The Irene Lopez Era

When Enrique Rodriguez crossed over to the Spirit world, Irene became the new leader. Irene did not follow in Enrique's tradition of frequent culture workshops, gatherings and ceremonies. She did keep the Costanoan Rumsen tribe together by having meetings at Arcadia Park in Arcadia, California and kept everyone informed as to the research that she was doing on our tribe.

She remembered stories that were passed down from Chanjay, Tiburcio, Jocefa and Enrique about the village in the mountains "Echilat", how they were constantly fighting with their neighbors the "Esselens" over the village site because of the natural supplies that the site provided such as fresh water to drink, deer, turkeys to hunt and eat, willow, redwoods to make homes and sedge to make baskets, and most important, black oak and valley oak, everybody's favorite acorns.

Lopez would often gather everyone together and tell stories about the trips from the village to the beach during the summer to gather smelt, abalone, mussels and other sea foods, and how all the tribal members would get together and build sweat lodges and fires on the beach. There they would tell stories, sing and dance around the fire for several days and sometimes lasting weeks at a time.

On one occasion, Lopez related a story that took place in 1928 when tribal members Abel and Felipe Silva went to Monterey. The tribe received word regarding some money that we had coming. They returned with this story about our inheritance. At the village site of Echilat they found that a hacienda had been built. They described it as a huge house with stairways and large chandeliers hanging from the ceilings and herds of deer and turkeys milling around.

At these Lopez also spoke about the migration from San Carlos to Santa Cruz, where Jocefa was born, to Santa Clare, to the Indian village Alial near San Jose where they held the talking feather ceremonies. Then back to Santa Clare, Santa Cruz, San Juan Bautista, Soledad, San Antonio, San Miguel, San Luis Obispo, La Purisima, Santa Inez, Santa Barbara, Buena Venture, San Fernando and at last arriving at the Indian village near Mission San Gabriel.

About the gold that Tiburcio would go to the mountains to get. Each time that he went, he got only as much as was needed to get along. Later on Irene went with Henry Rodriguez looking for the gold, but no one ever found it. Our stories still tell us that the gold is still there.

Irene did a lot of research with the help of tribal members Delia and Johnny Casados.