Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

Tom recalls his grandfather, Faustino Garcia, who knew something about traditional medicine and “used to treat me nice” (79).

Tom remembers David Jacks, a recognizable name in California history and a notorious land thief in the Monterey region who “knocked all the Indians and poor people out of there and said ‘This is mine’” (80).

Guadalupe Robles was Tom’s wife Keta’s white grandfather. Miranda explains that her late mother conducted genealogical research on Robles but struggled to uncover any reliable information. Miranda includes a photograph, circa 1879, of men whom her mother identified as Guadalupe and Jose Robles, though Miranda doesn’t know how her mother found this photograph or why she believed the men in the picture were Guadalupe and Jose Robles.

Tom describes seeing a light atop Mt. Diablo on the Carrisa Plains, 300 miles away, and being drawn to it. This happened on every clear night when he was young. He didn’t go to the light but instead traveled around California searching for work until he finally met a Mr. Shonck, who offered him a job. Tom worked on Shonck’s farm for four or five years.

Tom didn’t start drinking until later in life. He recalls a terrible accident at a lumber camp in which a man was decapitated. Tom recalls: “I was sick for six months. I quit right there” (87).

Tom describes the time when two brothers took him for his first airplane ride. He remembers feeling “scared” during the brief flight and “shaking” even when it was over.

Tom recalls a time when, somewhere in Kansas, he woke up next to a beautiful yet fully dressed woman and had no idea how he got there, so he left. Afterward, though it was early in the morning, he walked into a bar to get a whiskey. The Slavic bartender asked Tom his nationality, and Tom replied, “I’m a California Mission Indian” (90)

Tom recalls hearing about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was, so he tried to go back to sleep but was told that men were arming at a nearby bridge in case of a Japanese attack on the mainland. He then reflects on one of the consequences of Pearl Harbor when “the Americans picked up those Japs right out of bed and took and put ‘em in camps” (93). Tom speculates that Pearl Harbor was orchestrated in advance, and he believes this because “[t]he government can do some funny things” (93).

Miranda features a 1909 clipping from the Los Angeles Times, an article entitled, “‘Bad’ Indian Goes on Rampage at Santa Ynez” (96). The Indigenous man’s name was Juan Miranda.

Miranda composes and “prays” a novena, which, as she explains, is a Catholic practice that “has always had a sense of urgency and immediacy” (99). She directs her “prayers,” however, to her “bad” Indigenous ancestors, by which she means those who resisted imperialism and genocide. On “Day 3” of the nine-day novena, for instance, she prays to “you dirty Indians, you stupid Indians,” who “wouldn’t learn proper usage of land or gold: have mercy on my weakness” (97)

This two-page section consists of a transcript of notes taken by English ethnologist J. P. Harrington, whose work in the 1930s helped preserve California Indigenous languages. On this particular visit to the Gonaway tribe, Harrington encounters two people: Sadie, an elderly woman who is among the last of her tribe, and Petie Simpson, a younger man who “doesn’t speak much Indian language,” was “brought up around white people,” and “hates the government” for “not doing a thing for the Indians” (101).

Here, Miranda presents excerpts from letters to J. P. Harrington, written by A. P. Ousdal, a Doctor of Osteopathy in Santa Barbara, California. Ousdal was taking X-rays of the leg bones of a sick and injured Indigenous man named Juan Justo. Ousdal writes of “two burial mounds near the city that we ought to excavate” for comparative study because “they are rich in deposits of bones and skulls” (103). He argues that if Juan should die, the Smithsonian Institution should claim his bones as property for further research.

Miranda creates a “collage” of 15 Harrington or Harrington-related quotations. She includes a photo of Harrington leaning on the back of a vehicle. She then addresses Harrington directly, notes that “you died the day before I was born (Harrington died on October 21, 1961),” and wonders, “[D]id our spirits nod as they passed above Southern California that late October day?” (105).