I came to spend four days and nights on the island, to let come what may. I wanted to be helpful to my friend, eighty now and a deeply loved and respected, elder. She was teaching Native children and adults basket weaving, beadwork and storytelling. She was still hearty but needed help fetching things and getting from here to there. I was learning as she taught me how to be helpful and grow old in a beautify way.
Used to be, when you walked on the island of Santa Cruz and looked around, all the land you could see was Chumash Indian land. The island was once home to the largest population of island Chumash with a highly developed complex society and life ways. Marine harvest and trade with the mainland. Island Chumash produced shells beads used as currency. Grasses and roots for making baskets and other necessities for living were there for the taking.
And so, apparently was the land. Historical records show that by 1853 a large herd of sheep was brought to the island. The Civil War significantly increased the demand for wool and by 1864 some 24,000 sheep over grazed the hills and valleys of Santa Cruz Island. Some of the early buildings from sheep ranching still stand.
Now, instead of sheep for the next four days the island would again be filled with Indians. We had come to honor the Chumash peoples' annual channel crossing from the mainland to the Channel Islands.
A camp village was put up, where basket making, cordage making, song, prayer and storytelling take place. The first day there are about fifty Indians gathered. By Saturday, the day the tomol arrives, there would be nearly two hundred of us, and the adage “a single bracelet does not jangle alone” describes us. The connectedness we have to each other is so much a part of our lives, it can’t be distinguished from our lives.
Although I am not Chumash, I’m of mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German descent, for forty-three years I lived in an area that made up the traditional Chumash homeland. I hold the culture, traditions and history of the Chumash people in my heart. For my Chumash friends this is their heritage, their landscape of time.
There’s real power here. When we leave the campsite village and walk to the rim of the island first there is silence. Raven and Sea Gulls at the water’s edge dip and wheel and dive. Under a sky turned pink we go for a sunset swim. With much island and ocean and so few people there is the lazy wag of space. I float in the sea with my head surrounded by gulls and fledglings.
The next morning at dawn, we woke to sunrise singers. A high sweet trill of voices, abalone beads swaying, carrying songs from the ancestors. The singers were letting us know it was time to gather for sunrise ceremony.
Later in the day we waited for the paddlers to arrive. I stood with others on the shore and felt the sun rise from my heart. I’d known two of the paddlers, a male and a female crewmember, since they were babies, and I’d watched them grow to strong, beautiful, kind and responsible, young adults. Now I was a grandmother, moving toward elderhood and I knew the world that I would one day leave behind is in good hands.
For a moment I was returned to 1994 when these two young paddlers where small kids and our community began American Indian Education Project began the series “Tomol Trek” with the goal of building a modern-day recreation of a tomol. Our tomol was built by the children under the guidance of a master, in his backyard tomol building workshop. There was a perfect balance between master and apprentice as the children sanded pieces of the vessel throughout construction.
A dozen hands moved slowly across the handle, moving towards the paddle end of an oar. Small hands, young hands, skin so smooth and maroon, peach-colored hands, muted brown, every child with a tribal memory circling their heart.
Back in those days, my son and daughter were two of the kids helping out. They knew about the pleasure found in working hard and seeing the good results of that work. As they sanded the pieces of wood, I watched my kids find their relationship with the tomol they had helped build. Our kids did not have to exchange their Native values for education; the tomol carried ancient memory and cultural knowledge into their present lives.
Now two of those children where attended the academy were grown ups, and they were making the crossing in the tomol. The paddlers left the mainland at three a.m. There would be a careful change of crew three times. The moment the paddlers in the Tomol come into view my heart broke open and I was ageless and timeless and felt the welcome arms of the ancestors.
The tomol is brought forth from the sea and there was song and prayer.
Back at camp we prepared dinner, while island fox kept a steady eye trained on us. A near Harvest moon rose We ate, talked, joked, and told stories of past crossings to the island, and “the old ways” moving through our evening together like dancers, stirring to the same rhythm. All of the people, the paddlers and those that helped make the crossing and camp village possible—those who brought and cooked food, the fire keepers, the elders who led prayer and ceremonies, the singers, the dancers, and the paddlers—were honored.
Time was a continuous loop until our stay on the island came to a full circle closure. Thankful for what I had been given, yet reluctant to let go, I prepared to leave and made the rounds to say goodbye to everybody who had welcomed me.
On the boat ride to the mainland, we were soaking wet, laughing. A Humpback whale was sighted in the ocean. In the Chumash language my friends sang in the whale, and she surfaced.
At home in earthen shadows, rinsing off the salt water and sand, I felt the light from the moon, full and wan. I braided a pungent memory and filled my lungs and my heart with it, knowing it would permeate my body and cling to my soul as a reminder of what I could feel when we were all together on the Island.
Tomol Evening was first appeared in News from Native California, a quarterly magazine devoted to California's Indian peoples published by Heyday Books.
This essay is included in We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir by Terra Trevor (University of Nebraska Press).
Photo courtesy of the author
Copyright © Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.
