News From Native California - Spring 2015 Volume 28, Issue 3 | Page 22

And after the end of that, well, you would go and wash
your hands and face in cold water. Usually you’d go down
to the ditch where the water was flowing past the rez. And
after that, well, you would have this huge, huge meal which
consisted of everything you could cook. Sometimes there
was deer meat, and there was salmon because the American
River was running and the salmon were running up the river.
So, we’d have deer meat and rabbit and acorn soup and then
other kinds of white man food, I guess you’d say. And then
when you did that, well then you would play. You maybe
would have Indian football, some volleyball because there
was tons of people there, so there was plenty to get teams
up. So that’s all I can remember of it.
I would say two, three hundred people would come.
They’d come from all over the reservations. A lot of time
people would find out through word of mouth because we
didn’t have telephones. We were too poor for telephones.
But a lot of people came who had lost people. But you
weren’t prepared for the rest of your life, I guess, until you
did that and got to cry, because tradition demanded that you
get rid of your hurt feelings. To start life new, is I guess what
you might say.
I really don’t know when the tradition stopped, but the
memories I have of it is from when I was young. I think
when you get alone and you start thinking about things. And
I think cries serve a purpose even deeper than we know. I
think that’s what’s wrong with the people today. Not enough
of us cry.
LS: Mmhmm.

Left to right: Alicia Adams with Norma Knight at the Maidu Museum
StoryCorp event. Lavina Suehead, Iris Linda Blue, Charlie Cooke, Dolly
Suehead, Shelly Covert, Sage LaPena, Virginia Covert, Lois Davis,

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▼ N E WS F ROM N AT IVE C AL IFO RNIA

DS: There are people who cry over everything and we say
that’s a crybaby or something. [laughs]
LS: [laughs]
DS: But it’s important for a person’s welfare and wellbeing
in health, metal health or otherwise. After thinking about
it through the years—I’m not a scientist, so I couldn’t tell
you in their words—but I think it’s very, very important and
it would be a good thing if people had it today. And if you
don’t want someone to see you, just lock you in a room and
have at it.
LS: Mmhmm.
DS: And you’ll feel better when you come out, I think. Like I
said, I think there’s a lot to it that we don’t understand. Some
people aren’t able to cry in front of others. Maybe it was easier for us because it was how we were brought up and we
believed in it. But we could do it a lot easier.
LS: So it was sort of like our psychiatric work for our people.
DS: Yeah, healing.
LS: And healing to share this together. Where today they
would go to a psychiatrist and talk it out.
DS: Yeah. Exactly. There you can go and solve it by going
over and having a good cry. You hear that expression, have a
good cry, even today. I think it served it’s purpose and I think
it still does. ▼

Norma Knight, and Alicia Ad