If you took the challenge in last week's post and tried to identify the artifacts, the answers are at the end of this post. If you didn't do that yet, there's still time. Here's the link to
On the Estuary
By C.R. Downing. ©2018
By C.R. Downing. ©2018
The Mother bent down and gently puffed her breath toward the dry cattail leaves. She was trying to start a fire. A tiny spark from her prized flint glowed on the dry leaves. If she was careful, she would cook dinner tonight.
She paused, and then she blew softly again.
A tiny flame licked hungrily at the dry fibers.
With the same gentleness she used with her babies, the Mother placed two twigs on the flame. Within seconds, she had a true fire.
Over the next several minutes, the Mother added small pieces of precious wood to her cooking fire. Only once did she have to stop and call her children back to their task of searching for evidence of clams on the sticky mud of the low-tide estuary. She hoped the Father would arrive soon with some fish or game for dinner.
Her people, the Kumeyaay, were strong and proud. Their clans controlled all the area from what is now Escondido, California to the North to far below what is now Ensenada, Mexico to the South. The Eastern border extended to what is now known as the Colorado River. Only the Pacific Ocean to the West blocked her people’s expansion in that direction.
Overall, the Mother’s life was good. Her clan lived in what is now the Point Loma area of San Diego, California. She and her husband had three children. The family lived along the tidal flats in a willow-framed structure covered by brush.
Many in her clan used boats made of bundled reeds and coated with tar as waterproofing. The shells that they collected and sometimes made into jewelry were traded far beyond her nation’s boundaries.
Many in her clan used boats made of bundled reeds and coated with tar as waterproofing. The shells that they collected and sometimes made into jewelry were traded far beyond her nation’s boundaries.
This late afternoon, as the sun prepared to drop into the sea, putting out its fiery light and bringing another night for rest to the Kumeyaay, the Mother looked off to the high ground that was never covered by the ocean’s tides. It was there the family last saw the Father as he began to hunt before the sun was high in the sky.
She turned toward a sudden shout from down the mudflat beach. Her children were running towards a figure striding purposefully toward her fire.
The Mother stood and smiled. It was the Father, and he was carrying a pelican!
Working quickly to take advantage of the dying sunlight, she plucked and gutted the bird. She stuffed some kelp blades into the body cavity, pushed a cooking stick through the body from tail to neck, and propped the stick so the pelican rested just enough above the now glowing embers to cook. She was careful that their meal was not so close that it would catch fire as the fat dripped down on the coals.
Calling her youngest daughter, she instructed the girl to turn the stick so the featherless skin would brown on all sides. She watched as the girl performed her task once, then she gave her daughter a smile and a soft touch of recognition for a job well done. She wrapped two seagull eggs in kelp blades and placed the kelp-wrapped eggs in the embers. These the family would share along with the meat.
When both the bird and bird eggs were cooked to her satisfaction, the Mother called the Father and her children to the fire. Using her flint knife, a luxury she enjoyed thanks to the Father’s skill at bargaining shells for needed items, she cut the bird into five chunks of varying size.
She handed the Father the largest piece. She placed one of the kelp blades in a basket, placed one egg on the brown kelp blade, and cut the egg in half. She slid one half of the egg onto another kelp leaf and left the other half on the first blade. She handed the Father his kelp blade and half of the first egg and put the blade with her half near the embers.
The Father smiled as he chewed his egg. He enjoyed these times with his family.
The Mother looked up, saw her husband’s smile, and returned it. After warning the children to be careful with the hot food, she cut the second egg into three equal size pieces and handed them out.
The members of the Kumeyaay family were in no hurry. Each gnawed the meat off the bones in their share of the pelican. The Mother collected the bones and cut them in half with the flint knife and handed them back to her family. They knew the value of the marrow they sucked from those bones. Each was careful to remove as much as they could before the tossed the light, white cylinders into the sand next to the fire.
“The tide returns,” were the simple words spoken by the Father. It was time to move to their shelter above the tidal line.
Bones, feathers, pieces of eggshells, and other leftovers were scattered around what was left of their fire. As the embers died, the Mother sent a prayer of thanks to the red-tailed hawk that glided overhead. She knew the hawk would carry her message to the high god.
Calling her children to follow them, the Mother and the Father led the way to their shelter.
The tide rose, carrying with it a slurry of sandy mud that mixed with runoff from a rainstorm in the mountains that found its way to the estuary. The combination of clay and silt settled in the darkness, covering the embers, bones, and shells. When the morning low tide exposed their dining area of the night before, no one in the family could have found it, even if wanted to.
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| The Family's Cooking Fire After Dinner |
Our story of the Kumeyaay family ends here. However, even though the family could not find their dining area, I found it. At least I found someone’s cooking site.
I estimate that these artifacts are at least 450 years old. I dug them up when I installed my pond in the Loma Portal area of San Diego. The total height of the bank in my yard from the top to where the pond is and the artifacts were found is 45 feet. Assuming the artifacts are 450 years old, approximately one inch of new clay and silt and shells would have been deposited on top of the cooking site every ten years on average.
Eventually, the ocean receded from the area. The deep layers of clay hardened. Only after the clay bank had been cut and houses had been built in Loma Portal in 1960 was the cooking site close enough to the new surface that it could be easily dug up.
Answers to what's in the sand/clay I dug up.
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| I made a Powerpoint on the Kumeyaay for the teachers to use with the artifacts. Here's the link to that presentation. |
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