Since first hearing about the Camp Fire in 2018, it has both fascinated and disgusted me. The response to the fire, the cause, the end result, the total death and destruction. Most of this could have been avoided had things been done differently not only in the present, but in the past, but they weren't and there is nothing to do about that but to change the way things are done going forward. Lizzie Johnson, a Washington Post reporter wrote a book about the fire, the people of Paradise, their story, the Konkow Legend and the aftermath. The story that I'm sharing today comes from that book, entitled Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire. I'm including a link here to purchase it. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/08/19/paradise-excerpt-california-wildfire-bus-driver/)
https://www.northshire.com/book/9780593136386
From the author's note, "I first learned of the Konkow legend on a chilly spring day in March 2019, as I stood high on a plateau above the town of Concow." "As residents commiserated over their losses, remarking on how hot the Camp Fire had burned and how fast it had moved, a couple from the Konkow tribe, who happened to be on the tour, offered to share a story." "Their ancestors, they said, had once witnessed a wildfire similar to the one Butte County had just experienced. Two young boys had thrown pitch pine sticks onto a campfire, accidentally igniting a conflagration. The outcome was horrible. Most of the tribe died, and the few who survived had been forced to move north. This tale, they said, had been passed down through the generations and later translated into English. Hearing the story that afternoon, I was struck by how the Konkow legend offered a remarkable glimpse into the past-- something never captured in modern statistics and rarely by history textbooks--- of what tribal ancestors had witnessed long before white settlers arrived and displaced them, before housing developments were carved into sacred land."
There is more, but if I included everything here, you wouldn't need to purchase or borrow the book and read it for yourself. I borrowed it from my local library after reading about her story on the Washington Post's website (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/an-idyllic-california-town-and-the-wildfire-everyone-should-have-expected/2021/08/19/30c54012-efd0-11eb-81d2-ffae0f931b8f_story.html)
The Konkow Legend
In the beginning, Wahnonopem, the Great Spirit, made all things. Before he came, everything on the earth and in the skies was hidden in the darkness and gloom, but where he appeared, he was light. From his essence, out of his breath, he made the sun, the moon and the countless stars and pinned them in the blue vault of the heavens. And his spirit came down upon the earth, and there was day; he departed and the darkness of night closed again upon the place where he had stood. He returned, and the light shone upon the Konkows and all the other living creatures upon the earth, in the waters, and in the skies; the wildflowers bloomed in the valleys and on the mountainsides; the song of the birds was heard among the leaves of the madrone and on the boughs of the pines; and the hours of the day and of the night were permanently established.
This is the story of the Konkow tribe of the Meadow Valley Lands, as brought forward and told in the stillness of the nights, around the campfires, by the old men, the scholars, and the priests. (page 7)
As the days and nights interchanged in the countless moons of the past, the Konkows and all the other people on the face of the earth became very wicked and bad, until one day the spirit of the Wahnonopem, borne upon the beams of the rising sun, came through the pines and appeared unto some very wise old men, and said to them: "My children, whom I have made out of my breath, shall not bow down and worship the mountains, the waters, the rocks, or the trees, or anything which I have made upon the earth, or in the waters or in all the skies; but go to all my people and say that they shall bow down to me, and me alone; and all who do not believe in and worship me shall be devoured by the wild beasts and the demon birds of the forests, or destroyed by the great fire, Sahm."
This the Great Spirit said to the teachers of our tribe, and then he passed away into Hepeningkoy, the blue land of the stars. But his words were not heard, and the wickedness increased and went wild and rampant about the whole land, and Wahnonopem caused Yanekanumkala, the White Spirit, to appear in the flesh unto the people, that he might enlighten and turn them from their evil ways. This good man began his teachings and for many years he lived among our people, teaching the young men and the maidens many lessons of love and wisdom, many songs and games and gentle pastimes; and all these years they loved him more and more. But he died, and the lessons were forgotten. The songs died away in the forests, and in their stead came the war whoop, the shrieks of struggling women, and the groans of the wounded and the dying; and the name of Yanekanumkala became a jibe and a mockery all over the land.
As time went on, the Great Spirit sent two more good men, white spirits from the Yudicna, the unreachable frozen regions at the end of the earth, to explain once more the teachings of wisdom and of love, and the worship of Wahnonopem; and to show them that they came from the Great Spirit. He made the streams issue forth from solid rock, the mountains dissolve into lakes and the waters of the sea. They healed the sick and gave back the spirit of life to the dead, who, as they quickened into life again, bowed down for a time before the Great Spirit and worshiped him. But these good men accomplished no lasting good. Wickedness went about roaring as fiercely as before; and they passed away, carried by the wind to their homes in the frozen seas, amid the floating ice mountains, and the golden auroras of the far-off Yudicna.
Wahnonopem, after the good men had departed, became wrathful against his children and sent a great drought upon the land. The gentle rain fell no more upon the earth, and it baked and cracked and yielded no more food. The sweet summer grasses and the white clover shrank away and became as wisps; the pine tree bore no more of its nutty cone; the brown balls of the buckeye and the red grape of the manzanita were nowhere to be found; and the flesh of the roebuck, the black bear, and the wild game in the woods was a frothy poison. The people worked hard digging for the socomme, the sweet roots of the swamps, which had become as rocks, and when found they were molded away or wasted into strings. Suffering and hunger were all over the land, and the old men, the young men, the women and the maidens cried in their anguish for the Black Spirit of Death to come to their relief. (page 63-64)
All those who had heard the teachings of the good men became conscience-stricken and built the kakanecomes, the sweat houses, and bowing down therein invoked the Great Spirit, praying for the mercy of Wahnonopem, and that the fruit of the evergreen and everbearing tree in the land of the stars, near the Great Spirit, might be showered down to them. But Wahnonopem would not hear. He had said that he would send the great fire to destroy his bad children, and his word was the great law upon the earth, in the waters and in all the skies.
The good men had told the Konkows that the kakanecomes were sacred, and that no women or children were to go down into them. Only the men who were feeding the holy fire were to bow down before it, with the wickedness in them purified by the fire. But one day when all the people were out on the plain, wringing their hands in their anguish and despair and praying for relief in their suffering, two little boys went down into the kakanecomes and threw some pitch pine sticks upon the fire. The flames flew up to the roof and from there spread everywhere, licking and destroying everything in their way. (page 121)
Over the fields and valleys, across the dry streams and the mountains, the flames scorched the dry, parched earth, burning the trees and melting the rocks, with the people fleeing in terror before them. But the flames were faster, and everything that was alive--- the game and the wild beasts and even the birds in the forestland and all the Konkows but two--- was destroyed.
Peuchano, so names from his great sufferings, was a kindly pious man, and he and Umwanata, his mate, had always thanked the Great Spirit for his kindness to them, and he remembered them even in the great fire. The flames came roaring toward them like wild beasts, but they rolled away on every side as if pressed back by an invisible hand ---the hand of Wahnonopem, the Great Spirit. (page 193)
And these two good people ran and wandered for many moons, crying and nearly starving, until one day they halted near Anikato, which the white man calls the Trinity River. Wahnonopem had sent down the rains, the fire died out, the grasses were springing green again all over the land, the birds were singing everywhere, and Anikato was full with the fish shining and swimming in its limpid waters.
In a sheltered nook upon its banks they made a little home, but they built a kakanecome first. As the moons waned and came again, little children grew around them as plentiful as the grains of sand near the great water; and one day, long, long after, Peuchano and Umwanata, having grown very old, gathered their children and grandchildren around them and told them that the Black Spirit of Death was coming for them soon, but that before they went with him they wanted to sleep in their old welluda, their ancestral home, where they had first seen the wildflowers blooming and heard the glad songs of the birds singing among the pines.
And the women, the young maidens, and the little children waded into Anikato, and made them selves pure by ablutions, and knelt upon the banks, while the old men and the young men went down into kakanecomes and purified themselves with the holy fire, and they all prayed that Wahnonopem, the Great Spirit, might lead them on their way to far-off welluda. (page 257)
Konkow Legend
The Konkow legend that is scattered through the book is drawn from A. G. Rassin, "The Con-Cow Indians," Overland Monthly, vol 4, no. 19 (1884), pp 7-9, quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/ahj1472.2-04.019/13
I strongly recommend that anyone who is interested in the fires in California read this book. She wrote a non-biased report of what happened and included reports from PG&E as well as first hand stories from those who were there. It was well researched and is non-partisan.
