very wealthy. He lives down (___) Groveland, Sacramento County now in Sacramento.
Dyer: The stories have it that the whites were particularly hard on the Chinese.
Coleman: Well yeah they were hard on Chinese, so were the Indians you know. They were hard on the Indians in those days.
Dyer: Did the Indians and Chinese get along better?
Coleman: If you lose (___) (___) (___) like slide down to San Francisco to Stockton (___) (___) and you’d see that Indian down there. Just walk right together (___) (___) and the Chinese are together. They’re great friends. Why…after I got big enough, I was used to the (___) (___) I was in the grocery store and you got teens and cart trains and walked…took…stalked from these predators you know on the grills and you always had the young Stockton and I was always breaking (___) (___) or something around there.
Dyer: Well they…
Coleman: They never gave me any sour or anything, but they (___) and threatened me all those years; just go in the store and (___) metal, pongee shirts you don’t see any of them. I used to wear them and Lee Riders, high heel boots with two and a quarter inch heel on them (___) (___).
Dyer: You were a swinger?
Coleman: Yes.
Dyer: Well did you spend a lot of time living with the other Indians there in the Indian Village, Rancheria, and Reservation while you were a youngster?
Coleman: No (___) (___) who went there.
Dyer: Uh-huh was there a large encampment of Indians around Coulterville?
Coleman: Oh yeah there wasn’t a no great group but there was a good, many Indians in the…getting around just like they were living in different places.3 a white flour sack and he’d bring his stuff in a bag his groceries back in and everything was…there wasn’t much carrying the stuff; it was all in (___) (___) pork and junk like that. You know you had to buy it in the slot. Goodies is in the bag and (___) nothing canned, very little canned stuff; and there’s lines of (___) and he’d sit down and bag and sit right out there and just purr like a kitten (unintelligible 21:41-21:50). He probably didn’t like kittens. They never attacked anybody, but he had a…a (___) (___) and he had a ground poles in there cats used to almost gnaw out of there you’d have to change the pole every now and then to keep them in. I guess there’s one that goes in the wilds.
Dyer: But he just kept them as pets?
Coleman: Kept them as pets (___) (___) day.
Dyer: I wonder if some of the mountain men were in that area who were supposed to have trained the grizzly bears and kept some of them as pets.
Coleman: Well I don’t know if they used have them grizzly’s but I think they come from different parts of the (___) of California and especially the Italian women and (___) (___) dancing. It would be ever two or three days on one of outfits showed up in town where the money was.
Dyer: Did you see any grizzly’s down there then or…?
Coleman: I never saw a grizzly around…
Dyer: here…
Coleman: …yeah. I saw grizzly’s there. Only ones I ever saw was these guys had them there. You know grizzly’s they’re kind of (___) heavy in the neck.
Dyer: I guess once you’ve seen one you’ll always remember it.
Coleman: Very square head too, certain jowls way out there with a powerful head on him.
Dyer: What about some of the words that appear in maps and in the books the Indian words? Do these words have a special meaning for Indians when you talk about a word like “Wawona?”
Coleman: Yeah. Wawona is a red wood and all that stuff it has a meaning but…and there’s some of the different ways mentioning in the same article, see, in Indian lines. Messages have different ways.
Dyer: So it’s a difficult language?
Coleman: It’s a difficult language that’s why a pale face can’t master it because it all means the same thing but its worded different, see.
Dyer: That’s in Yosemite…
Coleman: It’s a way they…it approaches the way they answer, see.
Dyer: As a Yosemite Indian, could you speak to a Mono or a (___)?
Coleman: Oh no…
Dyer: …Chowchilla?
Coleman: No, no.
Dyer: So you (simultaneous talking 24:48-24:50)
Coleman: Tuolumne County, Stanislaus, Merced County all different members, all different dialect; different language altogether. It’s like you talking to a Chinese and the Chinese talking to a Japanese. (___) (___) it’s all different. (___) (___) (___) a lot of people they learn, you know, all different places and they talk to you in Oklahoma language there and it may be part oaky you know, he’s learned their language and he thinks it’s (___) because you can’t understand him. You never heard the word before in your life. Maybe you can’t answer a guy because you don’t know.
Dyer: Was Yosemite an Indian name or is that something that whites have made up because of the Indian?
Coleman: Well they got that “Yosemite” from an old, old Indian way back I guess maybe 100 to 125 years ago, maybe 180 years ago. Well the Indian of Yosemite and all them except the Soo Indian and the Oklahoma Indians and they kept rights, see, California Indian, Nevada Indian, all those other Indians and the tribes Indians. Outside the Soo and the (___) Indians, you know they didn’t have any (___) (___) never went to school (___) (___) it’s its own (____) speech, and that’s why they got the word “Yosemite.” They had to be…it’s the way they pronounce it in American language, white man’s language, “Yosemite” see. Well the Indian pronounces “U” “yoo-hoo-mah-teh” “Yomate”.
Dyer: Yoohoomate?
Coleman: Yeah Yosemite means bear, and then there’s another word there that some of them claim is “Yokemite.” Yokemete means a killer…killer tribes, see. So it could be a mix of those three, see, with the Americans (___) (___) to Yosemite, see.
Dyer: Uh-huh but the Indian probably would not recognize that.
Coleman: No the Indian that didn’t talk well (___) I guess and just made a stab at it and said that’s just the way it went, see. (___).
Dyer: I think I saw the…how about Hetch-Hetchy? That’s supposed to be another name that’s originally in the Indians; that’s changed too.
Coleman: Yeah, yeah. They…I can’t think for a second what the Indian name for Hetch-Hetchy is, but it’s…I can explain it to you. I know…I know in my mind, but I can’t recall the word.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: See, it’s a gorge and it’s a very treacherous gorge, and it’s (___) because I think Hetch-Hetchy…Hetch-Hetchy that’s a warning of the Great Spirit and it was (___) to get into that gorge, so that’s where the word “Hetch-Hetchy” come to the American people.
Dyer: Was it a sacred place for Indians then?
Coleman: Oh no…
Dyer: (___) (___).
Coleman: …have their tribal set to out there before they went down to Hetch-Hetchy where the (___) (___) and the cities got all those buildings? That’s a very treacherous and mud there….there’s no bottom to it. We (___) in ’60…’61 and the horse got away and ran across there and he…before we could ever get a go-cart down there, why, he disappeared.
Dyer: Quicksand.
Coleman: Quicksand and it’s a bald-like. It’s got grass on it, but it’s in the edge line. It starts them ironing right now. The more the horse struggled, the quicker he went down, sent out the (___) tow-truck we couldn’t find him down there. I don’t think we could ever get out the tow-truck (___) ever lost its tow…he’d be in there.
Dyer: As a boy, were you ever in Hetch-Hetchy?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: But what do you think of Hetch-Hetchy as you remembered, as a valley, does it to compare in any way to Yosemite Valley?
Coleman: It’s kind of mini Yosemite; the cowboys and the cattlemen and everything (___) Yosemite.
Dyer: A beautiful place.
Coleman: Oh yeah…yep I…even slept on the (___) there. (___) (___).
Dyer: It’s not quite as wide a valley though…
Coleman: Oh no…(___) (___)…it’s small; miniature size according to Yosemite.
Dyer: Was there an Indian encampment there in the valley?
Coleman: (___)…on hills above white wolf (___) (___) were tribes of Indians everywhere. Now in Fate’s Valley on the near gorge there’s a…(30:34-end is blank)