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Moreno, Joseph (audio interview #1 of 3)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the first of three interviews conducted for an American Indian Studies class. Details of the interview process are lacking. 11/18/1978 12:00:00 AM
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- 2019-09-26
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- *** File: aijmoreno1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-7:31)... Moreno's father raised him as an Indian although his father was "White." The heritage of his mother's side of the family is not as clear, but Moreno recalls being raised in a Spanish speaking household. His mother's skin was dark and she had Chumash Indian blood. His father came to the US in 1874; he was born in Mexico. Moreno is not sure how his father came to Yuma but he got a job there. (7:31-19:59)... Moreno's father did not like the government in Mexico and as he got older he wanted to leave; at seventeen all boys had to join the National Guard to fight the Apaches in Mexico. His father joined at sixteen years old. One night he heard some men talking about going on a ship. He was of the ocean and so he left with another man and hid out for a year. He was arrested while he was visiting his grandparents in 1873. His punishment was to be a mail carrier; but at this time every mail carrier was killed. He had a thirty-six mile route over the mountains, leaving at 8:00 p.m. and returning the following afternoon. Once he was chased by Apaches and ran fast, carrying sixty pounds of mail. (19:59-30:00)... Moreno recounts the story that his father told him about being attacked by Apaches when he was eighteen. His father was traveling with a group of five men and one woman; they were carrying flour, sugar, and salt and fuses. He claimed that the Apaches could hide in flat ground and lay there for hours without being seen. As a result, it was just too late by the time the group saw them. When the Apaches started opening fire on the group, Moreno's father saw that the woman was in trouble and ran to help her. As he was running with her, a bullet hit her. His boss told him to let her go because she was of another world. His father then ran toward the barrier that the men were building, counting thirteen shots in his eleven steps to reach them. He was hit by a bullet that ricocheted and was knocked down. The Apaches just disappeared. He believe that their purpose was just to kill as many as they could. His father was told that he had to go for help (tape cuts off here). End of tape *** File: aijmoreno2.mp3 (0:00-4:49)... Moreno's father told the men he would go for help if he had a gun; he got a pistol and took off, climbing up the side of the mountain. As he was climbing, the side rocks were coming loose. He put them in his hat so they would not make noise and cause a landslide and alert the Apaches. When he reached the bottom, the Apaches were yelling at him and he started to climb back up the mountain. He made it back to the group and told them he would not go alone because of the Apaches; they started to travel slowly and to wait until it was dark . (4:49-7:13)... When it was moonlight, Moreno's father and his group started out and found the tracks of the Apaches. They came to a town just about daylight where his father had relatives and he stayed with them that night. The next day they went back to where they were hit by the Apaches. Everything that the group had brought on the trip was taken or destroyed. (7:13-10:56)... Some time before Moreno's father came to California, he was shot at by the Apaches with two arrows that did not hit him. He was eighteen years old when he came to California. Before then, he had served his six months as a mail carrier and then had gone on the trip where he was attacked by the Apaches. (10:56-15:17)... Moreno's father came to California when he was eighteen but did not marry his mother until he was thirty five. Moreno recalls when he was young wearing his older sister's dress and his mother was caring for a sick man. They lived in the mountains near the Indians. (15:17-26:46)... Moreno recalls Sonora and the Missions. His grandfather owned about two acres of land. The Whites settled there and built a battle wall around the town. Moreno's grandfather did not like how the Indians and poor were treated and how the land was taken from them. He would not settle with the Whites; and settled with the poor Indians instead. His grandfather and great-grandfather were both White. They were indentured by the Spanish and worked for the missions to pay off their debt. Moreno's grandfather started working off the debt when he was fifteen and it took three years. The Indians were kept as slaves for the church/Missions. (26:46-30:21)... The most vivid memory Moreno has is of his mother taking care of a sick man and how he saw tracks of a mountain lion. He also remembers wearing a little pink dress with no shoes and watching his grandmother pounding on a flat rock. This was about 1901 and he was about three years old, living in the Escondido mountains. He was hit with a rock by his brother and his head "cracked open." His brother and sister put a gunny sack over his head and poured water on it (tape cuts off). End of tape
- SUBJECT BIO - Joseph John Moreno was born in the small settlement of Green Valley in what is today Encinitas . Although baptismal records recorded his birth date as 1897, he accepted his father's claim of 1898, which was used for all his official records. His mother (Micaela Gilbert) was Chumash Indian, Irish, and Spanish from Santa Barbara, California. His father (Jose Gabriel Moreno), who was Mayo Indian and Spanish came from Sonora, Mexico to California as a boy. Moreno was raised among the Kumeyaay (Diegeno) and Payoomkachoom (Luiseno) people in the present day Pala, Escondido, and San Diego area. After his parents separated, when he was four years old, he was placed in an orphanage in Anaheim, where he remained for one year, during which time he had learned some English. After he returned to live with his father, the family moved around quite a bit and he was pulled out of school for long stretches to work. At the age of fourteen, he left home briefly and then returned and worked in the sugar beet fields until age eighteen. From 1917 to 1927, Moreno worked in construction in San Pedro and then returned home to care for his father. During the Depression, he rode the rails and worked at a variety of jobs in Arizona and Mexico. Although not discussed in his interviews, from the 1940s until the 1960s, Moreno was an active member of Piledrivers Local 2375, Wilmington - one of the few people of color to be allowed into the union - and served more than two terms as president of the Local. He was inducted into the AFL-CIO Labor Hall of Fame in 1991 and is featured in Archie Green's, Wobblies, Pile Butts and Other Heroes (University of Illinois Press, 1993). Green alludes to Moreno's Chumash heritage, mentioning "intricate walking stick topped by a carved blue sea dolphin." Moreno began to remember, explore and affirm his Chumash heritage in the 1950s after he was reconciled with his mother, before her death. Later, after his retirement in the 1970s, he moved to Banning, California with his wife, Rosita, a Tohono/Akimal O'odham woman from Arizona. They lived at the Morongo Cahuilla and Serrano Morongo Indian Reservation, where she was Director for the Food for the Aged Program. He became a known herbalist and Native artist on the reservation, making gourd rattles, bows and arrows, rabbit (throwing) sticks, shell jewelry, bone awls and needles, walking sticks and more, often selling his pieces at the annual reservation fiestas and on the intertribal Pow Wow circuit. Some of his work ended up in local museums. By the 1980s, Moreno was a well-known Elder in the intertribal Indian community, and was often asked to perform respected duties like blessing the grounds before a Pow Wow or Fiesta, conducting Naming Ceremonies, and Opening Prayers for ceremonies. He traveled to Santa Barbara with his family to attend the monthly meetings of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation. At the time, he was the oldest living Chumash Elder of the Coastal Band and was recognized by other Chumash groups, as well, and was one of the honored Elders at a special gathering at the Santa Ynez (Chumash) Reservation. His daughter, Georgiana Sanchez notes: "Despite the hardships and heartache of his early life, Joseph John died a Chumash man, beloved and respected by his family, the Chumash community, and the intertribal Indian community. His funeral services included Chumash ceremonies at the all-night vigil and at the gravesite." [Note: Moreno's Chumash heritage is touched upon only very briefly in his oral history, and because the interview with him was conducted in 1978, there is no record of his later activities and status as an artist and Elder. These details, as well as information about his union activism, were provided by his daughter, American Indian Studies professor and poet, Georgiana Sanchez.] TOPICS - family background; father's life in Mexico in National Guard; father's experiences in National Guard; and, his ambush by Apaches;father's ambush by Apaches; father's move to California; parents marriage; grandfather's life; and earliest memories living in Escondido Mountains;
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