Pomo traditional narratives

Pomo oral literature reflects the transitional position of Atsugewi culture between central California, Northwest Coast, Plateau, and Great Basin regions.

[1] Their territory lying in North California, centered in the Russian River valley on the boarder of the Pacific Coast, stretching out a 50 to 100 mile radius.

Present day San Francisco is where they settled for more than ten thousand years before the initial contact with the Europeans.

Once settled in 1850 the U.S government pushed out the Pomo and forced them onto reservations so they could take the land and give it to the new incoming Americans.

The Southern Pomo Gallinomero legend about the origin of light is that in the beginning of time there was nothing but pure darkness, no sun and no moon.

Still however, the nights remained dark so this process repeated with Coyote gathering the seed and Hawk flying into the sky to send it off.

The Coyote then ran up a nearby hill in order to see what had happened, at a distance he could see that the land began to fill up completely with water.

The belief is that the ocean tastes salty because there had been ashes left there after he burned grass (in order to lure grasshoppers out so that he could eat them).

For the Gallinomero, or the Southern Pomo, mourning ceremonies were seen as a way to allow the passage and intervention of lost ones into the spirit world.

All of the Pomo believed in the afterlife and stressed the importance of having a sacred Indian name from the ancestral line so that upon reaching the afterworld, ancestors would be able to greet each other upon arrival.

Those mourning their lost ones would gather up their ashes and then scatter them in the air, which they referred to as going to the Happy Western Land beyond the Big Water, for those who were considered to be good people during their lives.

The loved ones of the deceased would bring gifts to be buried or burned with the dead, such as beads, baskets, robes, etc.

The homes and belongings of the deceased would also be burned in order to prevent the ghosts from lingering around the objects.