Dyer: You were talking about Chief Fuller then moving over to the Tuolumne Rancheria.
Coleman: Yeah and he got in with this Collette and then he promised the olden and people on. What he’d get for them and everything. I guess he had a lot of that stuff surplus government came after number one world war, shoes, and (___) britches and (___) shirts and coats.
Dyer: Uh-huh, would that be government surplus?
Coleman: Yeah and got blankets and (___) blankets.
Dyer: Did you know a lot of people out there or have occasion to be with a lot of people on the Rancheria?
Coleman: On the Rancheria there? Yeah. Oh I guess there was at least a dozen or more I’ve forgotten with kens to my mother. I think it’s an old lady they used to call “Marakita.” She was related to my mother, and there was two other (___) ladies and Sofya and Chowya. They were related to my mother, and, oh, there was a number of them.
Dyer: Now were they considered Yosemite Indians?
Coleman: Yeah, but they’re married and borrowed the buck (___) (___).
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: And the Buck come over here and went to work for the lumber mills.
Dyer: So they stayed with him?
Coleman: Yeah they stayed with him and died out and they stayed anyway. That’s where they drifted to just like white people drifting.
Dyer: What about do the Indians farther south, say down around Coulterville, did they frequently come up for socials or visits, various celebrations?
Coleman: Oh yeah they always had their feast.
Dyer: They (___) (___)… *simultaneous with below* (2:25)
Coleman: (___) year you know like I was telling you a while ago acorn time and berry time and they always celebrated; they always had a feast, see. They hadn’t won…they…whatever they were having it for was in season.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Like the acorn, see, they have an acorn festival up here today at the Tuolumne Reservation now being September and that’s the time we pick the acorn, see, for food.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Well I don’t know whether they’re going to have much to celebrate this year or not. There don’t seem like there’s that many acorns around where I’ve been.
Dyer: Bad year, huh?
Coleman: Bad year.
Dyer: Maybe they have to eat bread?
Coleman: Maybe. (___) (___) they always had very little. Then they would feast you know.
Dyer: How did you communicate with each other then? Was it…
Coleman: Well they had a man that one that supermen *unintelligible* (3:24-3:27) eight or nine hours. They…they would send him. See, he was an Indian runner in other words.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Well he had a buckskin string was their calendar; tied on every day…doesn’t tie a knot see. He comes in and out here in Chicken Ranch and he (__) (__) in Tuolumne and tell them when they were gonna have this big meeting and in certain places they were gonna have it; and whoever was their chief up here or their captain, why, he took down the number of days on his calendar and then they’d all meet up there, see.
Dyer: Hmmm.
Coleman: *unintelligible* (4:17-4:20) an old fella that would be an Indian runner. He was named after…he was…in a (___) Creek up there when they (___) (___) massive creek and he was left, a kid to die, and some white people were quite prominent in Yosemite and around there; Hutchen.
Dyer: Oh.
Coleman: So they took him and raised him, and they used to call him “Talmatchins,” and he was an Indian runner. He was a little older. He went to Fresno and he could run to Yosemite Valley into Coulterville area…down into Coulterville in seven hours from Yosemite.
Dyer: Oh my.
Coleman: That’s good time…building.
Dyer: That’s building.
Coleman: He had to have a mighty good horse to make it in eight hours.
Dyer: Now did he…was he able to speak their language as he went from place to place or was it by sign language?
Coleman: By sign language.
Dyer: Sign language, huh.
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Did they ever use signal fire?
Coleman: Well some parts in the season, yeah, smoke signals.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Yeah they used them in some parts, but in later years when I got up, you know, the (___) getting impressed with the forest rangers and that cut out the fires, see. Just like a fire (___) in these areas. That’s been going for years and years. You know that modern man cut it out *unintelligible* (6:04-6:06) second park and they burned it for hundreds of years and never set to burn. They didn’t have no fire engines even to protect it even if it did catch on fire (___) (___).
Dyer: Yeah.
Coleman: But modern times, you know, it rules.
Dyer: I guess that’s what your father said, huh.
Coleman: Yep and the same way after Columbia…they be starting that hotel up there. It stood there for 150 years if it stood today and now they…down underneath digging in the foundation, they were going to strengthen it so it wouldn’t fall in.
Dyer: What about the encampments around Columbia? Were there quite a few Indians that lived around Columbia, Springfield, and Walnut Creek and Shaws Flat area?
Coleman: There was always a little group.
Dyer: Just little groups, huh?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Were they related to all the other Indians around?
Coleman: Well I don’t know if they were or not. I guess they were because they merged in the two rivers, see.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: See (___) people moved into the Tuolumne group was because they were between Merced River and Tuolumne, you know, Tuolumne and Stanislaus one.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: That wasn’t too boarded to immigrants, see, considered one of the Indians when he got over this way. Of course, he was a different tribe, but they took him in anyway, see. But if you moved over to Calaveras County or somewhere, I guess, maybe might have a little restriction getting in, but all these little places…all been…some family may have lived there and as they improved on the law then they’d run him off and kept running him off. Right over here in McMillon’s field they used to give him character and there’s a cemetery over there and they’d run him off.
Dyer: And they…
Coleman: And Mackie tried to run them off and they wouldn’t run, see, all the way down here. Wherever there was a little spring right under the zesty field, they’d get that (___) (___) and kept him there.
Dyer: They had the cattle out there?
Coleman: Yeah, yeah, uh-huh.
Dyer: Just a few people in there?
Coleman: Just a few people who…25, 30, or 50.
Dyer: So they didn’t all live in one, big building?
Coleman: No they didn’t all live in one building.
Dyer: Do you know of any Indian village around the campus, the junior college campus? We’re trying to work…there’s a round house site out there. They…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Have you heard any stories about people who might’ve lived there? Would go way…
Coleman: No, no the people who used to live there, had lived there on my time, and whoever’s around. They take that (___) plumber that died out there. He was born and raised there and he knew nothing about that round house, but as the Martins and Prince of the people living around there could find the beets (___) (___) beets and there must’ve been a big village at one time, but my cousin up here, (___), she’s passed 90 and she don’t remember any Indians living out there. It was either they lived there like plumbers but they lived in the town of Columbia (___) (___) in the brush and she don’t know…she didn’t know…she never heard of any Indians all around the college, so that must’ve been a long, long time ago.
Dyer: Yeah…would it be that they’d have a round house there yet not have people live near the round house?
Coleman: Oh they always had somebody living around the round house.
Dyer: There are signs of Indians there along these…
Coleman: Because the whites, you know, they wanted to get them out and they burned their round house and they wasn’t somebody there to protect them. Yes same every year…I mean they (___) (___) (___) here. Indians would hold the meetings and learned to come back to the round house (___). They always blamed this white man down here, Mackie. There wasn’t no William shop up here.
Dyer: Finally get the water from the lines you got?
Coleman: Yeah probably (___) (___) run down. There’s a (___) of the ditch we dug right there. See the ditch there?
Dyer: To stop…
Coleman: …(___) was taking it down there anyway to get it away from here.
Dyer: Under your driveway?
Coleman: Yeah…no right here. It’s right above the tin can thing. See that low plates there?
Dyer: Oh I see.
Coleman: (___) (___) come right out of the tunnel.
Dyer: You have about a six inch depression there?
Coleman: Yeah. We dig that to claim the water rights. They wanted to get it off of here. You needed to run it across into that other field and you got it.
Dyer: Uh-huh across...
Coleman: Across the (___)…
Dyer: …the highway there.
Coleman: Yeah across the highway.
Dyer: 49, yeah. Well did they do the (___) (___)?
Coleman: That was here right up joining this fence here.
Dyer: On this side…westside of 49?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Did they do the same thing down in Coulterville? The round house that they had down there?
Coleman: Well they…no I think they burned down by (___) (___).
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: There was one up in Greeley Hill I remember and I could tell you a lot of that country…we just (___) all and I can’t think of it, see.
Dyer: As you’re driving along?
Coleman: Oh driving along…right along this…ride along like a chatter bug. I know it so well. That’s what I put in my childhood days.
Dyer: I suppose the Indian markings down along the Stanislaus River are things that date way back to…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …most of the Indians were alive now, would probably not remember.
Coleman: Yeah when they changed your record there a while ago, your tape, why, I was settling about Mirror Gorge. Now down in what you call “Pete’s Valley” is a cliff down there in depreciation and floods and towards the river and everything else. His…marked only cell house, see. Well that writing in Indian writing and sketches is a good hundred feet up there on the cliff and it’s just plain. That’s the only drawings and writings that I’ve ever saw in the mountain and that’s a big valley.
Dyer: Now that’s near Hetch-Hetchy then?
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: You go up Whitewall down. It goes right to it.
Dyer: The trail goes direct down?
Coleman: (___) (___) to it, yeah, (___) (___).
Dyer: How far is it from Whitewall?
Coleman: Oh it’s about eight/eight and a half miles something like that.
Dyer: You could do that in a day.
Coleman: Oh yeah would like it. It wouldn’t be that far if it you get permission to drive a car. You drive a car through the gate and drove to the Harden Lake with a car without going through the (___) gate; unless they’ve chained it since ’61…’61 was the last time I went there and you could go down then and the rangers hadn’t chained the gate. They do so much changing (___) (___) certain and then they dropped another hundred feet or so you know.
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: And (___) it’s a hike but it’s not a steep hike. It’s out the canyon, but the writings in there and (___) and beets and stuff. They must’ve been a terrible (___) up in there.
Dyer: Did you know Indians in Calaveras County?
Coleman: Did I know them?
Dyer: Contacts with any of the Indians across the (___) (___) river?
Coleman: A few…yeah.
Dyer: Were they the same type or did they have different…
Coleman: They’re about the same type of Indian; that and husky.
Dyer: Are you average in build for an Indian? You look like you’re a little on the tall side.
Coleman: No, no all my (___) (___) we’re all tall.
Dyer: You must be 5’10 or 11?
Coleman: 5’10 ½
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Stock and feet, but I was chubby like the rest of them. Before I got sick, I weighed 285/286, when I lost that one pound, I thought I was sick.
Dyer: 285? That’s pretty husky.
Coleman: Yeah it’s way to easy fella.
Dyer: A lot of people today (___)…
Coleman: (___) (___) 52 across here.
Dyer: Fifty-two across your chest, huh. That is pretty husky. Drive a team then too?
Coleman: Oh yeah…(___) (___) drive a team. I could do anything…chase women.
Dyer: You need a lot of spirit.
Coleman: Yep.
Dyer: Now when did you lose that weight now? You don’t weigh much more than 200 now. Do you?
Coleman: 196 I think I weigh. I lost it in the last three years.
Dyer: Is that when you were in the hospital?
Coleman: Uh-huh. That doc first told me I had to get rid of that (___). Either be in a wheel chair or dead. If you wanna stay around, he said, “get rid of that.” I got rid of it. I feel pretty good. Aches in bones and arthritis and all that junk you gotta live with it, you know.
Dyer: Well you’re pretty healthy-looking 78 year old man.
Coleman: I never get tired. I can drive that automobile three or 400 hundred miles and not feel a bit tired. I get stone gut, you know, when I’m driving.
Dyer: Frank, people today talk quite a bit about the Indian as a conservationist or the modern word is “ecologist.” Is this true of the Indians that they lived with the animals; they lived with plants; they lived with their environment?
Coleman: Yeah, the Indians is a great (___) of time…try to mimic the animal that he has in mind. He likes to act and live like him, you know.
Dyer: Is it because he admires the animal?
Coleman: He admires him. Tries to act like him and live like him (___) (___) (___) (___). He tries to be that animal.
Dyer: Did he have a feeling that the bear was a special creature in some way?
Coleman: Oh yeah, yeah a feeling that he liked. And they liked him for his size and everything, but and they liked some lighter animal; different action, you know, fox, coyote…fox and coyotes they don’t have any…they thought was the cutest and the smartest and the slickest of any of them. You’d be watching the pray and he’d sneak right in and get it on you. You didn’t even see.
Dyer: I think the racoon is pretty smart too.
Coleman: Oh yeah right; they’re very, very (___) bullet.
Dyer: Yeah. I had a run-in with racoons where I used to live and tried to beat them, but I could never beat them.
Coleman: No we used to catch them (___) (___) (___) all the rivers and all the horseshoe bin and go back bee. We’d take a trap and we’d get that little…make a little mirror, you know, and we’d punch a hole in it and then we’d tie that on the pan in the trap and it’d be in the water and the racoon and dive with that sanding mirror and then the whole trap wasn’t exposed when he runs back. And we used to work hours and hours to get that little mirror to stay on that pan; sometimes get a block a wood to fit it in. Weight it in there so it wouldn’t break the…break the little mirror.
Dyer: Uh-huh…what did you do with them?
Coleman: (___) (___)…we used to give them to prospectors and different guys they’d buy us ammunition; 22 (___) and 20 shorts…ten cents a box, .15 cents and medium were all like that. We used to give them to (___) practice and we had to earn our own ammunitions and we’d get it from them.
Dyer: Earlier you had mentioned about burning the valley and how there’s no burning out there now. Is that an example of good conservation to burn off the valley every year?
Coleman: Oh yeah.
Dyer: What was the idea behind that?
Coleman: The Indians?
Dyer: Uh-huh.
Coleman: Oh just like a clear view of it. Yeah that valley, when I was a youngster, you could stand there and look out that meadow and look out to Mirror Lake; it was right up there; timbers all trimmed and cleaned, no underbrush.
Dyer: It must’ve been more game in the valley then…deer especially.
Coleman: Oh all kinds of deer. Up to…oh I’d say 1945 there was plenty of deer there, see, 100-150…280 deer at that…you’d have to slow down; big bucks got a rack on them like they were hard to get out of the road. You had to stop for them; all over.
Dyer: Well was the idea that in burning the valley to bring back more game and…
Coleman: Well I guess it was better for hunting. To stock (___) we used to (___) (___) hit a rock when you eat. We’d go up on top (___) deer bring them down…he’d swallow and (___) and skin him out, send me home with a chunk. I couldn’t take him home because my dad would kill me if I took the deer home. I didn’t bring meat and I couldn’t bring the hide and horns and stuff. He wouldn’t go for that. He was frightening there. He didn’t wanna go easy. Privileges of (___) in there.
Dyer: Oh and you weren’t supposed to shoot them?
Coleman: Oh no. We’ll shoot them. We ain’t shooting them. That there’s a point of hotel and we closed it the last of September. Stage goes out, quite living up there. We just go there; baggage and (___). Enough to bundle up and go up there and climb on a bunch of (___) 20 feet high and sleep up there ‘til the…the snow was so bad we’d get scared and come out; eat mice, hens…
Dyer: They left behind?
Coleman: …and smoke cured and they left behind and opened up the next spring. We’d eat their hens and bacons and…
Dyer: Yeah. You were sort of a mischievous, little youngster, huh?
Coleman: My Irish friend and I.
Dyer: Now is that the Digman Family that had the…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …store down in the valley?
Coleman: (___) (___) (___).
Dyer: What about other things with the Indians about developing the land? Were they very quick to pan the gold from the creeks?
Coleman: Oh yeah, yeah they were good gold hunters and handlers. And one in particular, he used to turn to the Nevada and salvage his money off it. They used to say he could smell it.
Dyer: Smell the gold, huh?
Coleman: That’s what they said.
Dyer: You believe that?
Coleman: Yes. He discovered that pine tree mine hole there between Back Bee and Bear Valley (___) (___). His name is Philip Lager. They used to call him “Buck Lager.” God damn he had all kinds of gold that guy. I guess he could because he had a lot of it.
Dyer: Did (___) work for Jim Savage down there too?
Coleman: Oh yeah they used to go out training and there was another guy (___) that originally bought himself a car, but it was a bag (___) (___) and killed himself. At least he didn’t kill himself right there. They…he got under the car and slide it down the mountain and his leg amputated on the side of the running board and his name was Martin Flannigan. He was Indian/Irish and he could smell that gold too; good prospector.
Dyer: Do they do much prospecting in the valley itself?
Coleman: No, no there’s no gold in Yosemite. Nope. About, oh I guess, 15 miles out of the valley, the El Portal, and about…well I’d say…five or six miles from the boundary line there’s gold which is gold mining in that country I guess side gold mining. Indian woman found that and then married this…this (___) (___) and mind that hides gold mines…that’s still a good mining they tell me. It cost a lot to top rate it’s gotta be so deep, but there’s still gold going down when they quit it.
Dyer: You know I think we just about…
Coleman: …(___) mine. There’s a lot of gold and in the old mountain king mining a lot of gold. There’s a lot of gold out in that (___) (___) country.
Dyer: That’s near El Portal?
Coleman: Yeah that’s near El Portal.
Dyer: Well (___) thought there was a pot of gold in there.
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: But they did take out quite a bit…
Coleman: Yeah.
Dyer: …I guess (___) and a lot of Mariposa, Elk (___) area where it’s…
Coleman: Yeah (___) (___) (___) country. And there’s veins there too right in the streets of (___). We used to get gold when we were kids. Of course they paved it all and you can’t get any but (___) (___) street sell it. It’s a family buy it…
Dyer: Did your family buy any or sell them?
Coleman: Yeah (___) (___) (___). Yeah they turned the scales there and penny weights there and (___) gold and all…a lot of gold in those prospectors. Those old guys out there just grow old prospecting.
Dyer: Well Frank why don’t we call it a hold here for a while and we can continue a little later because I think I’ve picked your brain for some time and it’d be better to come back and do it again some time.
Coleman: Ok. (27:48-end is blank).