In 1851, when the first white men visited Yosemite Valley, they noted its unusual beauty. The reports of this earthly paradise soon attracted artists, such as Virgil Williams and Albert Bierstadt, whose images helped raise public interest in preserving the valley before it would be forever lost to settlers. In 1864, the Congress of the United States set it aside for "public use, resort and recreation," effectively creating the first American national park. The valley soon became a popular destination for tourists from Sacramento, San Francisco, and beyond. The roads were built, and hotels were erected.
The Ahwahneechee Indians, who lived in the valley when it was first discovered, were known for their fierce nature (the name Yosemite derives from a Miwok name for them, meaning "killers") and were therefore deemed undesirable as park residents. They were forcibly removed to a reservation in Fresno, and their village was burned. Later, a small group of Miwok Indians were allowed to settle in the valley. Authorities believed that their dwellings and colorful costumes would provide picturesque accents to the bucolic landscape, and numerous artists and early photographers who visited the valley included them in their works (see image 1). Since few employment opportunities were available to Indians in the burgeoning tourist industry, they supported themselves by manufacturing and selling native artifacts and trinkets (see image 2).
2. Tourist trade, oil
There was no systematic research or documentation of the Yosemite Indians – or American Indians in general – undertaken by American ethnographers until the end of the nineteenth century. Given society’s condescending attitude toward all living Indians at that time, combined with the Indians’ retaliation in response to perfidious treatment by the American establishment, this lack of interest is understandable. In 1873, a Modok nicknamed Captain Jack organized a bloody revolt against whites in northern California, and three years later, colonel Custer and his cavalry command were completely wiped out by the Sioux in the battle of the Little Bighorn. The United States government was disinclined to allocate any funds for surveying and preserving a culture of the race it considered hostile to public interests. It is, therefore, not at all surprising that the majority of what we know about the Yosemite Indians comes from the pen of a foreigner - a visiting Russian botanist, Fyodor Ivanovich Plotnik - who, in 1878, published in Saint Petersburg a booklet "История и жизнь индейцев в американской Калифорнии." ("History and lives of Indians in American California;" see image 3).
3. Plotnik's book, title page
Plotnik was one of those remarkable polyglots who typified the scientists of his time: he identified and catalogued hundreds of plants on three continents, developed numerous chemical compounds still in use today, spoke and wrote in seven languages, and studied and wrote about indigenous peoples in Siberia and America. Among the Indians living in Yosemite, he mentions a community consisting of a few families that, to him, differed from the rest of the local population: instead of living in bark lean-tos like the Miwok, the Pauo - as they called themselves - lived in low houses of sun-dried bricks. Some of them had brown or blond hair, blue eyes, and spoke the dialect strewn with words that sounded somewhat familiar to Plotnik. For instance, they referred to their surroundings as "dol" (дол, dolina is Russian for "valley"). They called a tongue "yazga" (язык, yazyk in Russian and old Slavonik), a hand was "roog" (рука, ruka in Russian).
From what Plotnik could gather during his short stay in the valley, the Pauo maintained a collection of beliefs that differed from those of the rest of the California Indians. One marked difference was their practice of ancestral worship. Inside one of their houses, they kept a preserved body wrapped up in a bundle. During a ceremony that they reenacted on Plotnik’s bidding, the Pauo carried this mummy together with crude wood figural carvings on long poles. They danced in a circle to the beat of a drum - a common Indian practice. Plotnik described the carvings as having non-Indian facial features: blond moustaches and beards. He likened them to the works of sub-arctic Eskimos and the Chukchi, who live in Alaska and eastern Siberia, respectively.
Plotnik learned that the majority of the Pauo had left the Yosemite Valley shortly before his arrival. They relocated to the "Three Saints Land," the tribe’s ancestral home, and, when asked where that was, the remaining members pointed south. The rest of the Pauo didn’t plan to follow them, as some tension existed between two factions. They themselves believed their ancestral home was to the north.
The first thing that came into Plotnik’s mind was a possibility of these Indians being somehow related to the Russians who reached California in the eighteenth century. Since 1741, when captain Bering embarked on his voyage of discovery, Alaska and the Pacific Northwest had been claimed by the Russian Empire (Alaska remained part of Russia until 1867, when it was purchased by the United States). Russian fur traders and czarist administrators traveled down the Pacific coast all the way to San Francisco Bay in search of otter pelts. In 1812, they established a permanent settlement at what is now Fort Ross, California. To counteract their presence in an area also claimed by Spain, the Spanish king, Carlos III, authorized the founding of twenty-one Franciscan missions and numerous military and administrative installations, known as presidios, that were built in California between 1769 and 1823.
Based on numerous clues - namely linguistic similarities; the images of bearded, blond ancestors (despite the fact that Indians cannot grow full facial hair); and masonry houses - Plotnik concluded that the Pauo descended from coastal Indians who had come into contact with the Russians. He did not offer any explanation as to why the tribe moved to the "Three Saints Land" in the south, while Fort Ross - and therefore the tribe’s possible ancestral ties - are located to the northwest from the Yosemite Valley.
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The Pauo are not mentioned in any American literature on California Indians. It is doubtful that they could be considered a tribe at all - they were only a small band, never more than a few families, and could easily be overlooked by scholars. At the crucial time, at the turn of the twentieth century when most research into the conditions of the surviving American Indians was conducted, they were on the move. Those few who remained in Yosemite were either absorbed into a Miwok tribe or succumbed to white man’s diseases; those who moved to the "Three Saints Land" either failed to reach their destination, became part of some other tribe, or simply dissolved into the white population. We do not know what, if anything, the first researchers in Yosemite Valley thought about the square, low adobe houses that the Pauo had built and left behind. The existence of these structures was never recorded.
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The next mention of the Pauo is found again in European literature, this time in the Sudaetische Zeitung fur die Historische Studien, volume XXIII (1922). In an article with the rather sensationalistic title "Der letzte Mohikaner oder eine geheimnisvolle Schicksal eines verlorenen Indianerstamm," (The last of the Mohicans, or a Mysterious Fate of a Forgotten Tribe), Dr. Johannes Zimmermann wrote about a lonely Indian living in a small canyon in the vicinity of Hemet, in Southern California (see image 4).
4. Entrance to the Reinhardt Canyon, oil
He described a man named Yucca Frankie (yucca is a wild plant of the cactus family that grows abundantly in the dry region north of Hemet) as tall and light-skinned. Frankie spoke in a mixture of English, Spanish and an Indian dialect. He claimed to be hundred years old and identified himself as a Pauo. He lived in a low adobe house with a pointed roof. Around his house were remnants of about a half a dozen structures of the same kind, each in different stage of dilapidation (see image 5).
5. Site of a Pauo settlement in Reinhardt Canyon, looking south. Leveled ground where houses once stood is visible in the foreground (current view).
Frankie, who resided on the west side of the large Hemet-San Jacinto Valley, did not associate with the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians - who lived on the reservation on the east side (see image 6) and who spoke a different dialect. He supported himself by selling produce from his garden and was also a horse healer of some repute.
6. East side of Hemet-San Jacinto Valley, oil
During his three-months’ stay in the valley, Dr. Zimmermann frequently interviewed Yucca Frankie. He recorded that Frankie’s beliefs were similar to those of local Indians - a mixture of Catholic religion and shamanistic rituals. However, instead of reciting his "Our Father" in Spanish as the Soboba did (having first come in contact with Christianity through Spanish missionaries), he recited it in his native dialect. He claimed to be the last surviving member of the Pauo who used to live in Yosemite and who moved to his present home when he was already an adult.
Frankie, who resided on the west side of the large Hemet-San Jacinto Valley, did not associate with the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians - who lived on the reservation on the east side (see image 6) and who spoke a different dialect. He supported himself by selling produce from his garden and was also a horse healer of some repute.
6. East side of Hemet-San Jacinto Valley, oil
During his three-months’ stay in the valley, Dr. Zimmermann frequently interviewed Yucca Frankie. He recorded that Frankie’s beliefs were similar to those of local Indians - a mixture of Catholic religion and shamanistic rituals. However, instead of reciting his "Our Father" in Spanish as the Soboba did (having first come in contact with Christianity through Spanish missionaries), he recited it in his native dialect. He claimed to be the last surviving member of the Pauo who used to live in Yosemite and who moved to his present home when he was already an adult.
7. Maze Stone carving
Yucca Frankie showed Dr. Zimmermann a large boulder with a carved hieroglyph near his home (now known as the Hemet Maze Stone, and a designated California State Landmark No. 557, see image 7). He claimed it was made by his ancestors, who first came to this area many generations ago from across the sea. Frankie could enumerate fourteen generations between that event and the present and name all of his fourteen forefathers. Although he did not remember why his tribe left this location and migrated north to Yosemite, he claimed they returned here based on a prophesy promising that they would be transported from here to their old home over the sea. Unfortunately, some tribe members perished on the journey south, and others died as they waited for the remaining relatives who were supposed to join them in Hemet but never came. It seemed that Frankie believed Dr. Zimmermann had been sent by the Great Spirit to take him home.
8. Hemet today, with San Jacinto Mountain
The Hemet-San Jacinto Valley is dominated by the San Jacinto Mountain, which rises to 10,834 feet (3,302 m, see image 8). From the valley floor, one can see San Gorgonio Mountain, which reaches 11,503 feet (3,506 m), to the north. Fifty miles to the west is San Antonio Mountain, standing 10,068 feet (3,069 m) high. Not surprisingly, Spaniards called this country "Tierra de tres santos" ("the land of three saints"). There is no doubt that this is a place the Pauo of Yosemite must have known in the past and to which they were returning, as they related to Plotnik.
Dr. Zimmermann compiled a list of about a hundred words from Frankie’s native vocabulary. He was surprised to realize that many of the terms Frankie used sounded familiar. Disregarding Plotnik’s interpretation (whose book he had read), he offered a different explanation for the resemblance: he saw, for instance, in Frankie’s "dol" a similarity to the German word tal (valley) and in "yazga" a resemblance to the German zange (tongue). He concluded that the Pauo must have, in their distant past, come into contact with some Caucasian people (not necessarily Russians, as Plotnik had proposed), or that they themselves belonged to the white race.
He was led to that conclusion by Frankie’s light-colored skin, a bone carving of a bearded man, and the sandy hair he preserved (these two will be mentioned later), along with a history of an ancestral home somewhere beyond the sea and the nature of dwellings they built. Zimmermann noted marked differences between Frankie and the local Soboba Indians, who until recently lived in shelters constructed from brush and ground their foodstuffs in stone mortars and metates using manos and pestles (see image 9).
9. Indian stone tools
A strange, non-Indian-looking stone carving in the shape of a labyrinth/maze, together with a couple dozen words that sounded recognizable to him, pointed Zimmermann to India. He surmised that a similarity among certain words - such as "dol" (Pauo), "tal" (German), "дол" (Russian) and "dale" (English) – all meaning "valley" suggests a common ancient source: a proto-European language spoken by ancestors of the Caucasian race who dispersed throughout Europe and moved to the Indian subcontinent. His conviction about the tribe’s origin was reinforced by his interpretation of its name: he transcribed it as "Pawo", which means "hero" in Sanskrit - a quite appropriate name for any group of people. All these facts led him to conclude that the origins of the Pauo/Pawo should be traced to India.
10. Site of the Pauo Terraced Vegetable Gardens, With Mount San Gorgonio (Current view)
Zimmermann noted in his article that some of Frankie’s pronouncements, such as his claim to be hundred years old (Zimmermann had estimated Frankie’s age to be around 70), must be taken with a grain of salt. In general, however, he felt that Frankie was honest and truthful in most of his statements. Frankie regarded Zimmermann’s interest in him as a sign of kinship. There was only one subject Frankie refused to discuss: when Dr. Zimmermann observed that there was no graveyard in the canyon and inquired about the burial practices of his people, Yucca Frankie declined to speak on the subject. Dr. Zimmermann never learned what rituals and mortuary habits the Pauo followed, although he speculated that, in the absence of a burial ground, the dead could have been cremated – another practice that pointed to India as a possible ancestral home of the tribe.
Before leaving, Dr. Zimmermann purchased a leather pouch from Frankie. It was very similar to the amulet pouches used by Prairie Indians to protect them from all kinds of harm. This one, reportedly belonging to one of Frankie’s male relatives, contained a strand of blond hair, bird feathers, pebbles, a piece of colored glass, tree bark, and a carved animal bone. Besides listing the pouch’s content, Zimmermann did not elaborate on the meaning of any of the items it contained.
11. Carved bone
One of the items in the pouch - the bone carving (now in a collection of the Statens Konstsamlingar Museet in Malmo, Sweden), constitutes the most intriguing aspect of the Pauo mystery (see image 11). It is obviously old and has acquired a yellow-brown hue from age and handling. It is singularly different from any other known American Indian artifact. It represents a head of a man with bushy eyebrows, a full beard, and a moustache. The man’s undeniably Caucasian features are rendered rather realistically. In 1996, the bone was subjected to various scientific tests to determine its age and origin. Radiocarbon dating suggested that it was between 350 and 400 years old and that it was made from a hollow grizzly bear bone.
In the end, based on all his findings, Dr. Zimmermann put forth a possible explanation for the presence of non-Indian people living on the west coast of the United States: they descended from ancient travelers who migrated from India thousands of years ago - perhaps even before the arrival of Paleo-Indians - and were able to retain their typical Caucasian features. He supported this theory by citing other reports of white "Indian" tribes, such as a portion of the Cherokees on the eastern seaboard and the Mandans on the upper Missouri River, both in the United States, as well as a report about light-skinned tribes in South America. According to his interpretation, in certain regions the descendants of these light-skinned travelers were much more numerous than the red-skin population. He even surmised the following scenario: when Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World, he must have encountered descendants of these wandering Caucasians. When asked who they were, they identified themselves as "Indios" (Spanish for "Indians"), though they meant to say they came from India; the name later came to designate the entire Native American population of the American continent.
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The last known reference to the Pauo appears in the French magazine Cahiers d'Archeologie (Volume XCVI, 1952). In it, Belgian archeologist Theo de Charpentier reports on his excavation in Hemet, California. (Consequently, his presence in Southern California can be substantiated by a news item in the San Bernardino Sun, a California newspaper, dated October 21, 1950.) Charpentier had come to examine the rock carving on the Soboba Indian Reservation and stumbled on the Pauo. He was in the process of compiling a list for UNESCO of ancient labyrinth-like structures and images from around the world. The rock in question is located near the present tribal headquarters and was moved there from a nearby field where it was originally found. The carving follows a labyrinthine design. There are numerous theories - none of which have been substantiated - about its originators, from Chinese seafarers to local high school pranksters. Charpentier also learned about a second carved rock in the side canyon on the west side of the valley, called Reinhardt Canyon. (There is also a third, similar carving on a much smaller stone, which is now in a collection at the Ramona Pageant Museum in Hemet.) When Charpentier visited the site of the aforementioned Maze Stone, he noticed remnants of adobe structures nearby. Local Hemet history buffs who accompanied him recounted the fantastic tale of Yucca Frankie and his faraway origins. (It has to be noted that Charpentier had read neither Plotnik’s book nor Zimmermann’s article and was not aware of any theories concerning an indigenous, non-Indian population in this area.) As an archeologist by training, he could not resist temptation; he borrowed a shovel and conducted a dig. Under the hearth of one of the houses, he found skeletal remains wrapped up in textiles that formed a bundle (see image 12). Lacking an official permit to excavate the site, he decided to suppress news of his find and smuggled the bundle out of the country. It is now in a private collection in Montreaux, Switzerland.
12. Ancestral remains bundle
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How should we interpret the limited sources of information available about these mysterious California inhabitants? In what light should we view those surviving artifacts that document their culture?
Based on what we know so far, several facts seem evident:
- Undoubtedly, with their tall stature, light-colored skin, blue eyes, and sandy hair, the Pauo were different from the rest of the indigenous population of California.
- They spoke Indian dialect full of foreign words.
- They claimed that their ancestors came from across the sea.
- Some believed that the tribe first settled in the Hemet area, later moved to the Yosemite Valley, and eventually returned to Hemet.
- They were the only Native American population in California to build rectangular adobe houses with pointed roofs.
- Pauo were skillful agriculturists, whereas other California tribes were mostly hunter-gatherers.
On the other hand, there is no evidence to support the Zimmermann's theory that the Pauo were descended from a pre-Indian Caucasian civilization that colonized America thousands of years ago.
A more plausible explanation is their belief in the more recent arrival of their ancestors. That date can be inferred from various clues, including Yucca Frankie’s recital of the names of fourteen of his direct forefathers, beginning with the first arrival to California. Given an average human generation span of about 20 years and considering Frankie’s estimated age of seventy in 1922, the arrival of the first Pauo can be placed to around 1570, or earlier. We know that a grizzly bone carving, when tested in 1996, was determined to be between 350 and 400 years, indicating that the animal from which the femur was used for the carving died sometime between 1600 and 1650. It is safe to assume that the bone was carved soon after it was harvested.
So, where did the Pauo come from? It is quite probable - based on their appearance and the collected linguistic material - that they were of European origin. Did they migrate as a group, or were they descended from one or a few foreign individuals who arrived on American shores? If their origins truly lie beyond the sea, which sea would that be? Although California borders the Pacific Ocean, that fact does not necessarily exclude the Atlantic. The documented case of Cabeza de Vaca - one of four survivors of the 1527 Narvaez expedition from Spain to Florida, which began with six hundred men - suggests one possibility. His eight-year trek through the American Southwest and Mexico (including along the coast of California Sea, now called the Sea of Cortez) shows that other expedition members could have survived, migrated further west, and formed the nucleus of a new tribe.
Regarding the possibility of Europeans coming from across the Pacific, note that beginning in 1565, Spanish trade galleons sailed regularly from the Philippines to Mexico. After crossing the Pacific toward Cape Mendocino (north from today’s San Francisco), they turned south past the California coast. Not all galleons reached their destination; the Pauo could have been descended from survivors of those sailors who were shipwrecked on the California coast, which - at that time - had no European settlements. Plotnik’s theory - that the Pauo were descended from Russian fur traders - also has some merit, although no scientific proof of it exists yet. As previously noted, Russians moved from Alaska all the way down to the San Francisco Bay. Moreover, in 1784 they founded a settlement on Kodiak Island, Alaska, named Three Saints Harbor. It is feasible that those Pauo who remained in Yosemite might have considered that northern location as their home.
It would certainly be beneficial if some remains of Pauo bodies could be subjected by modern scientific investigative methods, including DNA testing, as the results would shed light on their genetic makeup. Unfortunately, the private owner of the only extant remains - the ancestral bundle - refuses to grant permission for such testing. At the time of this writing, no other Pauo remains are known to exist.
The origins of this truly lost tribe, its history and the ultimate fate of its members are still shrouded in mystery. Until more information is unearthed, it may remain so for a long time.
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All rights reserved. Copyrighted by Andre Lohnert 2015
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Slovak synopsis / Slovenské resumé
Andre Lohnert: Stratený Californský indiánsky kmeň
Táto práca je súhrnom výskumu o zaniknutom indiánskom kmeni Pauo, ktorý sa líšil od ostatných pôvodných obyvateľov Californie svojim vzhľadom, jazykom, zvykmi a v zachovanej predmetnej kultúre. Existencia kmeňa je doložená viacerými literárnymi zdrojmi:
- knihou ruského cestovateľa Fiodora Ivanoviča Plotnika z roku 1878, ktorý predpokladal, že Pauovia boli potomkami ruských kolonistov z osemnásteho storočia;
- článkom nemeckého etnografa Johanna Zimmermanna z roku 1922, ktorý sa domnieval, že Pauovia mohli byť pozostatkami prehistorickej emigračnej vlny z Indie, ktorá pred tisíckami rokov, snáď ešte pred príchodom paleo-Indiánov, osídlila americký kontinent;
- článkom belgického archeóloga Thea de Charpentiera z roku 1952, ktorý na mieste niekdajšieho indiánskeho osídlenia vykopal mumifikované pozostatky Pauo.
Práca je ilustrovaná autorovými obrazmi a fotografiami artefaktov.
