www.montereycountynow.com august 8-14, 2024 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 21 from, who always knows who my ancestors are, and I recognize how lucky I am even in the Indigenous community,” she continues. “But think about how we can all honor our Indigenous lineages, even if we feel disconnected or unrooted. As long as we’re in community together, we’re aligning in a good way.” Minutes later, the singing and dancing begin. Seaside resident Anthony Mondragon, a Monterey native, is less rooted in his Indigenous heritage, but he’s sowing the seeds to change that. Mondragon’s great-grandmother was Ascencion Solorsano, the last known full-blooded member of the Mutsun tribe (pronounced “mootsoon”), whose ancestral lands stretched from the San Juan Valley west to Watsonville and Moss Landing, south toward the Pinnacles and north into the Santa Cruz Mountains and Gilroy. It’s estimated that when the Spanish colonizers arrived to the Central Coast in 1769, there were about 2,700 Mutsun speakers in the Pajaro River watershed. Ascencion, as she is referred to throughout this story, was also the last known native speaker of the Mutsun language, and in the months before she died in Monterey on Jan. 29, 1930 at the age of 84, she was interviewed extensively by John P. Harrington, a linguist and ethnologist from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Mondragon, who’s a contract painter, decided in 2019 to start a nonprofit that would strive to become something much like Costanoan Indian Research and Indian Canyon, a place for ceremony, education about Indigenous heritage and reconnecting people with nature. And not just anywhere, but in Monterey County, where he’s from. He’s trying to put the Mutsun on the map—of all the Indigenous tribes that once existed in Monterey County, there is arguably none more obscure. And Mondragon, 60, is uniquely positioned to help shed some daylight: On a recent day in the backyard of his house in Seaside, he pulls out a tote packed with Mutsun-related documents his father, who died in 1999, collected in his later years. Some of its contents are one-of-a-kind, and many others are hard to otherwise unearth. He inherited them about a dozen years ago, and hasn’t even gotten through them all yet—they remain unorganized, just papers stacked upon each other. He has three more totes he hasn’t even tapped into yet. Much of the story that follows is based on those documents, but some things are based on research uncovered independently, before even meeting Mondragon this summer. Mondragon is not an academic, or even an activist—he just knows that his heritage is rich, and that the records he inherited are a priceless treasure, and he wants to spread the wealth and knowledge of the Mutsun. Like Ascencion, and Sayers-Roods and her mom, his dream is to help keep the stories of the past alive in the present. Ascencion was born in San Juan Bautista on July 22, 1855, to full-blooded Mutsun parents who preferred to speak Mutsun in the home, but encouraged their children to speak Spanish or English when out and about—it was the best way to survive and maybe get ahead. As Harrington, of the Smithsonian, wrote in an obituary of sorts after she died, “her life was indeed like a bridge between modern and earlier times.” There have been many stories written about Ascension’s life (Harrington was moved to write a poem; see p. 26). She was a singular woman, a medicinal healer and keeper of Mutsun ways who provided health care, often for free, to any in her community. Her father was a farmer and later coffin maker, and according to Harrington, their family moved to Watsonville when she was young, but despite that, he writes that she never saw the ocean until she was 50. But when she returned to San Juan, as it was then called, and when it was still in Monterey County, “she associated with the oldest Indians then surviving, many of whom were born in the [18th century]. It was during this period that she picked up her knowledge of the customs of the Indians, and learned many facts directly from those who had been eyewitnesses, although she acquired further information constantly by being with father and mother during the latter three-quarters of their lives, so that she knew whatever they told or talked about.” In Harrington’s writings, which contain scores of ephemeral, folkloric stories, as well as Mutsun language, his praise for Ascencion and her contribution to history could not be higher. “Her remarkable memory and truthfulness, unhampered by any crowding of her mind with English, resulted in her being able to hand this information to students of history and ethnology in a very usable form,” he wrote. “Her mind is as active as ever, her memory perfect and alert. The information she is giving is simply wonderful.” Among the most interesting things written about Ascencion since Harrington’s writings is a 1978 article in Journal of American Indian Education, an academic journal. Penned by Margo Angel Man, who’s of Indigenous descent, it’s titled, “In the Gardens of Popeloutchom.” In Man’s telling, Popeloutchom was essentially like the Mutsun Garden of Eden that for them existed in the present. She adds that the Mutsun, in their language, simply called themselves “Westerners”—they lived in the West. Ascencion lived most of her life in Gilroy where, Man writes, “She was known because of her mystical curative powers…Her wisdom was the accumulation from several generations of Westerners. Each year hundreds of sick and lame Indians made the journey to her home.” Ascencion then did her best to cure them with tonics and ointments made from local roots and herbs. But finally, Man writes, Ascencion, who was suffering from cancer, had a vision of her death in three days time— it must have been in 1929—and so she took the black, silk dress she intended to be buried in and left her Gilroy home to stay with her daughter in New Left: Indian Canyon, an Indigenous-owned piece of land about 14 miles south of Hollister, is in many ways the model of what Anthony Mondragon seeks to pull off in Monterey County. Right: Seaside resident Anthony Mondragon, the great-grandson of the last speaker of the Mutsun language, is trying to revive the Mutsun Tribe locally. “Honor the past to shape the future.” Daniel Dreifuss
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