I-8 Jewish Travel: Kwaaymii, Arden and oral history

Campground at Laguna Meadows near Mount Laguna
Campground at Laguna Meadows near Mount Laguna

-61st in a Series-

Exit 47, Sunrise Highway, Mount Laguna, California

By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison
Sylvia Arden at work in the archives of the San Diego Historical Society
Sylvia Arden at work in the archives of the San Diego Historical Society. (Family photo)

MOUNT LAGUNA, California – Jackie Lucas dropped in on the Serra Museum in Presidio Park, San Diego, in 1975, to look around the museum that focuses on early San Diego history.  She saw on display a photo of a Kumeyaay woman.  She walked into the offices of the San Diego Historical Society, which then was headquartered at the Serra Museum, and told chief archivist Sylvia Arden that the woman pictured in the photograph was none other than her grandmother,  Maria Alto.

So pleased, excited and engaging was Arden—who is our “Jewish connection” to this story—that Jackie decided to invite her father, Tom Lucas, to return with her to the museum to see the photograph and to talk about the old days.  Tom Lucas was a member of the Kwaaymii band of the Kumeyaay Indians, a band whose territory is near Mount Laguna, which is accessible from the Sunrise Highway exit of Interstate 8.  Sometimes the Kwaaymii are called the Laguna Indians.

Lucas brought with him a scrapbook of photographs and other documents pertaining to the lives of his family and that of the Kwaaymii, which he later donated to the historical society.  Arden and Michael Carman, then the society’s curator, conducted a preliminary interview with Lucas.  A month later, Lucas engaged in a more formal interview with Richard Carrico, who then was just beginning to make a name for himself as this area’s leading ethno-historian.  “Not only was I delighted at the chance to conduct such an interview, I was complimented,” Carrico wrote in a 1983 Journal article describing the encounter. “Mr. Lucas agreed to an interview at his home in Pacific Beach on November 4, 1975 and to a later informal talk and tour of his ranch in the Laguna Mountains.”

Dennis Sharp, today the curator of the San Francisco Airport Museum which focuses on commercial aviation, trained at the San Diego Historical Society after Arden had retired.  The story of how Arden arranged the interview between Lucas and Carrico, he said, was “so typical of her–all those little connections that she made.  She was always so selfless about promoting history for the community.”

Dan Arden, a Hollywood-based producer of television documentaries, recently told me that his mother Sylvia’s passions were the museum’s oral history program, which she had helped to develop into a nationally recognized art form, and chronicling the history of San Diego’s minority communities — for which, as a Jew who had experienced anti-Semitism in the Poconos of New York,  she felt great empathy.  The Lucas-Carrico interview, in a sense, was a “twofer” for Arden — both an oral history and about minorities — while for Carrico it was a decisive step in his career.

Working from known facts, Carrico, through the interview, incrementally extended his (and our) knowledge of the customs and practices of the Kwaaymii.   First, he asked, how old Maria Alto was, and although Lucas didn’t know exactly, he figured she must have been over 90 when she died in 1924.  That would mean that she would have been at least a teenager, and possibly an adult, in 1850 when California became the 31st state of the United States.  Lucas said that his mother often worked as a live-in domestic, traveling to ranches in San Bernardino, and possibly in Santa Barbara, from her home on what is now the Laguna Reservation.  Next, Carrico introduced the subject of pottery that could be seen in a photograph of Alto.  Where did she get the clay? he asked.  Lucas said that his mother had two favorite places, one southeast of Laguna Meadows, in a place he called Laguna Flats, and the other in the northern part of the Laguna Mountains.  The clay was fine without rocks that could cause pottery to burst in the baking process.  Often his mother mixed the clay with cactus juice, for the same reason that lime today is added to cement.  After it was shaped, the clay would be placed in a hole at least 4 feet deep, and covered with oak bark which would be ignited.  Rocks set around the circumference of the hole served as a windbreak. More of Carrico’s step-by-step interview of Lucas may be read at http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/83spring/kumeyaay.htm.

Richard Carrico
Richard Carrico

For several years after the interview was completed, “Sylvia kept pestering me: ‘When are you going to do an article in the Journal?'” Carrico remembered.  “She stayed on me, as she was supposed to do, and the result was not only the article. It got me to thinking in the mid to late 1970s that I really needed to find out if there were others out there besides Tom Lucas.  That spurred me on to what became my career, doing a lot of anthropology rather than just archaeology. So I really owe her a lot.”

Carrico, who is acknowledged as a leading living scholar of the Kumeyaay, is widely known for his 1987 book, Strangers in a Stolen Land, which covers the history of the indigenous people of San Diego County, including the Kumeyaay.

In 2015, some 30 years after his interview with Lucas, Carrico noted, “I have a contract to do an ethnography of the Kumeyaay Indians. I have been working on it for two years, and it’s about a three-year project.”

An “ethnography,” he explained, takes “an anthropological approach rather than an historical approach.” Carrico said he was told by Kumeyaay leaders that past studies of their people provided “good archaeology, but we are not there. Stone tools are, arrowheads are, broken pieces of pottery are, but where are we?”

Elaborating, Carrico said:

When a Kumeyaay looks up at the night sky, they don’t see Orion as we do, they see a big horn sheep.  A whole story goes with that.  The Milky Way is the backbone of the universe, and a whole story goes with that. If you ask a Kumeyaay where knowledge comes from, it is through their songs, bird songs, and the things that go along with that. Archaeologists recorded trails out in the desert but didn’t talk about why trails were important beyond trade and travel.  Actually there is a whole cosmological, religious, spiritual thing that goes with these trails.  Certain trails you would only use on spirit walks. That is what ethnography is about.  When you look at broken pottery, talk about it as a science and an art form to the Kumeyaay.  Or if you talk about ethno-zoology, an archaeologist would dig up a deer bones and say, ‘well, gosh, the Kumeyaay had some deer,’ and then talk about their diet.  The Kumeyaay want us to know that these animals had spirits and their creator put them here, and they do different things.  Some of them talk.  If an owl comes around your house and makes a lot of noise, then someone is going to die in the near future.  So, finding an owl bone on an archaeological site is one thing, but talking about the spirituality of this is completely another thing.”

Sylvia Arden in her retirement years is flanked by sons David, a concert pianist, and Dan, a documentary producer.
Sylvia Arden in her retirement years is flanked by sons David, a concert pianist, and Dan, a documentary producer.  (Family photo)

Sylvia Arden also was influential in the movie career of her son Daniel, who said he was “painfully shy” as a child. His mother decided he should “take a drama class at the JCC (then on 54th Street) and I loved it. It really did help me come out of my shell, at least to a degree, and that ended up being my passion all the way through my school years.  I ended up going for a theater arts degree at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and then I was a professional actor for about five years in New York.  Ultimately I ended up, through an acting job, involved with the production side, and I ended up switching careers into television and film production.”  Daniel is known primarily for documentaries, especially behind-the-scenes studies concerning the making of such famous film series as Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Sylvia’s older son, David, spent years touring Europe, South America, and Asia as a classical pianist who specialized in the works of contemporary avante garde and  American composers.  His goodwill tours were underwritten by the United States Information Agency, with his appearance at one all-Gershwin conference sponsored by the Crown Prince of Belgium, who later became King Albert II.  In an interview, David recalled that when he first expressed interest in playing the piano, at perhaps the age of 5 or 6, his mother immediately signed herself up for night classes in which she too could learn the piano.  Her idea was to teach her son whatever she learned, a process that came to its conclusion in about six months time, when the young pupil began outperforming his mom.  David was signed up for a regular piano teacher.   But Sylvia’s interest, and desire to participate in the lives of her children, never abated.  During the mid-1970s, when David was in Holland in a month-long music competition, Sylvia flew to Europe and sat in the audience every day, listening not only to David but to all his competitors.  She took notes and correctly predicted that David would finish first.  She also correctly predicted which two musicians  would come in second and third in the competition.

Likewise, David recalled, when his brother Dan was studying in London for his junior year abroad, Sylvia not only attended his rehearsals and performances but volunteered as a secretary for the drama class, soon becoming a friend to all the students.  She would regularly be invited out to dinner with Dan and the other drama students, and when the class finally mounted a production of The Threepenny Opera, their success and hers were one in the same.

Sylvia Arden, second from left, with oral history volunteers of the San Diego Historical Society.
Sylvia Arden, second from left, with oral history volunteers of the San Diego Historical Society.

As a motivator, Sylvia Arden won renown for her ability to recruit and train volunteers to conduct oral history interviews. At the San Diego Historical Society, her passion for conducting such forays into history inspired a corps of 25 to 30 people, some of whom were students, while others were retirees who themselves may have completed brilliant careers and were looking for productive ways to contribute their time.  After Arden retired from the San Diego Historical Society, she remained active as an officer in various national and regional societies for archivists and oral historians.  She also became a consultant who was hired by individuals and even by two counties in Nevada to conduct oral interviews and to teach others how to do them.

Recalling his own introduction to the field, Dennis Sharp said that he was hired by the society as an archivist a year or so after Arden’s retirement.  Asked to revive the oral history program, he attended a conference in Tempe, Arizona, of the Southwest Oral History Society. When Arden, who was an officer of the association, found out where he was from, she took him under his wing and made sure he met everyone in the society.  She also shared with him contacts she had developed back home in San Diego.  “She was all about promoting the historical society and San Diego’s past; preserving its collections, records and documents; and sharing those with the community,” he said.  Arden for a while was the archive’s only paid staff member and was remembered fondly as the “lone arranger,” Sharp said.

Arden was a strong believer in the value of first-person history, her son Dan said.  First-person accounts “are often in writing but often times, because they aren’t writers, the people who played important roles or have knowledge of important aspects of San Diego’s history” only will have the opportunity to tell their stories through the mechanism of an interview, Dan Arden said.

“She was very methodical about the oral history collection,” Dan continued.  “There were certain people who played very significant roles in culture, or the government, or various other aspects of San Diego life. She was always looking for the important areas of San Diego history and who were the people who will be able through their oral history to shine a light on that.”

Her approach to oral history “was very methodical,” Dan said.  “When she was going to interview someone, it could be a very long process.  She would have been researching even before the first meeting with them.  She might have been researching for six months to really prepare. And then the interview might be over 4, 8, or 12 sessions with a period of time in between. That was how in depth it goes.”

Sharp said oral interviews are designed largely to “fill in the gaps” of the historical record.  In order to know what the gaps are, oral historians read extensively about their subjects, and then ask them questions that will add to the historical record.

Richard W. Crawford, Susan A. Painter and Sarah B. West provided a sense of the scope of the historical society’s oral history program in the Spring 1991 edition of the Journal of San Diego History.

The program was initiated in 1956 by a former county supervisor, Edgar Hastings. Supported by county funding, Hastings interviewed 309 pioneer residents of San Diego County in the next four years. The program lapsed after Hastings’ death in 1961. In the late 1960s the program was revived by Historical Society librarian Sylvia Arden. Under Arden’s direction, oral history became a highly successful volunteer program.

It is possible for the researcher to read, in a narrator’s own words, a description of the 1916 Hatfield flood in an interview with Dean Blake. An interview with Bert Shankland describes what it was like to “eat smoke” as a San Diego fireman in the 1920s. The Montague Brabazon interview details, step by step, the early methods of processing and shipping dried and fresh fruit in the beginning of an industry which became important to the San Diego economy.

Little known aspects of 19th century life in San Diego are revealed in many of the interviews. The Alice Baldwin interview gives minute details of the mining industry in the back country. The social and economic conditions of Native Americans are described in interviews with Purl Willis and Tom Lucas, and rough frontier justice is depicted in an interview with Max J. Bowen.

City politics is the subject of interviews with former San Diego mayors John Butler, Frank Curran, and Roger Hedgecock, councilman William Cleator, and supervisor De Graff Austin. Work in the San Diego tuna industry of the 1930s is described by Edward Soltesz. Vincent Battaglia gives a detailed account of the tuna fleet commandeered for military service in World War II and cited by the President for its participation in such actions as the Battle of Guadalcanal…

Crawford, who today is an author and an expert  in the San Diego Public Library’s local history section,  and Charles Hughes, a local history researcher, both trained under Arden at the Serra Museum, which they recalled as having only tiny quarters for researchers, accommodating no more than six at a time.  (Today, the archives are housed in much larger quarters in the Casa de Balboa in Balboa Park.)  Because of the Serra Museum’s limited space, Arden required researchers to make reservations for seating, and she would bring to them material that they requested.  Once she got to know a researcher, and what he or she wanted, she would greet the researcher with a mound of materials that she thought would be helpful.

Quite gregarious, Arden typically made it a point to get to know the researchers, learn about their families, and their interests.  And she didn’t hesitate talking about how proud she was of her sons David and Dan.

When she took the job, Arden had not been professionally trained as an archivist.  In fact, having grown up the daughter of an impoverished single mother, she did not have the funds to go to college. But, after moving to Los Angeles, she learned how to type, very fast and very accurately, and made money preparing the master’s and doctoral theses of students at USC.   Additionally, she was a very good copy reader, often saving students from mistakes in grammar or spelling.

After being hired as an assistant archivist at the San Diego Historical Society, and later being promoted to the top archival job, she became a trailblazer as an oral historian while continuing to follow the protocols that she had inherited in the archiving of written materials and in the treatment of photographs,

Some assistants chafed at her loyalty to the old traditions. For example, Crawford and Hughes recalled, Arden would break up collections donated by a family or an individual, filing individual papers in various subject folders.  So, for example, if a paper in a collection donated by this or that family discussed the Kumeyaay, it would go into the Kumeyaay folder, and if another paper discussed the Old Town court house, that likewise would be filed by subject. Hughes and Crawford both subscribe to the theory that family collections should be kept intact. On the other hand, filing such papers by subject may make it easier for specialized researchers such as Carrico to quickly find what they need.

Arden’s former assistants also noted that she was protective of the San Diego Historical Society’s archives, and would use a rubber stamp that said this or that document or photograph was the society’s property.  While this practice could potentially mar the face of documents, it also can help prevent theft, which is a problem at any archive.  Clearly in both cases, there are good arguments on both sides.  In any profession, practitioners are likely to differ on methods and procedures.

On one subject about which there was no argument — in fact, Hughes, Crawford and Carrico are unanimous about this — is that Arden deserves high praise for her positive role in the development of the historical society’s archives, particularly its oral history collection.

Another important contribution Arden made to the history of San Diego County was the annotation of a diary of a young Jewish girl, Victoria Jacobs, who lived in the 1850s in what today is known as Old Town San Diego  before marrying Maurice Franklin and moving to San Bernardino, where she died in childbirth.  Jacobs’ diary, without annotations, would not have provided a casual reader with so nearly as rich a picture of early San Diego as it did after Arden added footnotes that identified the people and places to which Jacobs casually referred.

The annotated diary was published by Jewish historian Norton Stern, and won high praise from Professor Abraham Nasatir, the historian for whom one of the buildings at San Diego State University is named.

Approximately in 2007, Arden moved from her home in Mission Hills to a senior residence in La Jolla.  The residence lacked facilities to care for her after she developed symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, so Dan and his wife Ann arranged for her relocation to another facility near their home in Studio City.  While her memory loss increased over the years, said Dan, her sociability did not wane until the final few months before her death at age 92 on July 6, 2014.  “She would say ‘Now, how do I know you?’ and I would say, ‘You’re my mom; I’m your son!’ and she would smile and say ‘You are!’ and then a few moments she would say, ‘Now, who are you?’  The great thing was that every time that I would tell her that I was her son, she would be happy.”

Having been divorced from her husband Ralph, who predeceased her and is buried in San Diego, Sylvia Arden chose to be cremated with her ashes to be buried in Whittier, where Dan and Ann have reserved space for themselves.

*
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com