Yellow Sky
By : Carol Banegas
Kumeyaay
In the spring of 1997, while in Oakland, California I met a lovely woman by the name of Natalia Niel. She was in her 90's at the time, but looked much younger, and was living in San Luis Obispo, California
The following is a letter Natalia gave me that her father had written of his adventures while he was living in Julian, California in the late 1890's:
Tucked away in the pine and oak clad San Diego mountains, connected only by hourse and wagon trails with San Diego about sixty miles away, Julian in the good old days was a romantic little backwoods mountain village of a dozen or so inhabitants. However, since it had a store and a Post Office it was the metropolis for the surrounding miners, ranchers, and cowboys for many miles and thus could support a little one-teacher school.
Very often the school marm, as she was commonly called, was a sort of pioneer, that is, an Easterner who had rather adventurously decided to come west. naturally the country, the people, their privations and customs were always new to her. Tales of such school marms are legion but one in particular was a long remembered and is still told by old-timers in Julian.
In the fall of 1890 a young Eastern woman was hired as the new school marm in the Julian school. Everything was novel to her and she was very curious about it all - in a nice, respectable way of course. One thing that interested her very much was the report that a Yuma Indian was visiting the Julian Indians on the Inaja Rancheria.
It was not uncommon, dispite the diversion of dialects among the Southern California Indians, for some to wander east or west across the Colorado desert visiting, because these Indian people are all closely related and some tribes were always on friendly terms. But the interesting point that drew the white "mountaineers to see this particular Indian visitor, who bore the romantic name of Yellow Sky, was accustomed, for confort's sake, to wearing only a breechcloth since his native climate in the Yuma country was very hot. Thus, well-built, tall, athletic, and dark-skinned, with long, black hair, combined with his native lack of dress, he was a picturesque sight, and worthy of publicity in any man's country.
The new school marm was so curious, that she persuaded the people with whom she boarded to take her to see this popular young man one Sunday. She wanted especially some photographs to send to the folks back home. On this day Yellow Sky was probably a little more picturesque than usual for he had his long hair tied up on his head with a red bandana handkerchief, although he couldn't understand English he good-naturedly posed for the white woman's camera several times. An ingenious young woman - she, after several snaps, conceived the brilliant idea of taking a picture of him with his hair as flowing; so she asked him to remove his handkerchief. Being agreeable but misunderstanding her, courteously and quickly Yellow Sky removed the wrong article of clothing, the breechcloth! With a very red face the school marm beat a hasty retreat as only a nice young lady can. And she didn't take a picture.
Although the very curious school marm never lived that story down it didn't bother the Indian in the least. In fact he liked the cool climate and wandered on to the Capitan Grande