ALL NOW ARE FOREVER LOST!

John Peabody Harrington was employed by the American Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institute to collect information about North American Indians from Indians. He did a great deal of work with the Chumash. One of his Ventura informants during the early part of this century noted that he had left Ventura when he was 17 and had then lived for many years in the Salinas, California, area. When he returned to Ventura to live, there were still many full blooded Chumash Indians living in the area. At the time of his interviews with Harrington, he said that there were only four full-blooded Chumash left in the area. One, he noted, was in the hospital and would probably die there. Another, he said, doesn't know anything about his Chumash heritage. A woman, he said, lives over on a particular street. And, finally, there was himself. As he talked, he seemed to realize how much he had forgotten. He could not remember the names of some villages. Some names he could remember hearing and could repeat, but no longer remembered what the names were connected with. He slowly seemed to understand the mortality of his culture - that the Chumash life that had persisted for so many millennia in this place was passing out of the collective memory. Finally, he lamented, "Not only the rancherias but all the canadas and little places had names. All now are forever lost!"

                                                                                    Mike Kuhn

11-10-04