Dyer: Now you were talking about Hetch-Hetchy Valley.
Coleman: Yeah. I’ll tell you a man’s got a picture of Hetch-Hetchy Valley. He’s a very nice man. He lives up there. You know where the totem pole is on the back road going to (___) Twain Harte?
Dyer: Confidence?
Coleman: It’s on top of…
Dyer: I know…
Coleman: (___) gonna…gonna build a road there.
Dyer: Yeah I know the road.
Coleman: The man lives up there where the old totem pole used to be. His name was Zach Garrison. He has a picture with his (___) shocks put up in Hetch-Hetchy. I don’t know where in the hell he got the picture (___) good picture.
Dyer: Was there any feeling in the part of the Indians where they put the dam in?
Coleman: Oh no, no they…the Hetch-Hetchy in the meantime or during the time the Indians talk about it they was patented land. The Cellot owned it, Horatius Cellot. He owned it.
Dyer: A cattleman?
Coleman: No, he was a man that had some kind of business in San Francisco. He owned the Hetch-Hetchy. At least there was two of them and O’Shaughnessy sitting the County of San Francisco.
Dyer: Did he purchase it from the Indians?
Coleman: No, I don’t know how he got it. I don’t know how he got it; that I couldn’t tell you. He…a title to it, Horatius Cellot. We used to call him Ray…Ray Cellot. He used to come out and he had an aunt who lived in Coulterville. Her name is Hallenun and he used to come up and visit her and then we engaged in quite a joke (___) San Francisco, you know.
Dyer: Big city sucker.
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Do you still speak the language, Frank?
Coleman: Oh I’ve kind of forgotten it. I used to speak it pretty good, but I’ve kind of forgotten it.
Dyer: If I ask you a few questions, could you respond in the language?
Coleman: Oh I don’t know.
Dyer: General questions?
Coleman: Well it’s been so long since I spoke it and there’s nobody around that I could talk to and these Indians here don’t speak, see. If I had…I could speak to him and if him and I were together, you know, we could kind of thrash it out; and while we’re talking about it, I think he’s the same way. I don’t think he’s spoke the language in 20 years or better.
Dyer: Do you have an Indian name now in…?
Coleman: No, no.
Dyer: The Lydex family…
Coleman: The only think I was known about when I was a boy was “boy.” Boy name was “Boy.”
Dyer: To all people?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Indians, whites, Chinese?
Coleman: Everybody. I got a cousin up here in Sonora who’s pretty old and (___) (___) (___) calls me “Boy” to this day.
Dyer: I’ll be darned.
Coleman: (___) (___) (___) around my height. He’d call me by name, Frank, but I think he was talking about my dad and his name is Frank.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Frank (___).
Dyer: Were you aware of any kind of tribal organization, like, government, captains, chiefs, medicine man among the Indians around Coulterville? Was there someone you looked to as your…your natural leader among the Indians?
Coleman: Oh yeah. Old Captain…Old Captain Paul.
Dyer: Captain Paul and he lived in the Valley then?
Coleman: Yeah and he used to tell us…oh they sprayed everywhere and he used to tell us about over in Nevada that a Prairie Sprooner’s coming through and they take little…you little kids and infants and grab them by the heals and whack on the wagon tarn and kill them. He was an old savage himself.
Dyer: Oh you mean these are the whites that they kill?
Coleman: Yeah, yeah the whites.
Dyer: Is there the wagon trains that went through, huh?
Coleman: The wagon trains…they’d take the ox and slaughter and eat them.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: They look forward to that.
Dyer: Well now…
Coleman: A lot of jerky you know and the (___) team rocks and come across the (___). Some of them weren’t in too good of shape but they jerkied them anyway.
Dyer: Easier than running down the deer?
Coleman: Yeah. They’d mix it and mix the jerky with the deer meat and then have a regular go upon it.
Dyer: The Indians in California always seem to enjoy mule meat too. Was this true in...
Coleman: Well…
Dyer: …Coulterville?
Coleman: Yeah they’d eat horses and stuff like that. Uh…colt…a year old or something and I was eating. I’ve eat the horse meat that way, but I (___) (___).
Dyer: Now there used to be quite a few wild horses though?
Coleman: Oh yeah a lot of wild horses in those days.
Dyer: Probably escaped from the Spanish and Mexican.
Coleman: Yeah there was a good breed horse and they escaped some of them like the Spaniards moved in the planes land like they (___) Grant and all down to Monteral Pias and down through (___) Stockton got loose and straight and the Indians stole them and (___) all and a lot of white men drove off and traded different stuff to the Indian.
Dyer: Now did the Indian ride the horse a time too?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: How about some of the other foods that are…
Coleman: The Sarsaparilla Mine taken any ordinary horse. Oh I guess maybe levy horses and he get started around the hillside here or anywhere along this hill here and he could run alongside him and get on him while he was still running down the road just mount
Dyer: That’s moving very fast.
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: Where were most of these wild horses in Coulterville? Is there a particular area?
Coleman: They were a horse in different area. Right here at Moccasin Creek and down Don Pedro and down in this particular (___) gap down in here. He took on the…across where Jacksonville used to be. Before that was fenced, there were wild horses in there. We used to call them the “Marsha Flat Horses;” it was flat up on top of Marsha Flat, and there used to be wild horses there. Probably five or six of them; there’s pretty nice horses. They’re pretty hard to eat you know.
Dyer: They’re pretty hard to break though?
Coleman: Oh no.
Dyer: Feed the…
Coleman: *mumbling* (8:42)
Dyer: …give them attention.
Coleman: They were hard to…to…(___) for a little bit; starvation got them you know. They’re too much of a wild animal to eat (___) (___) walking around (___) (___) you have to eat and pretty soon you’d be eating and you had to eat. You start to get quiet them down and tame them, and they made nice horses after you got them tamed. Same with the little, wild horse got them in the stagecoach.
Dyer: Uh-huh the stagecoach (___) (___)…
Coleman: (___) was up there and then Jack Milford got him over there and was there buying horses and I told him to go up there and he said, “Come on with me.” And I went up there and I had this little buckskin horse and I asked who (___) says, “How much is that little horse?” And he said, “A hundred and a quarter.” And I went along and grabbed (___) (___) and I said, “Buy that little buckskin horse.” (___) (___) said, “He’s too small.” I said, “That’s a Nevada wild horse. It’d be a good horse.” (___) (___) Boyd bought him and I broke him. I worked him three days and then I put him out on a lead and he’d been there ever since.
Dyer: How many years has that been?
Coleman: Five years.
Dyer: Five years that he’s help pull the stage over at…
Coleman: Pull it all the time.
Dyer: …Columbia State Park.
Coleman: Including the horse (___) and night comes; he’s still head of that horse.
Dyer: He’s buckskin?
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: And he’s a smaller horse than the others.
Coleman: Yeah he works (___) (___) 1400 pound horses. He raised a buck. Right now he’s in good shape. He’s about 1050 pounds, but he’s a horse I’m telling you. Today ain’t too long before he rides a good (___). He was tough when I got a hold of him. *can’t hear (10:39-10:42). I worked him out there on the pole for three days, put him out and (___) Jim says, “I’m a broke man and put that one out on the lead, you gonna have a hell of a wreck.” I put him out there and he was saving his days and (___) (___) drove in your life.
Dyer: You’d think a wild horse would have to be pretty smart or he wouldn’t survive very long in the wild.
Coleman: Yep, yep that’s smart. He’s a nice little fella, he didn’t shoot him, he didn’t do anything, all he did was kick him. Yeah he’s really a nice horse.
Dyer: What about the food that was eaten? You’ve mentioned the ox and the horse and the others of those type. Is there special food that the Yosemite Indians were noted for that are a little unusual?
Coleman: Well they were like a rat or a chipmunk they had to put in the storage in the winter you know. They eat the acorn and they ate (___) kind of furry and there used to be a lot of berries and there were raspberries and wild strawberries and junk like that and mushrooms and of course there was there was natural food. There was acorns and they had to make their storage bins to keep the acorns year round (___) (___) like that and they were meat eaters; they ate squirrels and ate different kinds of animal.
Dyer: Do you like acorn bread and acorn mush?
Coleman: I used to, but they don’t make it right in later years.
Dyer: I tasted some…
Coleman: They use a grinder now and it’s coarse. It’s like cornmeal, but the woman would pound it on their grinding rock. Do you see these holes?
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: With the muscle you know mashed it away. It was just (___) (___) like talcum, pottery, you know, just dust.
Dyer: Like a fine flour?
Coleman: Yeah a fine flour. The finest flour you could get.
Dyer: Now did you add anything to it like berries or any herbs…
Coleman: No…
Dyer: …spices?
Coleman: No, no they just made plain like that and they blended it and they used spruce and cedar flowers to flavor it, see. They poured the hot water over the cedar flowers and that…or allowed the cedar to flavor it, and eat the acorn and eat it good, you gotta have steak or beef like that or deer and then cook on open coals, see. They cut in an inch rope like and curl it up and stick it on there and you bake it right on the coals…just above the coals and that…there’s no grease in there. All that grease drops into the fire like (___) (___) and you just eat the regular meat. And then they add a salt. They took and wrapped it; dampen the salt evenly and the salt they used they dampened that and made a ball out of it and they wrapped it. Some wrapped it in regular cloth, flour, a sack of cloth (___) (___) you know.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: And then some wrap it in bbq and they baked it in the coals and they cut it hard as a brick.
Dyer: So it’s like just a rock then?
Coleman: Yeah it was a rock salt.
Dyer: The size of your fist.
Coleman: Yeah and you licked it like a horse. You could gnaw a little piece off and you get a little more, see, and then you ate the acorn and you eat that and you ate it with the meat and it changed the flavors, see.
Dyer: Well when I had it, I felt it needed salt but I realized I don’t have the pallet, I suppose, for (___) (___). I did not have it with salt and it didn’t taste…
Coleman: Yeah put a little salt with it and where it’s nice and (___) you…you freeze it, you know, (___) freeze it; put a little red there. Then you (___) get a little (___) (___) in there and that’s where you change the flavor (___) (___), but (___) it’s got the (___) flavoring of the cedar (___) and it helps it to…it’ll do it now (___) (___). I guess you don’t know why. You see young people hanging around here with the old people and used to make it they made it good. (___) tell me what (___) (___) last month that meeting was very good because they made it the olden way.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: It was very delicious, tasty, and ground good, you know *can’t hear* (15:49-15:25).
Dyer: Now what would you drink along with this other than water?
Coleman: Oh they had all kinds of drinks. They put juices like they have today. Their main dishes was Manzanita berries; sweeter than these regular cider (___) (___).
Dyer: Would that be a hard cider too?
Coleman: No, no it wasn’t hard. (___) (___) but it wasn’t hard and then they had other stuff to drink, you know. Then they have a natural tea and then there was always a wild and you know with all that stuff and acorn even taste good with a raw onion…sweet onion, you know. You could dig them out and you can’t dig them out...raw onion. (___) (___) it knocks that flavor that you’re missing of the salt, you know.
Dyer: Now when your father would take the (___) (___) across the old Tioga Road, would he take along things like the dried berries and maybe some acorn bread and jerky?
Coleman: They took jerky always a pocket full of jerky.
Dyer: These are high energy foods.
Coleman: Yeah high energy food and I think when they was back in the (___) they used to make bread you know. Take a (___) frying pan and make yourself a big biscuit but it would flatten out the sides of a frying pan, see.
Dyer: Like a big ole pancake.
Coleman: Like a big ole pancake and that’s what they…I know they…I’ve been around a few Australian cowboys and they was always talking about that dam puddle. That’s the way it’s made. You hear from the generations from the father’s time, why, we always call it a “sheep herder bread.”
Dyer: And you can buy that in the market?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: The sheep herder’s bread.
Coleman: Yeah we always called it (___) just a mixture of biscuits you know. They didn’t have no bisquick and stuff like that; you had to mix your own. Didn’t have no (___) cake flour and you made that out of sour dough and all that junk and…
Dyer: Well old people used to carry the dough in a pan on a wagon there?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Get their start from that I guess.
Coleman: Yeah whether it can get a start and…the better you took care of it, the better the sour dough was.
Dyer: Yeah that’s good. It is sour.
Coleman: Yeah it really is sour and good out case.
Dyer: Frank, what about the animals in the area. You mentioned the horses and grizzly’s weren’t around there, but what about things like the valley elk? Did you ever see that elk in the Coulterville area?
Coleman: No, no…
Dyer: It didn’t get that far?
Coleman: No they imported the elks into Yosemite and all that. Oh I guess it was 1916, 17 somewhere in that neighborhood. They got them down at the elk hills. That’s out near (___) and Willow.
Dyer: In Bakersfield?
Coleman: Bakersfield area. Oh I’d say south west of Bakersfield.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: They…Miller Luck raised them there and this Chief’s Townsly, he was a chief after the troops left, you know, Texas Ranger. And he got the idea of raising elk there and brought them in there and let them run with the administration (___) and they fenced that all off of the seventh looking wild fence there, scenery fence, and they raised them there for a while and then they took a notion to distribute them to the park. They took some out there and just pass in Lake Merced and Tioga and Tuolumne Meadows out around (___) (___) Canyon. The (___) moose out there and the reason is in (___) and these foot burners go out that there with (___) elk that attacked them. There was two to three out in there and they…
Dyer: The people would go?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: The people are attacked?
Coleman: A lot of these (___) hikers, you know.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: We always called them “foot burners.”
Dyer: Oh foot burner? That’s a new name for me; burners or backpackers?
Coleman: The cowboys used to call them flinging burners. They go a foot, you know, backpack and you have…they have to get rid of them. I was…in ’52 I was in the south end of Yosemite National Park, I was working for the government and I was out there and I know there was no cattle in that country and I timed a spirit with a trail crew out there and I was just back and moving camp with the trail crew. I had to go see once a week (___) (___) vegetables and stuff, and I’d get on my horse and I’d ride around and I’d see a different person and I run out and pass (___) and I run over this cow…drag him and I said, “No cattle here.” No way in the world I thought, why, (___) by the San Juaquin River.
Dyer: They wouldn’t stray that far?
Coleman: Well no they couldn’t…(___) (___) have no from there. They couldn’t string them that far, so I knew it must’ve been an elk because I followed the track, I tracked it, and I followed him in to the south end Renual Creek out there and had to be out in Fernandez Pass and went into a bunch of those (___) aspirin and that’s where the elk likes, you know, I lost the tracking and I heard this huge animal run but I…it was so brushy I couldn’t get a chance to see him. So I fooled around there almost dark there trying to get a glimpse of it, but I never did; never heard it anymore after I jumped it that first time. Those elks can…they don’t run fast but they sure can get out of the country.
Dyer: Well these…
Coleman: (___) shuffling you know.
Dyer: Shuffle back and forth…they got a rack of horns though…
Coleman: Oh yeah…to move over there…so thick. You wonder how they can get through but they go through with them. (___) elk in the wild (___) (___) (___) swear to God those horns would never go through there, but they go through.
Dyer: What about eagles in the area? Old timer down in La Grange told me there were a lot of eagles.
Coleman: Oh a lot of eagles; there used to be a lot of eagles.
Dyer: Looking for the salmon I suppose.
Coleman: Yeah salmon and stuff. All through (___) is wild in here like (___) dam about two or three used to nest in here.
Dyer: Bald eagle?
Coleman: Bald eagle and (___) (___). I forget…around 1935, ’36 they track them right down here where the rifle range is below Lincoln Lantern, and the cowboys right near the Ellenwood. He dead now. He riding across the flat on that side of the road on the left going down where the rifle range is, and he was riding along there and a calf comes sailing out of here and flopped right side of him and the horse unload demon. It was quite a (___) down there with a horse, and they set a trap out there and they caught this eagle and he was sitting on a high sack of (___) (___). He measured with his wings spread out like that nine feet.
Dyer: Nine feet across and he just picked up a calf?
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: What would a calf like that weigh?
Coleman: Oh 60-70 pounds.
Dyer: (___) (___).
Coleman: Went through the air with him and dropped the calf.
Dyer: Taking the calf to its nest.
Coleman: Feed the young I guess.
Dyer: Maybe.
Coleman: But they found the calf and they say they won’t come back after that and desperate that guy come back and got caught. Of course they about (___) given up that he would. He come around the lines and stuff enough to know that he wasn’t…he didn’t touch the…he had them…
Dyer: She just left it there?
Coleman: Yes (___) they looked at it.
Dyer: It was dead though when it hit…
Coleman: Oh yeah the fall killed it.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: He was more than dead. It might have been alive, you know, carried him alive but when he come around here, they killed him and he hit the ground. (___) (___) killed him.
Dyer: Did they Indians have any special feeling about eagles?
Coleman: Oh yeah. They would treasure him terrible, the Indians. They wouldn’t harm him but they used to harm them too. They built their headgear and feathers out of eagles (___) (___), but they like to have them around because they…especially the medicine man. He would mascot for the medicine man. He really had the power when he (___) (___).
Dyer: According to the stories that the Indian felt that…a lot about the coyote and the fox and how wise they were.
Coleman: Oh yeah they…different sections in different parts of the tribal Indians the…I guess you could (___) they were their mascots. Now you see this? There’s some Yosemite Indians they call it a bear, see, and then there’s others that they call it a coyote, see. They would shoot her a little more (___) (___) little bears and they would call him a coyote.
Dyer: Now if you…
Coleman: (___) (___) (___) my tribe would…my section in the Yosemite Indian is a coyote, see.
Dyer: Your section is?
Coleman: Yeah I’m a coyote.
Dyer: You’re a coyote? Now as a coyote, could you marry into another clan?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: A bear clan? But could you marry someone from the coyote clan?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: It wasn’t a problem, huh? I think the Yokutes down in the valley did not let them marry within their own clan.
Coleman: Some of them…well in my time, they started dating and marrying with the Indians and the whites and all that you know. Throwed it to the virgin and they didn’t care.
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: They wanted to live white where they could (___) (___) seal stayed the tribal way.
Dyer: What about some of the tools that Indians used. The bow and arrow in this area is supposed to be especially good weapon compared to others in the state.
Coleman: Yeah the old timers big bows and arrows. A lot of them had them made out of rams horn and dress down, you know, beaded and stretched, curved taken in them, and they just had the certain trees they got some made out of mahogany, some made them out of maple, maple and mahogany, I guess were the two best. They could dress them down.
Dyer: What about the cedar? Do they use cedar?
Coleman: No cedars too bridle; it’d break. That mahogany was tough when you were trying to sit down to small size and still had the zip and swing to it, you know, (___) stuff.
Dyer: Now did the Indian use…
Coleman: *can’t hear* (28:55)
Dyer: Did the Yosemite Indian use the bow and arrow to shoot at the animal from a considerable distance or did he stalk the animal?
Coleman: He had to stalk him.
Dyer: Would you say the Indian was considered to be a good shot or was it that he just ran the animal down?
Coleman: No he was a good shot. He didn’t shoot until he knew he had him…
Dyer: And then he shot, yeah.
Coleman: Yeah and then he shot.
Dyer: Did the Yosemite’s get down along the river to net any of the salmon or spear them too?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Did they go down regularly?
Coleman: Yeah, yeah (___).Indians from up in the north end of the park and they either go down here to La Grange and get the winter’s catch or they’d go down to Merced as far up (___) (___) and they get their salmon catch in San Juaquin, why, they just feast on that in the San Juaquin River right out of Fresno after that Pulaski dam and all up one day.
Dyer: That’s good eating.
Coleman: That’s good eats.
Dyer: Did they dry the salmon and use it in the winter too?
Coleman: Yeah, oh, yeah they had dry salmon, smoked salmon, and all kinds.
Dyer: Now did your mother do this kind of thing where you…
Coleman: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah she (___) and all that.
Dyer: Did she make your clothes or did you generally wear the clothes that were available in the stores?
Coleman: We wore mostly what’s in the stores. Our father knew…leaving us hanging around too much and he (___) and we used to go (___) (___) so we never got too much experience of the Indian. We’d play the Indian keep but we couldn’t go live with them like kids do nowadays you know.
Dyer: Were you brought up (___)?
Coleman: He used to think that when the kids used to roam like that that they’d get bad ideas because my brother he roamed like that. (31:20-end is blank).