The Crimson Arrow

 

Just a house by a yucca tree,

and stretching away the desert waste;

Just a place to dream and be one with God,

And never a moment of haste.

 

Just the rocks and the sand ‘neath a sky of blue

And sometimes a passing cloud,

The bark of a fox or the song of a bird

But never a sound too loud.

 

`the shadows that spread like a purple mask,

or the sky all aflame like a rose;

Then the rest and the peace of a desert night

No one but a desert rat knows.

 

Just a home by a yucca tree,

And three pals who will welcome you there—

The Mockingbird, Artist and Chief,

And their desert so wondrous and fair.

 

– H. Arden Edwards

(1884-1953)

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An Ethnographic Pageant at Piute Butte

 

The Crimson Arrow is the title of a pageant created by H. Arden Edwards, founder of the Antelope Valley Indian Museum at Piute Butte in Lancaster California. Edwards and his wife had homesteaded 160 acres of land there beginning in 1928 and after it rather quickly failed as a farming enterprise he decided to create a museum at their home on the butte, one that woulattract the interest and the nickels of passing traveller’s.

Edward’s hand built house, Yato Kya, was an eccentric and extraordinary piece of vernacular architecture set against a dramatic butte in the northern Antelope Valley, the westernmost extension of the Mojave desert near Los Angeles California.  It still stands, more than 90 years later, a tribute to Edward’s ingenuity in using found materials including river cobbles, downed Joshua trees, plywood and recycled setboard from LA theatre productions.

Adjacent to the house is a natural amphitheatre  at a cove in the butte, that enjoys good acoustical propoerties which Edwards augmented to create a setting for outdoor entertainments.

The butte itself is of archaeological interest and the top of the Butte was evidently much in use in prehistoric times as attested by the examples of rock art reported there.

Edwards first staged the pageant in 1932, in imitation of the Ramona Pageant, further to the south, which had started nine years earlier. That pageant was based on a crusading novel by Helen Hunt Jackson. She wrote her novel in the form of a romance, but with the underlying intention of exposing the poor treatment of surviving Indian peoples in California. She also did more conventional reportage on the subject, but it was the novel that seized the public imagination and carried the message most effectively in the end. It is often said that the service performed for the antislavery movement in the US by Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was paralleled for Native Americans by Ramona.

Possibly an  exaggeration in some ways but it did provide a clear model for how to provoke more public discussion through literature and obviously influenced a number of people, including Edwards. The Ramona pageant was staged in the little town Hemet at the foot of Mt. San Jacinto beginning in 1923.

Edward’s pageant  was designed to imitate its’ success, but went through several name changes (The Flaming Arrow, The Medicine Man, The Crimson Arrow)  over the years. However the script apparently remained virtually identical from year to year.[1]

With students, relatives, local friends and Hollywood contacts, such as the young actor Robert Preston assisting,  the cast list was long.[2] Edwards also invited musicians from LA and acquaintances from the Southwestern Indian tribes of Arizona to participate.

Who Was Edwards?

Howard Arden Edwards was born in 1884 in Indiana. He was self educated, left school at the age of about 10 and worked as a roustabout, clown, daredevil sideshow roller skater and theatrical scene painter. By 1910 he was living in Lancaster California, a small agricultural boomtown at the western end of Antelope Valley.

Lancaster itself was created by the coming of the railroads in the 19^th century and had a strategic location as the railhead for an area that was considered to have agricultural promise with the provision of irrigation, By 1910 it was a hopeful little place with a dusty main street and a growing population, fast becoming a market town for local farms and ranches, having some promising mining activity nearby. Edwards met and married Rose Brewer a professional whistler, the sister of a friend met in Lancaster. At that time, in 1913 they seem to have lived with in-laws in Lancaster. Edwards began to paint more seriously and was interested in becoming an art teacher now that he had a family to support.

With no formal qualifications it was hard to get a job teaching so he completed a high school diploma as a condition of getting a teaching job and completed a teaching certificate in 1926. Somewhere along the way in his travels he had become interested in American  Indians – especially from Southwestern tribes and he also seems to have joined in the popular pastime of picking up artefacts found in the vicinity of abandoned villages around Antelope Valley and the nearby mountains where small communities of people from several local tribes still remained.

Edwards  visited the surviving Indian settlements of local tribes as well as gradually become involved in relic hunting, and later more formal archaeology in the area and around the southwest and the California coast. We don’t have much information on the early development of his Indian interests but along the way they turned more serious, and he apparently began to began to integrate them into his teaching or art, looking at design motifs for instance as well as his collection interests.

There were all sorts of interesting things going on around Lancaster at that time,  for instance an early socialist group tried to start a large utopian community at Llano del Rio nearby in 1914. It failed after a few years because of water problems and the previously under-appreciated local earthquake zone, The Llano colonists moved on to Louisiana and rebuilt, but a few years later Aldous Huxley and his wife took over one of the old houses and spent some happy years there writing, bringing in many surprising literary and artistic visitors, some of whom became attached to the area.

There were Chautauquas being held, lots of new homes being built, plans and dreams being made. Aqueducts and other water diversion works were under construction and crews were rapidly building roads that brought Los Angeles closer and made travel to the coast or north towards San Francisco easier.

The agricultural and grazing activities however, were already beginning to have some serious environmental consequences that would soon see further farming growth in Antelope Valley slowed down.

So the Kitanemuk Vanyume and Tataviam, local Indian tribes, were not the only people to see some attraction to this difficult territory, but they saw it very differently and were much reduced by epidemics and persecution as well. They had largely withdrawn from foraging use of the Valley as the hunting and native plants were reduced and fencing, farming and incoming population increased. By the first World War most of the remaining families  were working for local farmers and ranchers or lived in small independent settlements in relatively remote areas away from the ranching and agricultural activity of the valley floor.

In 1928 Edwards filed two claims for homestead land totalling 160 acres near Lancaster, and made a plan to settle there at Piute Butte. He would be leaving his wife Rose and son Arden Jr. there while he commuted back and forth the slow 100 miles to downtown Los Angeles where he taught part time in a high school and in adult evening classes.

It was only just over a year later that the great stock market crash of October 1929 heralded the beginning of the Great Depression.

The Edwards family like many others found things difficult and money was tight. Plans to consolidate the building work and farm at Piute Butte became difficult. The land was not suitable for intensive farming without extensive irrigation as it turned out. There was little money to complete the building projects. The Edwards had to give up 10 acres of their claim because of farming failures but were allowed to prove the remainder of the homestead claim despite the problems of making it work under the normal rules.

Edwards developed the idea of creating a museum which might generate a little money and make use of his collection of Indian artefacts and in fact most of the building started which started as a house soon became a museum with the family sort of camped out inconspicuously on the premises.

Arden was trying to write a novel, and decided to set up his museum to illustrate the prehistoric epic told of in his novel. He was able to do research locally, and to take advantage of lectures and library at the Southwest museum in Pasadena. Helen Hunt Jackson and her novel were clearly an influence, but Edwards seemed more interested in  the glamor of prehistory than in the troubled story of local Indians in recent years, or at least so I originally though before looking carefully at the text of his pageant.

He used the ideas he was developing in the novel and at the museum as the basis for the pageant too. He may have had hopes that a movie script would follow.

The novel

What the imaginative Edwards created in his museum was an eccentric synthesis of what interested him in Indian cultures from a broad geographical area. This was filtered through his own partial understanding of his collection and standard forms of mis-information in wide circulation at the time. He installed extensive collections of minor artefacts against a theatrical, artistic and highly idiosyncratic backdrop, and he used the resultant galleries as a base for expansive entertaining of his wide circle of acquaintance. In this he was not alone and there are other examples of intact collections or structures created by similar amateur collectors in California and the Southwest, but few are as extensive or combine such exuberant  vernacular architecture with such idiosyncratic curation.

The museum today becomes of particular interest for a number of reasons including its role as exemplar of a particular style of vernacular museum, its role as an example of creative homesteading and the occupational background as itinerant artist and set painter that Edwards had. But it is also of great interest for its preservation of several key periods in philosophies of curation and display design, which themselves reflect the changes which have occurred in how we talk about the area and the people who have inhabited it over the centuries.

It was not long after first homesteading at Piute Butte that Edwards met a kindred spirit- Herbert Steever Lester, the so called “Legendary King of San Miguel” another man of wide talents and unusual perspectives who had taken refuge from the world in an isolated corner of California during the Depression. Both Lester and Edwards subsequently began to offer occasional public lectures at local museums and started an extended correspondence and visits back and forth between their “kingdoms”. For decades we knew  of Edwards novel  only through his discussions of it in correspondence with Lester, for the manuscript was missing and the book was never published, but the manuscript was rediscovered in _____.

But the ideas borrowed for the pageant were successful and popular enough in their day to attract much public attention and interest to the museum, and to give it financial support through 5 crucial years while it was finished.

The museum and pageant and their depiction of local Indians, romanticized and imaginative and stereotyped as it was, began to change and define public perception of Native Americans in the area and increased interest in aspects of their cultures. The public may have been more aware of activities and presentations like the string of pageants being presented around southern California and the development of museums than they were of the actual Indian peoples themselves who were sometimes discussed dismissively in the press as virtually extinct or  viewed as  now degraded somewhat  from a more interesting pre-historic state. Views which were in fact plain wrong of course. Local Native American people were not extinct, and were doing their best to adapt to the rapidly changing  Southern California under difficult conditions. They had lost their land, had been discriminated against and legislated against and treated badly by many of the incomers. Communities and families had been moved or dispersed and Indian identity and traditional knowledge  often became private family matters not shared outside the community.

In fact the  developing literary and artistic  rendering that made vivid pictures of a vanished and largely mythical past dominated public thinking to such an extent that reality was ignored, and fantasy welcomed. This was and is not unusual, but the extent to which this was rapidly occurring in the southern California and southwest of 1929- 1939 was quite extraordinary. Edwards was not alone. Within a 150 mile radius there were a number of enthusiasts armed with passion, imagination and misinformation who were claiming and gaining the  power to control images, artefacts,  public sentiment and social welfare programs aimed at the remnants of Southern California’s indigenous peoples.

I have researched the lives and activities of several of these men, Harry James, Arden Edwards and to a lesser extent Cabot Yerxa. Others such as Ralph Glidden, archaeologist and curator of the Catalina museum, and Charles Fletcher Lummis have been extensively studies by others. Some, such as the socialite yachtsman, and pothunter Art Sanger remain to be adequately researched.

So Back at the Rancheria….

Antelope Valley was traditionally  the hunting territory of the Kitanemuk, a Shoshonean language speaking people who were probably never more than a couple of thousand strong – an offshoot of the “Serrano” peoples who occupied the mountains to the south of Antelope Valley. The Kitanemuk and Serrano people were western Mojave relations of the Great Basin Paiute, and it is in recognition of this connection or through uncertain tribal nomenclature that the land Edwards homesteaded was known as Piute Butte. The Kitanemuk in the prehistoric period were probably fairly late arrivals into the area where trade links through to the southwest had long been strong. Several important archaeological sites near Piute Butte attest to a long history of sophisticated and extensive trade, and in fact the ancestors of the Kitanemuk may have first come in as merchants, but once they settled in the area they seem not to have been interested in being travelling traders themselves- leaving the brokering role to the Mojave. The Kitanemuk lived primarily as hunter gatherers, perhaps supplementing this with cattle and sheep rustling from the Spanish after 1600 or so with some limited agricultural activity. Never numerous, they lived in scattered settlements, usually near creeks or springs and therefore mostly in the canyons leading into the mountains that surround Antelope Valley.

Overgrazing by American domesticated stock and early water diversion projects such as the dams in the San Bernadino mountains rapidly changed the grasslands and hunting grounds of Antelope Valley and by the end of the 19^th century the land was no longer  much good for hunting more than jackrabbits, and the native grasses and plants had already been largely driven out by the plow and  invasive European annual grasses and plants some of which became a tremendous pest and virtually in-eradicable in local conditions.

In 1914-17 the anthropologist J.P. Harrington worked in the area, taking photographs and doing linguistic work, visiting a number of the refuge villages where remaining Kitanemuk lived together with Chumash, Yokuts, Tataviam, Vanyume and others. He was so disturbed by the conditions he found that he wrote letters to officials trying to draw more attention to problems and improve the situation. Unfortunately Harrington’s letters seem to have had little effect and what interventions were developed on behalf of remaining Indian communities seem to have been concentrated elsewhere.

By then the original mode of subsistence of local tribes had been long and deeply disturbed for 3-6 generations and refugee camps may be a useful way of thinking about the lifestyle, prospects and plight of some of the remaining families. Some Kitanemuk however had taken jobs on local ranches and farms when they could and increasingly blended in to the local Hispanic workforce through intermarriage and or cover of their Indian identity in some cases since this often led to particular persecution in the past.

Despite this situation a collective identity remained and in fact the tribe has recently developed a more public identity again, working to increase knowledge of and pride in their traditions, to protect the land they once owned, to re-establish their sense of community and draw in lost families and protect their rights.

They now work with the docents and director of the AVIM to create educational programmes and the museum and grounds provide a focal point for a people who were long ago lost their tribal land.

How did the Museum shift from Edwards views to current position?

In 1939 the Edwards family gave up on their dreams for Piute Butte. Rose Edwards had come to dislike the isolated property and preferred to live at their home in Eagle Rock near Pasadena. Arden Jr. agreed. Despite his love of the desert Arden Sr. was drawn to the social life and financial opportunities that came with being in town more, and in fact he had many commissions at that time, was working at the Southwest Museum, doing set designs for theatres and movies etc.

Edwards continued to both influence and be influenced by the extraordinary circle of people active in intellectual and artistic circles in Pasadena at that time, and his influence as surely as that of Lummis shapes the ethos of the Southwest Museum , as well as the LACMNH where the emeritus curator Charles Rozaire still remembers having a chance to work alongside Arden Edwards at AVIM for a while as a young man.

Howard Arden Edwards finally  found the  buyer he sought  for the museum in a wealthy divorcee named Grace Wilcox Oliver, who had at least  some training in anthropology and seemed prepared to make the museum and its’ collections her mission. She continued to increase the collections and made improvements, and actually hired Edwards back as an employee of the museum for a short while before his death. However  Mrs. Oliver eventually sold out herself, and  from ________, for a few years Piute Butte became a dude ranch.

Eventually Grace Oliver’s adopted daughter Bebe began a campaign to preserve the rapidly deteriorating structures and collections through her membership in the American Association of University Women. The AAUW actually approached the State of California about taking over the museum. The State eventually agreed and AVIM eventually  became part of the State Park system, serving both as a State Historical Park in its own right, and as the centre for the State’s Great Basin collections.

Conclusion

With imagination, some old set board from theatres and movie studios and the artistic talents of a number of his art students, under Arden’ Edwards direction structures made of native stone, Joshua tree timbers and found materials were built into one face of Piute butte. Nearby a natural amphitheatre at the base of the Butte lent itself to the dreams of  the theatrically minded Edwards  who soon had plans to create a setting for a pageant- an open air play which would tell the story of the native people indigenous to Antelope Valley as he saw it. Today these features remain, being preserved and presented by the state as examples of California vernacular.

The popularity of these pageants  subsided, and  now, although they are well remembered by many older Californians, only a few examples remain in production. Most significantly the annual Ramona Pageant at Hemet.

Edwards pageant has never been performed since 1935, and yet… strip away some of the excesses in the play and look carefully at what he included. The language was dated and sentimental even at the time but a careful reading reveals his research and the number of ideas he was trying to incorporate into his little romance about the People of the Antelope. The intention was didactic. He hoped to teach as well as to entertain the public.  It succeeded in Edwards terms. The pageant  raised the money to develop a museum, which made a serious attempt to engage its audience.  Year later, through the revived museum, and the meta-curation developed there over the years by Edra Moore and her successor Peggy Ronning, a thoughtful engagement with preresentation and interpretation  of the landscape, the site and the collections continues today.

Edwards wrote his scripts in longhand, and did the casting and direction himself. People came from all over southern California to see the dramatic pageant under the stars lit by campfires and lanterns. The audience brought tents, and blankets, enjoying a picnic in the moonlight, the play and camping in the still desert before returning to “civilization” the following day.

The Crimson Arrow ran until 1935, with a cast of more than 100.

The 75 cent admission charge raised a good deal of money by the standards of the time and the play raised support and helped effect a sea change occurring in attitudes towards Indians.

The themes of the play The Crimson Arrow raise many of the same issues around contested landscapes and cross-cultural stereotyping that are hotly discussed today . It also imbeds  attention to different ways of knowing and being  that reflects the work of early anthropologists in the area.  The location of the pageant at Piute Butte is poignantly close to the contested territories of the Pleito cave region, a landscape now further contested by oil companies, the military, ranching interests and real estate developers dreaming of the further growth of Los Angeles- no longer 100 miles away and rapidly overtaking the valley which is planned to be the future location of a new International Airport for LA. The Kitanemuk are still there contesting too and their voices are getting louder and more confident now.

In doing a public  reading from this play in 2003, we ended where we began,  gazing out at the view from Piute Butte, but  with a greater understanding of the view.

Think back on your reading of Ramona, the research you did into individual tribes, the arguments explored by Krech and the articulate critiques of Ward Churchill, Vine Deloria and other Native American writers. The detailed knowledge of land and a way of life shared by Delfina Cuero. Using these sources we can try to make sense of Edwards efforts and their effect on his audience as he tries to share a sense of the history of the local landscape and its people.

Edwards described his work as “modernistic in a conservative way”, and so it was.

Circumstance and  The Crimson Arrow

Arden Edwards wrote this play originally in about 1931 as a dramatization of an episode from a novel he was working on. His novel was an epic about prehistoric California Indian life, and its chief protagonists were a young pair of lovers. In the novel he hoped to share his knowledge and love of Indian lore, using it as the background to a romance which would interest readers in prehistory.[3]

In the museum Edwards use this same narrative device to structure some of the displays in the hoping to catch people’s attention by giving an exciting context to some otherwise somewhat inscrutable artefacts, some of which were probably taken from San Miguel Island sites.

Arden Edwards did not just suddenly develop the concept of this play in a vacuum. He was writing in a particular place in a particular time and many aspects of the play make more sense if you understand something about the background context of its appearance. One aspect of this is the personal story of Arden and his wife Rose, which has been discussed above, but the other necessary contextual information is about Antelope Valley, its aboriginal inhabitants, Lancaster itself and its historical development, things that were going on generally in California and nationally at that time, the traditions of vernacular performance in small town America and how these intersected with the rapidly developing professionalization of American performative genres and finally, more about the audience for a play like this. Who were Edwards friends? What kind of social network did he have? Who were ads for this play aimed at?

Local Indians in Antelope Valley and area 1900- 1940

Lancaster California

Regional and National Events

Rodeos, Pageants and Chautauquas

In the days before television and radio, families and communities created their own entertainments. We still do this today too of course, but it is easy to lose sight of the size and scale of some of the things once commonly organized. Some of these activities have become professionalized and are now the domain of specialist producers. To give a few examples that are relevant to understanding activities at Piute Butte let’s consider Rodeos, Pageants and Chautauquas.

The Rodeo that we know today developed out of the informal practice of holding competitions amongst ranch hands in what were actually everyday occupational skills for many in the period from the end of the Civil War up until WWI at least. But with the advent of the performed pageant of Wild West life, such as the famous Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which toured from the local rodeo began to take on more formal performance characteristics and a tradition of substantial audiences began to develop. Rodeos became public events.[4] Eventually many were professionally managed and advertised regional events with substantial cash prizes and today there is a professional rodeo riders circuit and big money to be made by young guys with the fortitude and loe of risk to enter the circuit for a few years.

The Chautauqua movement was another post Civil War formalization of older and smaller scale local performances. A Chautauqua was an educational and uplifting program of edifying public lectures, dramatic performances and music which usually took place over several days in a temporary structure such as a big top tent. Often held during the summer, the Chautauqua brought a glimpse of high culture and urban entertainments to small town America. The name is taken from Lake Chautauqua in upstate New York where an annual summer educational institute developed in the 19^thC. The idea spread, and while many town committees produced their own Chautauquas, bringing in a mix of speakers, artists, musicians and other entertainers, eventually several organized professional Chautauqua circuits developed, each with their own offices and list of available performers and certain characteristic types of entertainment developed.[5]

Finally, what about Pageants? Hugely popular as community productions for many years- these were a form of elaborate amateur theatrical, sometimes with a cast of hundreds. A play was at the heart of the pageant, but was probably supplemented by substantial interludes of dance, musical performance or other attractions. Some pageants included highly developed parades A few proved so popular that they continue to this days and there are a number of California examples, some of which vanished after a season or two, and others of which ran for many years

Glendale,

Ramona

Laguna

Tournament of Roses

Lummis Mission pageants

[6]

Pageants usually had uplifting and didactic aims like Chautauquas, but they were often very specific and locally centered to tell the history of a particular location. While a professional pageant master might be hired, the cast was generally local and mostly amateur.

In booming California, with its focus on attracting new residents and creating a sense of community very rapidly, the pageant became a particularly useful device that could attract substantial civic support under the right circumstances because it  created a romantic public history for a locale in its’ cultural interpretations, and had the ability to convert bitter local feuds and conflicts into the stuff of drama. It is interesting that many pageants had themes to do with the interpretation of the contribution of local Native American cultures to a particular locale. Sometimes these were relatively well researched, and other times the pageants was really concerned only to present Indians in generalized or stereotypical terms as a category of civic threat which had now been successfully resolved. The more complex portrayals were often inspired in part by Jackson’s crusading yet highly romantic novel .

Edwards play The Crimson Arrow was an open-air pageant play on the Ramona model. He too chose to use a highly dramatic and romantic story, which focussed on the contact period between local tribes and white ranchers, although his is set earlier when the threat of incomers is more vague. The Crimson Arrow, like Ramona was a local entertainment which reflected on changing attitudes to Indians in a serious way and even more than Ramona, The Crimson Arrow, being tied to an adjacent museum had an opportunity to develop the message further.

The Sacred in the Crimson Arrow

One element of this play which is worth thinking about is the view of impending fate and the exploration of indigenous religious ideas as the basis of a response to overtaking historical events that it portrays. This is Edwards attempt to develop what anthropologists would term an “emic” perspective. [7]

Reading the play carefully, and stripping away some of the conventionalized dramatic language associated with the theatrical depiction of Indians, it become apparent that Edwards had a better informed and more thoughtful view of local Indian cultures than might at first appear to be the case, and furthermore he seems to be making a portrait of a people under particular stress, ripe for the importation of millenarian movements such as the Ghost Dance, which was developed by related Paiute groups in the Great Basin, and which did in fact spread into California in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Edward’s oblique reference to the important of dreaming as a source of guiding visions, his charismatic shaman, Riding Thunder with his reading of signs, clairvoyance and oracular pronouncements would not only be very much to the taste of an audience themselves experiencing the depression and all its uncertainties, but also was a serious ethnographic meditation on the local Indian people whom he seems to have known more about, and had a more serious interest in than sometimes seems to be the case given the peculiar arrangements of his museum displays by modern standards and  his highly romantic style.

The Inventiveness of Hollywood

Who was in the Audience?

Setting

The play was designed for the specific natural and dramatic setting of the little outdoor Amphitheatre of the Standing Rocks adjacent to the museum. It was an open air production and was performed in the evening to heighten potential lighting effects, making use of portable spot lighting, flame lit lanterns and open campfires around the base of the Butte.

There is evidence that Edward’s hoped that a movie might eventually result from the novel and play.

Set, Props and Costumes

The set was largely natural, with the addition of a few pueblo ladders made of roughly trimmed branches here and there up on the rock face of the butte, and the recreation of a village in roughly local style of the previous century which stood at the foot of the bluffs very close to where the audience would have been seated. There were small thatched huts or jacales, and the huge basketry granariesraised on wooden platforms which were characteristic of some California Indian settlements.

The village though a composite representation was intended to be roughly ethnographically accurate, and it was peopled with a background cast who went about their daily lives demonstrating typical activities such as winnowing, basket making, bead production, cooking tanning hides etc. Children enacted some typical games known from the research of anthropologists with surviving Indian communities. A “ground painting” characteristic of Shoshonean peoples was created during one part of the play. Actor’s costumes were what we would now consider typically early Hollywood Indian, owing more to Plains and Eastern Woodlands influences than to the local fashions. War bonnets, fringed buckskins, doeskin “squaw” dresses and a little face paint were more intended to be clear signallers of “Indianness” than serious attempts to be authentic to local custom on this front. The fact the original inhabitants of Antelope Valley typically wore very little may have decided Edwards to allow himself artistic license on costume.

It is interesting to see Edwards’ handwritten notes on the props- we realize that he used the museum as a source- apparently kitting out key members of the cast with specimens for demonstration purposes. He was interested in the manufacture of artefacts, and the museum to this day contains some dubious specimens, which could be interpreted as forgeries, but might equally have been an attempt to create copies for the pageant’s use. It is easy to see how these replicas could have crept into the collections in the end given the museum’s history.

–        two bundles of wood for old squaws

–        tortoiseshell at spring

–        several spears at Red Eagle’s jacale

–        Pendant making material for Kama

–        Feather hoop for children

–        Very crooked stick for Moon Woman

–        Burden basket

–        Grain for grinding on metate

–        Water jar for young squaw

–        Hide on log and scraper for Tanner of Hides

 

 

Incorporation of ethnographic background

Because this play was meant to teach and develop support for and interest in the museum, much ethnographic detail was incorporated[8]. Edwards wove in his knowledge of the importance of dreaming, aspects of mythology and folklore characteristic of tribes in the area and other cultural elements, which were hinted at. The band depicted is really a composite, and intended to explore reactions to the coming of Spanish and Anglo settlers into Antelope Valley and the disturbance of inter tribal relations more than to be precisely about the Kitanemuk and their predecessors as far as we can see now.

Despite Edward’s sympathetic view, he does not appear to have ever involved or invited local Indian families to participate as far as we can tell.. He seems to have been more focused on local Indian life of the past than in dealing with the dispersed and partially acculturated families of his own day He did have an interest in the contemporary Indian peoples of the southwest and he asked some Hopi tribal members known to him to participate in his pageant, which several did over the years according to pageant notes.

The only overt reference to Southwestern tribes in the play is actually to the Apache, who attack the village in the last act, This is historically and geographically an improbable occurrence, but very dramatic to the audience for whom the Apache would have been a by- word for fierce and aggressive warriors since the actions of the Apache Wars in the 19^th century were already legendary at the time.

The device of the Apache attack is also interesting in terms of the play’s message, because we start out feeling that the threat to the People of the Antelope is largely from Anglos, and then any guilt or uneasiness the audience may feel over this is neatly diffused as the villagers are threatened by Apache, another Indian group and described by Edwards as “savages” (a term you might note he does not use for local tribes) in the last scene.

The Pageant and the California Vernacular

The play needs to be understood in the general context of changing attitudes to and interest in California and Southwestern Indians during the period when it was performed for a full appreciation of its aims and audience. (see Brewer 2001, Brewer 2002)). This admiration of and interest in selected Southwestern tribes and ignoring of local Indian people may seem curious, but it was a common phenomenon at the time – almost a fad really for all things Southwestern, and curiously it is still the case. The distinctive architecture and dress of the Southwestern tribes- especially the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo peoples, and their continued public performance of traditional rituals means that for many they were coming to represent an idealized version of Indian culture even though it was not the type indigenous to California. These complex developments of the positioning of Indians in the American popular imagination are clearly present in a subdued form in Edward’s play, and more clearly still in the peculiar vernacular of his museum buildings with their uneasy combination of “tudorbethan”, Swiss, Hopi, Navajo and California design elements.[9]

The Audience

In the 1930’s there was a considerable audience for plays of this type, and Edwards was very well connected to the networks, which would bring him this audience. As a teacher with a wide network amongst theatrical and film communities, the artistic community of Arroyo Seco the writers, environmentalists and amateur anthropologists of Pasadena and Altadena as well as the fairly diverse Antelope Valley community, even if he had not advertised Edwards would have had an audience, and one which was discriminating about his theatrical presentation as well as about the meaning of allusions and minor details of the story and the ethnographic background to the story.

Music

In the original production music was carefully used to create atmosphere and suggest a romantic and elegiac mood. The music used was a combination of Indian flutes and drums, popular songs from the movies and orchestral pieces. The flute music and drumming details are not clearly specified, but we know that Gruen’s orchestral piece “The Mesa” was performed by a small string section probably including violins and cellos, that the popular  hit “The Indian Love Song” which includes a duet was sung as integral to the action. Another well known piece “From the Land of Sky Blue Waters” was played. There are indications that there may have been other songs incorporated but no details are available. Rose Brewer’s talents as a former professional whistler seem to have been called on conspicuously in the script.

Opening of the Play

So, moving to the play itself- the audience have now taken their seats on blankets and cushions around the perimeter of the amphitheatre, where there is an apparently recently  abandoned Indian village right in front of them. Indian flute music floats over the desert around Piute Butte where the last rays of the sun make the rocks a dramatic red. The flutes fade. Lights direct our attention to the amphitheatre floor where we are introduced to a “Piute” camp inhabited by “the People of the Antelope[10] The audience watches as the village suddenly comes to life – older women are gathering wood, a hunter is returning, a craftsman is making a pendant, children are playing games, a woman is carrying a burden basket, a man is working on the preparation of an animal hide with a stone scraper. This scene demonstrates the use of many of the tools and items now found out of their original context in the cases of the museum next door and we the audience can be expected to recognise some of them.

Arden Edwards himself has appeared, dressed as a cowboy to explain what is about to take place. Unfortunately he has not left us a text for his remarks, but  he apparently delivered a spontaneous short talk.

The play really begins as it gets dark, and the actors light the campfires in the amphitheatre to illuminate the action. lit by floodlights which would have the effect of making the village we had just been watching fade into the background a little as he spoke and then be highlighted again when he finished. He exits, and Blackhawk, an Indian man of unspecified tribe would come on stage to say an “Indian Prayer” The opening of the play would be signalled by the shooting off of a firework (a small rocket) by Edward’s nephew Donald Brewer. It appears to be a flaming arrow falling on the village- clearly a sign from the gods, and as the flame flare out we hear the cry of a Great Horned Owl ( a sign of impending death) echoing around the cliffs .[11]

In Episode 1- which was actually called A Sign from the Gods, the key motifs of the play are made evident. A romantic story of two young lovers is juxtaposed with one about growing threats felt from a sudden reduction in game and from the hostilities of various “warriors from the east”. Riding Thunder an older man, a shaman and a responsible leader is concerned about the future and aware of ominous signs and portents of doom which he is working to interpret. His young and pretty daughter Nee- wa- ta is oblivious and at first seems only interested in romance. Riding Thunder discusses his dreams with her, trying to make her take the problems coming seriously and  he makes reference to figures from Mojave mythology. He is a head man concerned to bring his people safely through the coming events. Nee –wa –ta is introduced to us through her romantic song. She is silhouetted against the sky singing “The Indian Love Song”. Riding Thunder again tries to get his daughter to see the signs of danger around them,

As in a Shakespearean play this act is followed by a comic episode offering light relief and a view of everyday life, but even here there are underlying indications of trouble in the bantering dialogue. The people are hungry, game has been driven away and no one has eaten meat for a long time. They have been wandering in a desperate search for food, their moccasins are wearing out and they have little hide to make new ones. Real tension become apparent and we catch the edge of family quarrels. Despite that there are flirtations and jokes around the village as they wait for people to return from hunting and gathering hoping for some food. People are anxiously noting that Riding Thunder is working on a new medicine pouch, The Anglo incomers and hostile tribes are referred to as “Wolves who Walk on Two Legs” and contrasted to our “People of the Antelope”, who are depicted as peace loving. The happy mood is broken as people discuss these things.

The scene which follows is an extract from Act I and II.

 

Cast for Reading

Tanner of Hides                   always busy with his work in the background- acts almost as a commentator within the play

Kama                                     character adopted from the novel Edwards had recently finished, Kama is a major character in the play as a whole providing the male romantic lead

Slim Fox                                young warrior involved still proving himself

Yellow Reed                         melodramatic villain of the village, ignoring events and an eye on the girls- none of whom return his interest.

Teko                                       village man

Red Eagle                             Chief of the band

Cheepa                                  pretty young girl, sister of heroine

Riding Thunder                    Leader, shaman a very troubled man who is watching events and incomers to the area carefully, hoping to help protect the band

Chula                                      villager

Maka                                      half mad but prophetic old wise woman

Nee-wa-ta                            Female romantic lead

Morning Hawk                      Hero

Messenger

Na-wa-nee                           villager

Act II

Tanner of Hides:             Hunters are heard coming in to the village,

wind machines used. Soft violin, low Tom Toms. Yellow Reed comes in wiping his hands on some grass which he throws in the fire.

 

 

Hunters come in on a trot from the desert,  form a half circle in front of Red Eagle’s house. Each one drops to one knee and plants his game markers in front of him.

Slim Fox enters last, takes ash from fire in his hand and sifts slowly over feathered prayer wands at shrines. No one moves or speaks until he kneels in front of the chief.

 

.

 

Kama                             “So! The young men find no antelope: Their moccasins are not soft enough to hide the tread of their heavy feet. When I was a young man we caught the running antelope with our bare hands. Our footfalls were as light as the soft down of the cottonwoods fall to the earth”

                                                The hunters murmer and whisper to one another as Kama is talking.

Slim Fox                                (standing up) “More like you slept (emphasize this word) beneath a cottonwood tree and had a dream.” (hunters laugh a bit at this sally, but ease abruptly as Kama speaks again)

Kama:                                    “Aye, I had a dream all right: I dreamed that the young men of my tribe would, one day lose their cunning and that Queepa the Rabbit would sit on the sand and mock at them, for they could not throw their spears far enough or straight enough. We will yet be diggers of roots, or eater of fish like the people who live beside the big waters.”

Yellow Reed                         (crowding forward and speaking arrogantly) “Where there are men, there is no hunger.” (the hunters murmer and show signs of anger)

Teko                                       (To Red Eagle) “Father we have hunted from the Big Rock Creek, to the Canyon of the Red Rocks, and there has not even been a rabbit to mock at us.”

Red Eagle                             (to Slim Fox) “I can find no blame in my heart for you Slim Fox. Thou art the son of my old friend, White Owl; and ever since our own hunter chief was slain, thou hast led our hunters as if thou wert one of our own men. There is no better man at finding game then thyself, so again there is no blame upon thee.”

                                                Slim Fox pulls a squirrel or rabbit from his hunting pouch and holds it out to Cheepa, who has come near to him.

 Slim Fox                               “There is no game- but one rabbit did I get, and as is my right as a hunter I give it to thy youngest daughter.” (hands it to Cheepa, who takes it, and runs towards Kama, holding it up to for everyone to see.)

Cheepa                                  “See what a hunter brings — a man does not come empty handed.” (Here Yellow Reed laughs loudly and Cheepa turns to Kama) “Now do I get the green pendant thou was’t making yesterday?”

Kama                                     “Why should you have the pendant, saucy one?”

Cheepa                                  “Remember your promise; that when I had a man to hunt for me, the pendant would be mine.”

Yellow Reed                         (Reaching over and rudely jerking the rabbit from Cheepa) “Ha! Where is this man you speak of. I see no men near here— and this animal is long since dead- in fact it looks like one I killed and threw away four moons ago, (Some laugh at this but most show anger)

 

Slim Fox                        (stepping close to Yellow Reed as though to strike him) “You dare, you.” (He is cut short by Red Eagle who forces them apart)

Red Eagle                             (loudly) “Stay thy temper until a better time.” (To Yellow Reed) Thou hast said this rabbit was killed four moons ago—you said yesterday that you came without stopping from the Red River of the Dawn, so how can this other thing be true?”[12]

Yellow Reed                         It was only a figure of speech, Red Eagle, I just meant that it was an old rabbit, instead of a young one.” (he steps back , openly sneering at anyone who looks his way)

Tanner of Hides                   “Hush! Here comes Riding Thunder!”

                                                (Riding Thunder comes to the front, he is folded in his medicine blanket and is gaxing out over the desert ignoring the others)

 

                                                “Has our Great Father no message for his people?”[13]

Riding Thunder                    “I see a red cloud covering the earth. I hear death songs on the wind.”(turning to Slim Fox) “Where is Leaning Pine?”

Slim Fox                                “I thought he was here with us but now—“

Teko                                       “Maybe he turned aside when we came by the lower buttes, and hasn’t re-joined us yet.”

Slim Fox                                “I had not missed him- I will call for him.” (Gives a long clan hunting call) No answer, but shouting is heard and Chula dashes in from the ravine pointing back and yelling“Evil Ones, Evil Ones!”

                                                A hunter staggers in and falls at the foot of his chief. There is blood streaming from a wound in his back.

 

Riding Thunder                 “The Red Cloud draws closer. Now you will miss Leaning Pine. He is stepping away onto the Shadow Trail. Beware! Or many more will follow him!”

                                                (Slim Fox runs to the fallen man and kneels beside him shaking his head. He rises slowly)

Red Eagle                             “Carry him away and place many stones on his body so the coyotes don’t defile him.”

Maka                                      “Death, Red Death and the Evil Evil Ones. Always s dead men, dead dead, dead, dead—Ha –Ha “ (disappears cackling crazily in the distance)

Cheepa                                  “Oh, I am afraid!” (runs to sister)

Nee-wa-ta                            “Of what? Poor old Maka, she is only thinking of her brave who was also killed- the day they were to marry. Of this other thing it is evil even as she has said.”

Red Eagle                             “It is a bad omen when Maka, who is ancient cries of death.” (turns to Riding Thunder) There is no cloud before your eyes oh wise one! You know the secrets of the winds, you understand what the birds and animals say- can’t you show us how to escape the eveil that threatens us all?”

Riding Thunder                    “There is nothing impossible to those who are unafraid.”

Red Eagle                             Evil days have fallen upon us. I will sharpen my hunting knife. Can everyone gather together some wood?

                                                All depart to gather wood, and a rmantic interlude between Ne wa ta and Morning Hawk (with appropriate musical accompaniment) occurs which we will pass over

________________________________________________

                                                Morning Hawk privately gives Neewata a fresh rabbit he has caught telling her that he is determined she won’t go hungry despite events.

Nee wa tah                           “I will give this rabbit to old Mako. She has no one to hunt for her. Oh Morning Hawk- why do the antelope no longer come to our lands, so that our people can meet together again and not hunt solely in small bands?”

Morning Hawk                      “That I can’t say. I scouted towards the sunrise today- and when I was the length of three shadow sticks beyond the black water springs I saw strange footprints” (He pauses)

Nee wa ta                             “And they were?”

Morning Hawk                      “Apaches!!!!!” (Nee wa ta shrinks closer to him)[14]

 

Nee wa ta                             “Apaches! And so close to us- what mischief do they make now?”

Morning Hawk                      “No one knows. They come and go like shadows in the moonlight. Never before have I found their footprints. There must have been a young and careless warrior among their band. They will not dare come near here, but in the shadow of this same moon, I will go to find them if I can. Until they are driven from our land there will be no more game in Antelope Valley and no safety for our own hunters.”

Nee wa ta                             “Oh Morning Hawk, don’t go after them. It was just today that one of our one hunters was killed!”

Morning Hawk                      “A hunter killed? So close then! Now I really must go—but don’t be afraid White Flower- they are just sneaking coyotes who howl in the night. Am I not the greatedt warrior in all the tribes? See- I carry the great fetish of the Owl clan. It has been triple blessed and Lame Antelope the medicine man scattered sacred pollen over it. As long as I have it with me no harm can come to me, and besides that I have a great secret.” [15]

Nee wa ta                             “What is your secret my warrior?”

Morning Hawk                      “Ha! If I told you it wouldn’t be a secret any more!”

Nee wa ta                             “ Well. I have a secret too, so if I tell you mine- you shoudtell me yours!”

Morning Hawk                      “Hey, little one, keep yours and I will tell you what I have learned that no one else knows. One day when I was out hunting my spear became entangled in the branches of a tree. I pulled it towards me quickly, trying to jerk it loose. Remember that little bucksking tassle that you meade me to hang on my spear? It had caught in the twigs and when I pulled the polished handle of my spear towards me my hand slipped and as the branch swept back it caught the shaft and threw it clear- and suddenly I saw it hurtling through the air half way across the canyon- much further and faster than I could have thrown it myself.  I have made a medecine- a small branch which throws spears. Ths is my secret and now yours. “[16]

Neewe ta                              “What a strange thing you have told me. Your secret will be safe with me. My secret is smaller but also involves great medicine. It is my great love for you!”(throws her arms around him)

Morning Hawk                      “Sometimes I feel as though this is all just a dream, Your eyes are like the night stars and your voice like a bird. In all the world there is no one else like you, not even the Turquoise Woman herself.”

Nee wa tah                           “Hush, she will hear you and become angry.”

Morning Hawk                      “No, Here is a necklace of Turquoise Woman’s. I have made it for you. Fasten it on. Soon the Dawn Maker will be in the East and I must be far from here by then. Stay here and don’t leave (Walks rapidly away)

Nee wa ta                             (Puts on necklace) “This is a link to bind my heart to yours. I know I shouldn’t worry, but fear is stealing across my heart like a winter wind across the desert. Surely you can take care of yourself like any warrior, and our people should feel safer while the Hawk is on the wing!”

                                                Nee wa ta turns towards the jacale of her father, when near the door she turns and says “I will be waiting here when you return.”

                                                A crazy laugh is heard ringing through the camp from Maka’s location.

                                                Three nearly naked savages are seen rising in silhouette from behind the rocks, but they drop back out of sight whn a young boy (the messenger) runs past. He carries a feather wand in his hand and runs to Nee wa ta.

Messenger                            “Quick, where is your father the chief? I have a message for him from White Owl.”

Red Eagle                             “Who calls in the quiet of the moon? This is a time for resting, and I don’t like to have my people troubled in their sleep.”

Nee wa ta                             “It is a message for you, Father.”

Messenger                            (hands his wand to Red Eagle) “This comes from White Owl- he asks you to come quickly!” (runs back the way he came)

Red Eagle                             “This is urgent! I’m going to their camp right now- tell Riding Thunder that I will be back as quick as I can, the gods permitting.” (takes his spear and shield and exits)

 

Cheepa                          (comes to door of jacale) “I heard voices, sister. Have the hunters returned?”

Nee we ta                             “No, It was a messenger for our father.”

Cheepa                                  “I was hoping it would be Slim Fox. I’m worried about him and I just can’t sleep.”

Nee we ta                             “You are moon mad! Go back to your blankets-If you see Riding Thunder before I do, tell him that our father went to the camp of White Owl but should be back soon.”

Cheepa                                  Cheepa goes back into the hut. Nee we ta walks away behind the hut. The three savages slowly rise and steal after her. Ther is a shrill scream, quickly muffled, and then silence. A high thin whistle comes from across the ravine. The wind machine begins to blow.

 

                                    Yelllow Reed appears, crouching low to the earth- when he sees that there is no one around he crosses to Red Eagle’s hut. He disappears between two structures.

 

Na wa nee                             (calls low but excitedly) “Cheepa! Cheepa! Come here quickly.”

Cheepa                                  “Who calls my name?”

Na wa nee                             “ It is Na wa nee. I just came down through the dunes and I heard a scream. I thought it sounded just like Nee we ta’s voice, but I thought she wa with you, slleping rolled up in her mat?”

Cheepa                                  “She isn’t here but she only left a few minutes ago.”

Na wa nee                             “Then it was her voice. Something terrible has happened. All night there have been strange noises and I thought I saw something moving in the rocks back there.”

                                                They call Riding Thunder who comes out and calls everyone to the Council Fire- the flames rise and steady Tom Toms begin to sound.

 

                                    Everyone gathers around Riding Thunder silently as he draws a circle in the sand and takes meal from his pouch sprinking it solemnly east, south west and north, up and down..[17] He then takes a white feather from his pouch and waves it slowly over the mortar sitting in the middle of the circle he has drawn. Green flares up- the people draw back in fear and surprise.

 

Riding Thunder                    “ Our chief is not here, so I won’t wait for the Earth Mother has just given me a dream and I must share it while it is fresh in my mind. In this dream I saw a great cloud and it was as black as the night itself. It was larger than the flocks of geese who fly south in the moon of falling leaves I saw many people running upon the face of the earth. They were fleeing before the cloud. As it came nearer I saw that it was a solid wall of sand, but now it was black no longer It was red like dripping blood, and it was hot like the flame of a fire. One by one the people fell before it, until there were finally only a few left. They came to a great wall of rock and could go no further. Suddenly an opening appeared in the rock and the remaining people dashed in. The opening closed behind them. The cloud passed away. There were no trees, no bushes, no growing things- only hot sand as far as the eye could see.”

Tanner of Hides                   “Was that all oh wise one?”

Riding Thunder                    “No- there was more- a long time seemed to pass by and then I stood again before the great all of Rock and saw the opening slowly appear again. Soon an old man appeared and came forward into the light. He seemed to be blind. He stepped into a deep crack and disappeared from sight. Next came a hunter with his spear and club. He stepped out from the shlter of the rocks and a great lion leaped from the rock and crushed him to the earth. So it went on. One after another came forth from the cave and something happened to each one of them, so they all went upon the spirit trail. A voice said “One was foolish, one cheated, one cheated and one was stingy and kept all the food for himself. They were eveil in their thoughts and so came to an evil end.” I was about to turn away when a fine young warrior and a beautiful maiden dressed in white skins came to the cav’e entrance. The young man saw the crevass and jumped over it, when the lion jumped he caught it on the point of his spear. He called to the maid and they came down across the world together. The blood red cloud swept down on them. The warrior cast his spear at the cloud. It left his hand like a beam of light. There was a terrible groaning and the cloud split in two. The maid and warrior passed through unharmed. The cloud receeded to the edge of the world and there was only the sound of the Thunderbird in the distance. The drea, if a dream it was passed away and I found myself back in my hut again.”

Kama                                     “And the meaning of the dream my father?”

Riding Thunder                    “Until an eagle has been killed in anger I may not say.”

Yellow Reed                         “Here is a bundle that one of your young men dropped.”

Riding Thunder                    (takes the bundle, and as he unwraps it a dead eagle falls out, together with a game marker) “This has your mark upon it Slim Fox! You have brought the dream to an end, but you have done a terrible thing I the eyes of the Gods.” (the crowd recoil in horror)

 

Slim Fox                                “But Father…”

Riding Thunder                    “Silence, this is what I saw in my Medicine Sleep. The black cloud was the enemy stealing up on our villages. The winds were spears coming through the air. The lion was a chief who will kill many of our people, but will himself be killed by one who wears the eagle crest.” (another scream is heard off to the side)

Cheepa                                  “It is Nee we ta!”

Riding Thunder                    “No it is an eveil spirit- take the torches and frighten it away!”

                                                The people take oil soaked torches and search the camp.

Riding Thunder                    (to Slim Fox) “You have brought a curse on us! Get back to your own camp now. (to Cheepa) Back to your blankets! Don’t leave the jacale until I return.”

                                                Cheepa sneaks off to the spring when her father leaves and searches for Nee wa ta, calling out for her. “ Oh Turquiose Woman- from your home in the west have pity on us.”

                                                            After some business with Maka, the lights suddenly go out. When they come back up Turquise Woman is on stage and there is an interpretive dance with musical accompaniment. As the dance ens, the butte is lit in red and Tom Toms begin to beat.

In Act II Scene I there is an interlude for a dramatic dance exhibit with war chants taken from Hopi tradition. Lame Antelope, a powerful Shaman enters and Slim Fox is banished at the end of the dance. All this is enacted without dialogue and with lengthy dances. Chemicals such as magnesium and copper are thrown on the fire to crea great flashes of white and green etc. Massed warriors run over the hill in ran to prepare for a battle .

 

Apaches attack the camp and all is in confusion as Riding Thunder realizes that his daughter has been kidnapped.

 

There is a scene in the Apache camp as Nee we ta challenges her captors and insults them. She is told that she will be the wife of one of them and she is terribly insulting to him personally saying that there will be two wives in the hut- him and her which causes his oen men to laugh at him.

 

Chhepa and Slim Fox find the Apache group and tell the others wo plan a rescue. Anothergreat battle and Morning Hawk is victorious

 

A great victory dance takes place, then Arden Edwards come into spotlights and says:

 

“This was but a dream out of the past, Again the fires grow cold below the rocks and the drums are stilled for another year. In the name of the Crimson Arrow we bid thee God Speed and Farewell!”

 

 

                                   

Act II

 

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