The Jocefa Silva Era

Upon the death of Chief Tiburcio in 1875, his daughter Jocefa Silva assumed the leadership and duties of Chief over the Costanoan Rumsen tribe that had originated from the village of Echilat. Silva was born in 1833 at Mission Santa Cruz.

In 1876 Jocefa Silva summoned all the Costanoan Rumsen tribal members to a prayer meeting in a field near her home in Duarte, California. There they built a sweat lodge and her eldest son Jose Santos led the sweat. They also built a huge fire and participated in a talking circle around the fire before entering the sweat lodge. There she repeated the need to engage in tribal ceremony. After the community sweats they had a dinner where everyone brought something to eat. When they were done eating, everyone danced around the fire while some of them sang and kept rhythm with clapper sticks and rattles. So it was that in the summer of 1876 Jocefa Silva led the first open prayer dance that was attended by Indians as far away as San Diego.

Since coming to Southern California our people had intermarried with other Indians in the area - Cahuillas, Serranos, Chumash, Gabrielnos, Yaquis and Dieguenos.

In 1883 Jocefa Silva met Helen Hunt Jackson, who was sent out west by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to record the history and investigate the needs of the California Indians that included the Mission Indians. In Mrs. Jackson's report entitled "Report on the Condition and Needs of the Mission Indians" she wrote "In conclusion, we would make the suggestion that there are several small bands of Mission Indians north of the boundaries of the so-called Mission Indians agency, for whom it would seem to be the duty of the Government to care as well as for those already enumerated. One of these is the San Carlos Indians, living on lands, which were given to them before the secularization act in 1834. These lands are close to the boundaries of Rancho San Francisquito of Monterey" (now the San Carlos Ranch). Helen Hunt Jackson obtained this information after spending time with Jocefa Silva, who had a vivid memory of what her father had said during his many hours of oral history of what had taken place at Mission San Carlos Borromeo and the lands around the mission.