Audio
Eloy Martinez
This is a modal window.
Transcript
Eloy:
... That's because she was one of my sister's friend and she's always telling my sister... They used to call each other sister-in-law from the time they were little. And so, I think they had an ulterior motive from way back and that's one of my sisters. She passed away when she was 13. But she's the one that pretty much put us on that course. And then she was-
Johnny:
She was pretty much your first girlfriend then, huh?
Eloy:
... Yeah. Pretty much.
Johnny:
And you got married at 17?
[00:00:30]
Eloy:
Yeah. And she had to run away from a children's home when we got married. So, it was-
Johnny:
And she was Native American too?
Eloy:
Yes. She was Apache, a Mescalero Apache. She's the one that pretty much got me on the island, because she was into all of the native American causes. Even back in Colorado here dealing with a lot of migrants and a lot of contractors, that migrant contractors and there's a lot of Indians in Colorado that are mixed breed. There's more there probably better than any other state outside of New Mexico.
[00:01:00]
New Mexico has a lot too, because there's a lot of the prevalent Indians. You can't tell them apart from it, but there's just a pretty much of a mix because any place that people can get on horseback back in those days, they went to. So-
Johnny:
So, was she involved with the termination program?
Eloy:
... She was, yeah.
Johnny:
And she-
Eloy:
[00:01:30]
Her grandparents were evicted also. And but most of the termination policy was happening right about that. But most of those like her grandparents, her grandfather actually used to have a horse trading thing and he would actually provide fresh horses for the Indians. They'd come by and trade him five, six horses for two good ones. So, he made out pretty good, but he was one of the main providers of horses in that whole area down there for a long time.
[00:02:00]
[00:02:30]
And then he got into the mines and stuff, running mills and almost everybody back there went from... Because at that time that was the only work that they can get was in the mining camps. And then after the mining camps, when they started shutting a lot of mining camps, then I can't remember, but I think the next big spurt of stuff came in my father's life anyway was when they started the highway programs, when they started the interstates, because all these guys like my father and almost everybody that was a veteran went and got a VA loan and got themselves a dump truck. One of the little, not real big dump trucks, but enough to make some money because they'd pay them by the load. So, all they did was for, I don't know, he must've worked five, six years, I guess on the freeway system, just hauling gravel and pavement.
And then there's like 15, 20. I guess it was a piecework, but they had, in fact I don't track that. He had looked just the little truck, like-
Johnny:
[inaudible 00:02:56].
[00:03:00]
Eloy:
... But his was a dump truck, had big old spotlight on the top of the hood. I remember that. And I remember his sense of humor. He was crazy. My father was crazy [inaudible 00:03:04].
Johnny:
How long did he live?
Eloy:
He died at 50, 54. It's 54. But the alcohol pretty much had a big effect on him, because after he came back from the service, he drank a lot. Yeah.
Johnny:
Now you mentioned your wife, she had Indian ancestry. Did her parents relay tradition to her growing up? Did she [crosstalk 00:03:27]?
Eloy:
No.
Johnny:
No?
[00:03:30]
Eloy:
Her parents are... Pretty much they scattered a lot. A lot of people scattered and a lot of people's kids were taken away from them and she was one of the kids that got taken away from them.
Johnny:
So, she was in a boarding school?
Eloy:
Yeah. She grew up in a boarding school. They called it the Colorado Children's Home. But it was pretty much a boarding school. That's all it was.
Johnny:
So, what was her experience from that?
Eloy:
[00:04:00]
Pretty bad, because they mistreated them. They abused the kids and she told me later on. I didn't know at the time, but later she took me over there when they closed the children's home down. One of the caretakers that had been one of the house parents and she asked her this, "Can we go in that room and check?"
[00:04:30]
And she said, "I'm going to show you something." And they had this wall, like this wall right here. It had all these pictures up there on a wall and she says, "Behind every one of those pictures, there's a hole in the wall." She says, somebody used to beat their head on a wall and clock them. And I said, "Really?" And she took the pictures off and you could see so, but she always had had problems. So, I believed her, but that was the treatment people got. I don't know. I guess pretty much what you had back in those institutions or those places like that was the people that wouldn't be able to get a job any place else, if they checked him out a little bit, because a lot of them were... And I think it was the meaner they were, the easier or better they were to hire or something. I don't know.
Johnny:
Yeah. I've talked with a lot of folks that went through those boarding schools, and they didn't sound like it.
[00:05:00]
Eloy:
They want to save you from yourself and kill you in the process. It's weird.
Johnny:
Also one of the things, wash the Indian out of them.
Eloy:
[00:05:30]
Yeah. Well, they would get mad at you. If you couldn't speak for long time, you couldn't speak your own language, anywhere you went. Even today, if you're a person that's fortunate enough to know one or two languages, people look at you and the first thing that comes into their mind because they don't understand what you're saying. You might be saying, "Man, that guy's a good looking dude. Look at him. He's the shit. He had to be in the movies and stuff." And because you're talking to in your own language, they're like, "He's talking about me. What is he saying about me?" People go through all these cycles, man. It's like it turns real quick from one to the other and in this country, to my way of thinking, it's always been about, not who's right, but who can flip food and that makes you right.
[00:06:00]
[00:06:30]
And the United States has been lying to the people from the time they got here on that boat and it hasn't quit. And today a lot of people keep party. People will, whatever, all he does, all this other stuff. If they just look at this, it's getting effected. And it's not... Everybody else on the top end's already got the poor people, Hey, they're going to survive. They're already used to being poor. Yeah. One of the girls was telling me the other day, asking me stuff about something. And I said, man, I said, " Man, when we was a kid," I said, "We used to go to the places that sell hamburgers. And we asked for extra things and they didn't have the plastic ketchup, but they would give you the things where you could feel the ketchup up. We take a few of those catch up and say, well, you would ketchup. So, we'd take it home a little bit of hot water, man. You got some tomato juice."
[00:07:00]
She said, "Tomato juice?" I said, "Yeah. If you put two of them, you got tomato soup." They crank up saying, "Wow, man, how you guys survived stuff like that?" But cactus is another thing. People don't, they look at cactus and stuff and it's... You can eat a lot of the cactus. In my yard, I got them growing because they're good for diabetes and all this other stuff, but they go big old. But on the end of them, you cut it up and it tastes like a pomegranate. And when it's sweet. It tastes sweet, but people look at it and they say, "Oh, you eat the stickers. Don't eat the stickers. You peel the stickers."
Johnny:
How'd you learn that? Was that passed down to you?
Eloy:
[00:07:30]
[00:08:00]
That was back from my godfather when he was a youth, but he'd say, he'd go across, any day he says, "There's no water here. This is water." Cut a cactus open and is full of juice. Yeah. It's food. You make a little fire, you could toast that up. A little rabbit or squirrel or bird, Hey, you got a meal fit for a King. So, and it's low maintenance, but it's all that stuff that, and they showed you how to... A lot of the remedies, a lot of the things that cure stuff, it's installed in the ground, all the plants and stuff. I remember a lot of the plants. I don't remember the names because they used to call them different names. But I remember the plants my grandma used to use because she used to have... She was a big herbalist.
[00:08:30]
And she did a lot of stuff for women, did all kinds of stuff. And she was the local medicine woman so to speak and people will come to her for ailments, all kinds of stuff, man. But she always had something in a jar for everything that was wrong with you. She had a jar, and she would use some weird stuff sometimes, but it worked and I don't know. Maybe it was just a prayer, the belief too, but the stuff worked.
Johnny:
And did your wife speak her own language? Was that passed down to her?
Eloy:
Well, actually, she went back and learned a lot of stuff.
Johnny:
She went back where?
Eloy:
[00:09:00]
Back to the reservation and back to Arizona, White Mountain and plus, she also had a lot of friends that were on different... Because we did a lot of traveling back then. When I first came out here, I had started working in Colorado.
[00:09:30]
I just actually worked for free for this guy for a while to learn a trade. I was working out in the onion field and a guy asked me to say, "man, you look like you're pretty strong kid." I was throwing sacks of potatoes on a truck, onion sacks. So, he said, "You look like you're pretty strong kid." So, he took me over and I actually went into the farmer's house to help him move the furniture, so I helped him move the furniture. The guy was going to lay some carpet. So, I asked him. I said, "Hey, man. You need any help?" And he said, " Nah, I got my kids doing this and I'm going to teach my kids." Well, German guy. Yeah. So, I said, "Well, see, you already needed help. I'll work for you for free, and just learn it."
And he said, "No. I'll think about it." Yeah. I like to think. He said, "Yeah." So, I came back, helped him move furniture. And so, he told me, he said, "Give me your number." And I said, "I don't got a number." I said, "But I live in those cabins over there, man." He said, "Okay." So, about two days later, the guy came by and he asked me if I want to go give him a hand because his son was busy, right?
[00:10:00]
[00:10:30]
So, I said, "Sure." He said, "You're going to work for free, right? And I said, "Yeah. I'll work for free." So, he took me out a couple of times, and then by the third, fourth time you gone by patina is the first time he took me out. I was just like a parrot man, everything he did, I just mimicked. I'm going to get one shot at this. I really don't know what I'm a little real quick, man. So, I was like the camera taking pictures in my mind, everything he did I just... So, but about the third time I with him, he actually gave me 10 bucks and that back then, man, if you made a dollar and a half a day, that was pretty good money in the fields, because you came and paid the contractor and all the other people.
Johnny:
How old are you right now, at this time?
Eloy:
Then, I was probably about 17. And we'd just got married. Yeah.
Johnny:
You got a little jingle in your pocket and you're feeling good and you stuck it out with this guy, or what?
Eloy:
[00:11:00]
No. I learned from him what I could learn. And then, when he started dropping me off on the job with the material and just come back to collect a check, I figured I'm good enough to do it by myself, because I was doing it by myself. The only I wasn't doing any more is collecting the check. But then I got a job at a furniture store that they needed somebody to deliver furniture and could lay carpet or do stuff like that. And that was my first day and getting out of the field work, getting out of the... Because then I didn't really have any work experience. I had far more working experience on my own and other stuff. I knew how to drive the equipment.
[00:11:30]
I knew how to drive vehicles and other stuff. So, that wasn't a problem. But during that time, it was, I don't know, a couple of... I guess I had worked at this furniture company, but maybe three or four months. And Armstrong Corporation had a program where if you wanted to learn an organ, and you were willing to pay your fare to Lancaster, Pennsylvania they would train you for three weeks.
[00:12:00]
And so, a guy asked me. He says, "You want to go to the school to learn it?" And I said, "Yeah." So, he says, "I'll pay for two weeks." He says, "But you got to pay for one week." And I said, "Oh, okay." So, it was like, I said, "All right." But I went to the Armstrong School and I learned how to lay linoleum, down there in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. But then there was a lot of people that rode in real carriages back there.
Johnny:
The Amish?
Eloy:
Yeah. Almost everybody, man. There was no taxi, none of it. Everybody's on horses and little carriages. It was an interesting experience, yeah.
[00:12:30]
Johnny:
I bet. Tripped you out a little bit?
Eloy:
Because it was like being at home, on Amish reservation.
Johnny:
So, we're talking late fifties and then probably what, '56, '57, '58?
Eloy:
This is '56, '57, '57, '58.
Johnny:
So, you're on your way. You're a married man. You've got some skills now.
Eloy:
Right. And then, so I was working at the furniture store and I was making maybe I think 150 bucks a month, something like that.
Johnny:
And this is in Colorado?
[00:13:00]
Eloy:
[00:13:30]
Yeah. This was in the late fifties. And he kept telling me, "You need to go to California." So, I came to California. When I got out here, I went to the employment office first. He says, "You can't come to the employment office. You got to go to the hiring hall." I said, "The hiring hall?" So, they sent me to the union. I went down to the union. There's local 1290. The guy's name was McIntyre, big old Irish dude, big old red nose. I found later the red nose was from the whiskey, I guess. But he was like, he told me, first thing out of his mouth, he says, "We don't hire no Indians, no Mexicans. Nobody in his goddamn local." He says, "This is a closed local. My kids learn in Australia. So, we don't take no outsiders."
[00:14:00]
And I said, "What?" But I was already used to that anyway from back then. Rejection was first on the list. I knew I was going to get rejected. So, I just looked at him and told him, I said, "Hey man. I got two toolboxes. I said, this one does carpet and this one does linoleum." I told him, "I'm going to find work." Yeah. He said, "Not in my jurisdiction. You are not." I got in my little truck. I had my Volkswagen bus already. Googled it looks like the bus up to Richmond. I'd seen this guy wanted a roll carpenter. I said, " Hey. You guys need any help?" And he said, "Talk to my boss." And the guy said, "You in the union?"
And I said, "Yep." So, he gave me a job. At about six weeks later, the guy came out and tells me, "Hey, man. I got to let you go home." And he says, " They're on my ass. They're going to shut my shit down if I don't-
Johnny:
The union?
[00:14:30]
Eloy:
... The union, yeah. Because what they did was they took the health and welfare benefits, and sent them to union and they said, "Hey, this guy." "What do you mean this guy?" So, anyway, went out there and he chased me off the job. They ran me off of a few jobs. so, I got pretty much known to the business agents. And I came to San Francisco and I hid out in these high rises for a while, when they were building all the buildings downtown. I see the business agents show up downstairs. I just locked the gate, lock the doors. They check everybody unit and I just lock it up.
[00:15:00]
[00:15:30]
And I'd wait for them to leave. It look down and we gone, I'd open up again. But I did that for a few years. And then they had Apostle of the Sea place over there in West Oakland, right on the cross from where they got all the cargo containers now. They had just built this building and what it was for all the sea men coming in on the boats, they would have, they had a place for showers and they would sleep. Did they get to sleep? It was a Catholic organization. I don't know. I don't think they charged them in general. I can't remember. But, anyway, they had called for a bunch of people to come in and help out and donate some labor and stuff. So, they had seen me laying some linoleum. They said, "Come on. You can do this."
[00:16:00]
And I said, "yes." So, I went over there and I met this young stranger. And he was telling me about he was in a union, but none of the journeymen wanted to teach them how to do stuff. Instead, they just wanted him to pack tools and stuff. I tell them, "I'll teach you. What do you want to learn?" So, he needed to lay some linoleum. I told him, "I'll teach you also." So, we started laying the linoleum, the kitchens and bathrooms, all that other stuff over there. And we got through with the job. The Armstrong had donated a bunch of seconds and remnants stuff for the job. There's a bunch of rolls left over. So, he told me, he said "I need [inaudible 00:16:08]. And you probably got to do some stairs and some stuff." And my wife, in the meantime, we had come out here.
[00:16:30]
She got involved with the Tribal Friendship House in Oakland. And she had told me, "Oh man, that place is a mess and needs some stuff done to it." So, I went over there. Anyway, they gave me the material and I told the dude, I said, "You really in?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "All right. I'll get the material here. I'll show you how to do it." So, we went over the tribal center and we did the backstairs all the way from your back going all the way up at and on both sides, because they gave me all the metal and that's how I got hooked up with the Tribal Friendship House.
Johnny:
[00:17:00]
That is so cool. And [crosstalk 00:16:43] They're giving me the sign that the tapes... We've got to change tape, but hold that thought and we'll pick it up on the next tape here. Okay. All right. So, Eli we're here. Now we've moved over to A-Block field, army cell block. These are the army doors. And we'll talk a little bit more about your times in Alcatraz and the A-Block. Maybe we'll get down to the dungeon to here, but to pick it up, you were at the Apostle of the Sea.
Eloy:
[00:17:30]
Yeah. We were working there. Winter guys from different unions had volunteered to do some labor. Apostle of the Sea pretty much just how sea men are coming in from all over the world, place to shower and stay. And anyway, one of the youngsters that I had been avoiding the union for a couple of years, because they wouldn't let me in the union for what the... And then I had a bunch of fines that they want to pay. So, this youngster wanted to learn how to do this. So, I took him with me after we did the job with Apostle of the Sea, they gave me a bunch of extra leftover material and we took it over to Intertribal Friendship Houses. They needed some stuff done. They were asking for volunteers and they had just moved into the pretty much moved into the building spot. Maybe seven years back then course located on East 14th in Oakland, on Fifth Avenue. And I took him over there and showed him how to lay linoleum on the stairs.
[00:18:00]
So, anyways, those are done in the early seventies, I think, or early, late... I think it was in the seventies, early '60. No.
Johnny:
That was early sixties.
Eloy:
This is about '68, '67, '68 I think. It might've even been the last end of '66 when we did that. Yeah. I think it was brought in '66.
Johnny:
And this was due to your wife wanting to reconnect with the Indian folk in the area?
[00:18:30]
Eloy:
[00:19:00]
Yeah, with the Indian, because that's where all of the Indians. They actually had power walls there and they still had dances and they had a ceremony. People, and that was a place to reconnect with all the Indian people in the Bay Area. But that was my first connection in the Bay Area. And anyway, from that meeting that young man helping me over there at the Tribal Friendship House and getting reconnected there at the Tribal Friendship House. In a couple of years, he became a business agent for that local and he's seen me somewhere and he told me, he says, "Are you still running from?" And I said, "I am not going to pay nobody." He says, "Hey." So, he took me into the local made me a union member and forgave all the back dues.
[00:19:30]
And that's how I got into the union in the Bay Area, from that youngster just learning how to lay linoleum. And he would actually help me at the Tribal Friendship House. So, I went back and forth to the Tribal Friendship House, but there was a good connecting point because back then at that time too, there was a lot of meetings that were being held with the Tribal Friendship House, in '67, '68, there was a lot of stuff going Banick and Kim, a whole bunch of various organizations were holding meetings and talking stuff there. And Richard and actually some of the people went down to Tribal Friendship House and had strategy meetings there also.
Johnny:
You talk to Richard Oakes?
Eloy:
Yeah. This was during the occupation. So, we had something in common.
Johnny:
Is that where you first connected with Richard Oakes, Was at the Friendship House?
[00:20:00]
Eloy:
[00:20:30]
I had connected with Richard at a antiwar demonstration, anti Vietnam war demonstration over in San Francisco and because my son and a couple of his kids were playing together, my wife, she was always that way, would always pack a huge picnic lunch. And so, he came over, my son came over, he said, "Mom, give me a sandwich." And she said, "What about these guys?" And he says, "Yeah. Give them one too." So, anyway, that's how we met up. I seen Richard and Anna were sitting over by then. I says, "Okay. The kids have a settlement." He says, "Yeah, sure." So, that's how we met up right there, over a bologna sandwich-
Johnny:
Shared a little bologna?
Eloy:
... Shared a little bologna sandwich, yeah. And we got to talking and that's when Richard asked me. We talked, exchanged stuff, and he told me he was a iron worker from New York region.
[00:21:00]
I think it was the same region. I can't remember. I know where to swim. But he told me, we just exchanged stories and stuff. And then, then he asked me pretty much point blank. He says, when are the... Because I was pretty much involved with the Chicano movement at that time. And the Chicanos we were doing a lot of stuff at that time. At that particular time we I was at UC Berkeley. We'd also started at Chicana school in Berkeley, the first of its kind in the nation. And that's because the Chicanos were getting pushed aside and didn't talk. So, we actually started a school and it was pretty much about the time of Black Panthers and a lot of other stuff that's going on too. So, there's a lot of little splinter organizations. And I originally had came... When we came out of Colorado, we had been involved with the Crusade for Justice.
[00:21:30]
[00:22:00]
We just call it the Gonzalez organization. And so, we had, and I came out here, we got involved with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and the farm workers. So, we were pretty much active all the way around, from way back from the time we got here. But at the Tribal Friendship House, a lot of the things came out, met and Richard asked me. He says, "Hey, when are the Chicanos going to realize that they're Indians?" And this is maybe, but at the same time, the Indians realized that we are too, and there was always, it was always a conflict, even on the reservations back when I was a kid. I had had twofold problem. I didn't look enough Indian and then I had curly hair. So, it was all like all the guys wanted to fight me and all the girls wanted to run their fingers through my hair. So, I had it both ways. I had to fight them. When we're done, I was going to have to fight them. But that was the way it was back in those days.
Johnny:
So, you and Richard struck up a friendship then through that bologna sandwich and then?
[00:22:30]
Eloy:
And we got to talking and that's when they were talking about doing something here in Alcatraz then. That's about when the time when, just prior to that, they were having all that big talk about The Hunt Brothers coming in here and taking over the Island, doing all this other stuff. And we had met with Belva and a few other people that had been out here earlier and they had... They talked about saying, "Let's do it again." Yeah.
[00:23:00]
Johnny:
Did Richard talk about that first time in '64, when they came out and tried to take the Island?
Eloy:
He talked about it yet, but he wasn't here then in '64. Richard got here for '68, later part of '67, '68. I can't remember. I remember he had a red Mustang. Nice little car.
Yeah. Full of Indians all the time.
Johnny:
So, you guys started talking about Alcatraz and maybe a potential to do something out here?
[00:23:30]
Eloy:
[00:24:00]
Yeah. Right. It was like watching all of the other groups and organizations that were doing something. It was like, "Hey, it is time. Maybe we should be doing something too," and it was, but you had a lot of intelligent people that were... The first people that came out here, all of the college students their idea of, it wasn't so much just occupying. I think it was the idea in a creating a spark, getting your imagination working and just see, "Hey, well, you could do this, you could do that and stuff." Most of the ones that I remember when we came out here, we didn't expect we'd be out here too long before the pheasants came around and shot everybody.
[00:24:30]
That's just what they were doing back in those days. That's when they were burning up the Black Panthers and all these other people are in houses and stuff. So, it's like, I don't think anybody really expected to stay here that long, but the thing was that after the initial occupation, I think when everybody was talking about all the good stufF, I call that the good stuff that was going on. Then later on, then you got a lot of people that just wanted to look up for a crash, hang out spot. And I think that's when a lot of the stuff that got lost in a little bit of the translation or something. You got a lot of bad publicity and stuff, but the original idea that was that everybody had wanted to do.
[00:25:00]
[00:25:30]
I think a lot of that's come to pass, even with all the other stuff that's happened, because right now, here I'm doing something that probably wouldn't have been possible before. And so, in a sense Richard's cultural center is still being happening because people are getting educated and as long as people that can do that, I think that's going to be, it's always going to be for the benefit of it. And nothing's really changed for a lot of the Indians. If you go to a lot of their reservations and stuff, there's still bad shape. Their mortality rate is high, their alcoholism rate is high, the kids are sniffing on paint.
[00:26:00]
You get out of the Bay Area. It's not really a rosy picture when you get to some of the... Especially the tribes have no recognition or have no money. The ones that have no money, they're pretty much, their suicide is way up high, and kids are just lost. It's just a shame to see that, especially with, I don't know, just so much money out there that could be, and so much money that's legally theirs that could be springed out there and spread out.
Johnny:
But back in 1969 when you guys were looking at Alcatraz, you were hopeful for using Alcatraz for what?
Eloy:
[00:26:30]
Well, basically what we wanted to do is just use it as a learning center, and just take over a new Indian university, just make it something for the Indians. It's like a really small piece of land. It's not like we're claiming the whole United States or something and it's just Little Rock. No, but nobody, just the pigeons out here at that time. John Hart.
Johnny:
Yeah. Right. So, were you here in November when the occupation started?
Eloy:
Yeah. I got here with 80 guys on the boat.
Johnny:
You were one of the 80 on the boat?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
So, take us back to that. And where did you meet?
Eloy:
[00:27:00]
We met in Sausalito, because everybody was expecting it to come from San Francisco from this end of the Coast Guard. Everybody is all lined up on this side. On that side where they call it the back door, there was nobody back there.
Johnny:
So, you faked them out. You met out in Sausalito. Who were these people?
Eloy:
That was Mary and Peter.
Johnny:
Peter Bowen?
Eloy:
Uh-huh (affirmative). Peter Bowen. Mary. I can't remember. There's three people. I think they call themselves the Sausalito Navy. I can't remember, but they were... Without them, none of that would've happened, because they was just instrumental in getting people here.
[00:27:30]
Johnny:
There's another guy I remember I've interviewed, Brooks Townes?
Eloy:
Yeah. Brooks Townes.
Johnny:
I think he was the-
Eloy:
Yeah. He's the third one.
Johnny:
... Yeah. He was a photographer.
Eloy:
Right. He got a lot of photos.
Johnny:
He does have a lot of photos. I think after this, I'm going to give him a call and see if we could talk with him. But he is still around. Peter Bowen passed away in Mexico. I believe cancer got him, but Mary is still over in Tiburon. But you guys met at the No Name Bar?
Eloy:
Yeah. In Sausalito. Right.
[00:28:00]
Johnny:
And you came out to Alcatraz and what happened? Take us away. Take us back to that time.
Eloy:
We landed on the docks and people scrambled up, and-
Johnny:
Who was on the dock?
Eloy:
... Nobody.
Johnny:
Nobody?
Eloy:
Don Hart was the night before. Well, the old nightwatchman was checking stuff up, but that's pretty much how we knew how to get up there because he was right around where the stuff was at, right? But was water bars and all that.
Johnny:
So, what did he say when you guys showed up, 80 Indians?
Eloy:
He said, "What the hell is going on?" And then he started hauling "Mayday. Mayday" I don't know.
[00:28:30]
Johnny:
Really? You remember him saying that? Huh? Mayday. Mayday
Eloy:
He talking on a two way phone. I think he even sold that phone to Joe Morris. If I can't remember. I think he sold him a couple of walkie talkies. They never worked. I don't know. But he sold them to Indian Joe Morris and ended up with that walkie talkie that he asked.
Johnny:
What did you guys say to him though? What was the plan?
Eloy:
Nothing. We just told him we were taken over to Island. And he says, "The what?" And he says, "We're forecasting all the way the Indians are being treated and stuff. This red dot."
Johnny:
And he was cool with that?
[00:29:00]
Eloy:
Yeah. He said, "It's yours. Whatever you want. You got the manpower." Yeah. So, it was pretty cool.
Johnny:
So, the first night you stayed where, in the cell house?
Eloy:
Yeah. We got into cell house down, ironically, the cookout cook spot, is that the biggest areas because everybody is afraid to split up. We just wanted safety and numbers, figured if we have better chance if people have started bum rushing or something.
Johnny:
Because you thought the feds were going to move in?
[00:29:30]
Eloy:
Yep. We thought the Coast Guard and everybody was going to come in real quick, as soon as they found out. Yeah. And then it changed plans and a lot of people weren't ready for no more than the cold weather. A lot of people had sleeping bags and stuff like that. A lot of them have been here before, but some people didn't have a lot of stuff. So, I ended up sharing a lot of... So, you pretty much had to gather for the heat too, so-
Johnny:
Did you come prepared a little bit, yourself?
Eloy:
[00:30:00]
Yeah. Because I had been here when the other guys came up, when Witchey B, when John and or what do they call it, original 14. It's actually regional 16. Two guys got left out, Jerry Hatch and another guy got left out of the feathers.
Johnny:
And that was what year was that?
Eloy:
[00:30:30]
That was the same year. That was on the night before. That was a night or two nights. It might've been, can't remember exactly when it was, buT that was the name of that boat was Witchey B, then that's when the original guys came out and then we stayed in it just overnight and left the next day. And then that's when that's when everybody got mad at Richard, because they had pulled out and just said, "Hey man, we didn't have a contingency plan." Nobody had nothing. And it was cold out here, but I was the only reason I did come on Island because then I was Indian taxi. I was taking people back and forth. Yeah, and-
Johnny:
But the second wave you were here.
Eloy:
... But the second wave I was here.
Johnny:
And then more people came the next day?
Eloy:
[00:31:00]
As soon as we landed, as soon as people started hearing it on KPFA radio actually, and that we were on an Island and people just started coming. People were running into Coast Guard. There was people on little speed boats and...
(NOTE: speaker names may be different in each section)
Eloy:
Running the coast guard. There was people in little speed boats and three, four or five at a time. Other people that are on the bathtub, the bathtub two and bathtub three or bathtub one. I can't remember. Both of those were running and they had a couple of other.
[00:31:30]
I remember there was a black captain that ran stuff to the island for a long time too, until they try to, I don't know what they did to him, but some, I guess somebody tried to get into his castle at night when he's asleep and he got perturbed. So he left the islands. But he did a lot of stuff for a lot of people.
But Joe Morris did a lot of stuff too. I think without Joe Morrison and Richard, a lot of that stuff wouldn't have happened because Joe Morris coordinated a lot of the stuff coming in. Donations.
Johnny:
He had the contacts on the wharf, right?
Eloy:
[00:32:00]
Yeah. And he had all the longshore people. They actually got ... I can't remember, but I think that they actually got the occupation and Indians on Alcatraz sanctioned by the union. I mean, they got ... When nobody else had ever done that for any other group, they did it for them. I think they did it for them, and they might've did it for the farm workers.
I know they didn't do for the farm workers, but they did it for the American Indians on Alcatraz. So that's a lot of stuff that the ILWU has done over a long course of the years.
Johnny:
So how long were you here from those early ... ? From the-
Eloy:
I was here-
Johnny:
... Was your wife here with you?
Eloy:
[00:32:30]
Yeah, my wife was here longer than I was. My wife and my son were here longer than I was. I was back and forth because at that time I was still going to school at UC Berkeley, but I was also running donations and picking up supplies and picking up people and stuff. But most of the time ... I spent probably about a month here.
Johnny:
So the first ... You're saying the first month of occupation was, you were on the island?
Eloy:
Yeah, I was here through ... Actually, I left the same time Richard did. So when all that stuff happened, I didn't want to be any ... 'Cause it ... When the politics stuff started, a lot of stuff changed.
Johnny:
Yeah.
[00:33:00]
Eloy:
and I didn't after ... I knew that he wasn't comfortable in any way here, no way shape or form after Yvonne passed. So it was a lot of people say that he was asked to leave. I think it was a combination of a lot of stuff that happened.
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
[00:33:30]
To me, if Richard hadn't done what he did, when on that first crossing, when he jumped into water and started swimming, if he hadn't done that ... That was a spark. If he hadn't really literally just jumped out and then, the rest of Joe, Bill and few of the other guys did, but if Richard hadn't had done that, I don't think a lot of that would've happened. And-
Johnny:
He was the key; he was the spark.
Eloy:
He was a spark. And not only there; every place else. He was the person that he got up and he spoke and he was a pretty good speaker. He could speak, and he knew what he was talking about.
Johnny:
Where did that come from? I mean you were his friend. So-
Eloy:
I think-
Johnny:
... was it just natural?
Eloy:
... He had gone to school. He had gone to school back East too. So-
Johnny:
He was a MODOK, wasn't he?
Eloy:
Mohawk.
Johnny:
Mohawk. I'm sorry.
[00:34:00]
Eloy:
Yeah. Yeah. He was one of the iron workers. All of his whole family is the steel workers. He showed me fields and walking them big old beams coming across the roof, just like ...
Johnny:
No fear.
Eloy:
No fear, no fear. He had no fear. Richard had no fear. It was ... That's just the way he was. He was willing to confront people on opinions and stuff. He just wasn't going to be ... And he was big enough person that not too many people are going to talk too much about him anyway or say too much stuff to him, anybody, especially if you knew his facts.
[00:34:30]
It was really a privilege for me just to know the guy and it was, to me, he was like Chief Richard. He was ... I don't know what you want to might want to call it, but I would say he was the first urban chief, urban Indian chief that I think really deserved that title because he did stuff that nobody else has done. A lot of people talk about stuff, but he did the ultimate. I mean he paid for whatever.
[00:35:00]
Johnny:
He walked the walk and talked the talk.
Eloy:
Yeah, he did.
Johnny:
[00:35:30]
Hey. We got to go in here. 'Cause I brought you up here. There's some graffiti in here. Come on inside here. So Isla, we're in this cell here and this definitely has some graffiti from the occupation, Indian power, of course, 69 to 71. Custer was white; the classic Custer had it coming. Even the Hell's Angels evidently made it out here. Here's a death head on the wall there. So take us back to the first Thanksgiving out here on Alcatraz. What was that like? Who, how many people were here by that point? Would you estimate.
Eloy:
Finally at Thanksgiving time, I would imagine it was probably upward of 400 people, maybe 500 people.
Johnny:
Really? Wow!
Eloy:
[00:36:00]
Yeah. Because the coast guard, they weren't stopping anybody from coming in. And people that had boats were just coming in as fast as they could drop people off, they were going back out.
Johnny:
Well, we've been told that it was just Indian people that were allowed unless maybe the press was coming out. Or what do you remember?
Eloy:
Nah, there was a lot of other people out here then too.
Johnny:
Even in the beginning?
Eloy:
[00:36:30]
Yeah, even in the beginning. Because there wasn't ... At that time, there was a lot of actually there was a lot of Indian people that were married to white people too that were out here. And then I think later down the road, when they got all Indian, they said only Indians allowed. I think a lot of that broke a lot of people up. I don't know. They kind of went the other way. Some went, but I think at that first Powwow they let everybody come out. There was people from all over.
Johnny:
What was the vibe like when you were here?
Eloy:
[00:37:00]
It was charged like something new. Pride, I think was out there, 'cause people came out, had their regalias and people actually danced. I think even Fortune ... I can remember Fortunate Eagle danced. I think he might have danced and his son danced, and a couple of people from inter-tribal friendship house. 'Cause they've always had dance troupe with inner tribal friendship house.
Johnny:
Did you know Adam from the tribal friendship house or?
Eloy:
No, I actually knew Adam from his pink Cadillac. 'Cause he used to drive a pink Cadillac and he used to park over by Strauss all the time, because I used to park in that lot sometimes too.
Johnny:
What? You liked his car or what?
Eloy:
I just-
Johnny:
You remembered that? Great.
[00:37:30]
Eloy:
I could never quite associate this big Indian that driving a pink Cadillac. This kind of looked like, driving off, what do you call it? A farm horse instead of a Pinto?
Johnny:
Right.
Eloy:
[00:38:00]
I don't know, but no he's ... I remember him doing a lot of stuff. He was a pretty good PR guy. I mean he knew how to work the angles with him and Finley and some of the other guys that he was, he had it in with them kind of. So that helped a lot. 'Cause they were responsible for a lot of donations and a lot of ... they actually got a lot of cooperation from different folks. So I think there's the ones that say, "I don't like him, I don't like her." You know? I mean, without ... I think that you can't say that about any of them, because without all of them, none of them would have happened.
'Cause they all were all part of that wheel, and it's all part of the big ol' cog. So I think people just got to leave some of that old stuff behind and just get on about doing what they need to get doing.
Johnny:
Yeah.
[00:38:30]
Eloy:
But that happens, I would guess almost like in any little town. That's what Alcatraz became. Just like a little community, and you're going to have people that want to do stuff.
Johnny:
You guys had a school out here too, right?
Eloy:
[00:39:00]
Yeah. The Little Rock School. Shirley, the security guard said, Shirley Guevara Garcia. Now I actually ran to school out here, and actually still involved in school. She got Indian school over there in Oakland yet. She's still teaching. So, it's going; it hasn't stopped. And probably everybody pretty much that was here, I think went on under different ... Wilma Mankiller; another one. She went on to had her own tribe.
Johnny:
She just passed away last year.
Eloy:
Yep. Yeah. Lost another one. Not a means, warrior.
Johnny:
Were they all here on that first Thanksgiving?
Eloy:
[00:39:30]
Yeah. Pretty much a lot of them were here. Yeah. It was charged. That year it was really charged. It was something to be here. 'Cause it was like I guess it was, it would be almost akin to being totally free kind of, for the first time in your life especially off of a reservation or off ... Or even urban land, 'cause most places you still couldn't do a lot of the stuff that you could do here. Right?
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
But out here it was California, but it's totally different in a way. And in a way it ain't, 'cause you still got a lot of tribes right here in California that are not recognized. The Ohlones for example.
[00:40:00]
Johnny:
Do you remember the Ohlones or the MODOK coming, being on the Island during that?
Eloy:
Yep. A lot of the Ohlones won't come on the Island for some reason. They said the dog people are here or something. So I don't know.
Johnny:
I've heard those stories.
Eloy:
I don't know.
Johnny:
Where the dry or burial grounds or the dog people. The wolf people live.
Eloy:
[00:40:30]
Yeah. So I don't know. They might be something to it, 'cause they ... I know a lot of them that won't come out here because of that reason. But there were some that had been out here and I've seen a lot the ... Of course the Pomos have been here for almost since I first ... Actually I think the Pomos, they were dancing here. 'Cause I remember Didier people from up at the entire reservation dance the first year, and then the Verb people from the big head dancers.
Johnny:
Where were the dances held for that thanksgiving?
[00:41:00]
Eloy:
They were pretty much done in down where the big apartments used to be, where all that rubble used to be on the side where they knocked all them big apartments [crosstalk 00:10:03]-
Johnny:
The parade, the big open space where the sunrise service ends?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
Okay.
Eloy:
Yep. Nope.
Johnny:
And you had a bunch of food donated from San Francisco restaurants?
Eloy:
[00:41:30]
Yeah. The Rathskeller came over the boat. And people donated a lot of different stuff. Even different ... Even stuff that people didn't use out here. They even donated that black and white thing, black and white gown thing that they hold every year.
Johnny:
Right.
Eloy:
They get some of these gowns that are leftover, and these people ain't going to use them again. They didn't.
Johnny:
Right.
Eloy:
[00:42:00]
So they donated all that stuff out here. Me and Richard and, I can't remember ... it might've been John Tridell, we're sitting up on the trail over there, and we were watching the kids come up singing. There was like four little kids, four young guys with top hats on, they had the little black top hats on and the little vest things on, and they're walking, and the girls coming behind them. And they had these all [inaudible 00:41:59] things, all these jewel things that I don't know, probably cosmetic stuff. But they were walking up and every once in a while, you would see this number. All the way. What's going on? Right? 'Cause-
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
So they got up to the top and we finally seen what they was. They only have two sets of shoes. The girls would share; one had the right and one had left. [inaudible 00:11:21]. They was coming up to bury a cat.
[00:42:30]
That was one of the coolest stories about that. That's the only time I see him use that clothes.
Johnny:
Yeah. I remember coming out here early on as a kid and seeing piles of shoes that were left behind and they were high heel shoes and things that really wouldn't have helped people out here. And I do remember living in San Francisco, San Francisco supporting it and my parents pointing to the islands, saying, "Johnny there's Indians out there. We're going get some food to those Indians on Alcatraz."
So San Francisco did support it in the early months, at least.
Eloy:
Yep. Yep.
[00:43:00]
Johnny:
You do remember. And there's also talk of the money coming in. There was money being funneled out to the Island. And how did that work? Were you involved with that at all?
Eloy:
No, I wasn't involved in none. I'd never have liked the money part of none of that stuff. I was kind of like Joe Morris, I just, I don't want it. Joe Morris had a good system though, because everything that came in is in that book, he's got it. He had a book. I don't know what the books is [funniest 00:00:43:26]. You might have the book.
Johnny:
I have a copy of it. Yeah.
[00:43:30]
Eloy:
But everything that came in is in that book. Legitimate.
Johnny:
And I remember him saying that there were people that were maybe [crosstalk 00:12:34]-
Eloy:
Oh, yeah. But there was a lot of people that so-called spokespeople taking airplane trips and you know what I mean, live top of the mark.
Johnny:
Right.
Eloy:
Kind of stuff. You know? So I think a lot of that money just, but there again, it's like any other organization, if there's no balances and checks you just don't know what's going to get done with it.
[00:44:00]
Johnny:
So, but Richard was in charge in the early month or two. Right?
Eloy:
Yeah, Richard pretty much was a spokesperson. I don't think he ever handled any money. I know that. I know you hear a lot of rumors, but you know about him this and all this and this. And I never seen him that to be true because all the time that I ever seen Richard, he was always pretty much always broke.
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
[00:44:30]
'Cause I was lucky because at that time I was still working and I was still drawing a check and I was getting paid to go to school. I still have always had gas money and I had a vehicle. So I was able to do all of that stuff that they wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.
Johnny:
But you were here in the early weeks at least, or the first year.
Eloy:
Yeah. I was here for the first month.
Johnny:
And so, and then your wife and child stayed out. You just had one child out here?
Eloy:
Uh huh.
Johnny:
And so they were out here-
Eloy:
They were here too.
Johnny:
What was the normal day like out here?
Eloy:
[00:45:00]
Well, pretty much is that was a lot of times it was like, when Stella Leach was here, she pretty much ... Stella had good tight reign on a lot of stuff. Her and her crew, they handle security. And there was a lot of the stuff that wasn't good about that also. But they, but she had a ... She had a pretty good ... She was a good spokesperson. Stella was.
Johnny:
So there were people coming to the Island and being escorted around?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
Do you remember that?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
Or who were these people?
Eloy:
[00:45:30]
They had a lot of movie stars. People came over here. It was a lot of public figures came over. People promised donations and different other stuff. A lot of it never came into play. It was a lot of just ... kind of just get your picture taken. You know?
Johnny:
Who do you remember celebrity-wise coming out here?
Eloy:
Jane Fonda; I remember she gave some generators. Anthony Quinn was supposed to give some stuff. I don't know that he ever gave anything.
Johnny:
He's part Native American, I think. Wasn't he?
Eloy:
[00:46:00]
Yeah. I think he was supposed to. I think he might be in one of those books, but he was supposed to give us some teepees or something. See, they were making some kind of Indian movies, was going to give everybody a bunch of teepees. Never came through.
I remember Joe DeMaurice just laughing, say he was just one of those guys that promised us stuff. Promise in the wind.
Johnny:
What about Jonathan Winters?
Eloy:
Yeah. Jonathan Winters was out here and there's a couple of other people out here. I didn't see all of them that were here. Some I saw. Some I actually picked up in a Volkswagen bus.
Johnny:
No kidding! But people were just kind of exploring on the Island?
[00:46:30]
Eloy:
Yeah, they were looking. At a lot of people were just, most people were just kind of, I think pretty much amazed. They were like, the first thing that most of them would say would be like, what the hell you guys wrong with this? I mean, there's nothing out here.
[00:47:00]
But it wasn't about we were going to stay. It was just about the idea of getting it turned in people's head that this is what we needed to do. But everybody looked and then it was like, Hey, have you ever been to a reservation? You know? I mean, if you go there, even if you go there today, this is like, this is luxury. Even a room like this. You know it's not going to leak because you got two floors, at least above you take a while to get wet.
But this is actually better than most reservations where most people came from, and still yeah, probably still is.
But I think the whole idea back then was not so much ... It was just idea. I don't think they envisioned keeping the prison here. I think their vision may be getting enough funds to really make something, which would have been nice too.
[00:47:30]
But I just don't think everybody really, at that point ... Nobody had any idea that ... Who would stay as long as we did and accomplished as much as we did.
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
[00:48:00]
But I think when people started seeing the change, 'cause people everywhere started taking over things, it wasn't just here. [Gequeu 00:47:51] was created, which is kind of Indian university and Davis. Pitt river was taken over, or PG and E and a lot of different, BIA bureaus all over everywhere. And I think it gave rise to the Indian movement.
Johnny:
Well, I was going to say AIM started. I've met Dennis Banks and Russell Means over the years; they've been back to the Island, and I know that they were involved in '68 with American Indian movement. And they did visit, but they weren't really here.
[00:48:30]
Eloy:
Well, I think what AIM goes back to, I think they laid claim pretty much. 'Cause I think some of the Means, I can't remember were here on the original takeover with Alva. So they laid their claim to be in on Alcatraz back to that time too. But I think at that ... In '69 that gave rise to the AIM movement, because before that it wasn't that many people were involved, and that really gave rise to it.
Johnny:
So you do remember those guys visiting?
[00:49:00]
Eloy:
Oh yeah. 'Cause they had a lot of ... At that time after '67, '68, they had a lot of AIM houses all over the Bay area. There was what they call Dame houses.
Johnny:
But I've heard people say that this Alcatraz occupation got the media attention that AIM needed.
Eloy:
[00:49:30]
That AIM needed. Yeah. That's why they took off. After Alcatraz, a lot of the Indian organizations took off. Before that there was nobody paying attention. And after that people found out. And I think a lot of people ... Not only was that a focal or turning point, but also when Richard was killed.
I think when Richard was killed that added more fuel to the fire. And I think people took it more serious then because they could, then they knew that, Hey, they don't really care about you anyway.
The thing that was bad about Richard, it's like, even with all the media attention, he got all the other stuff. When you passed away, it was a bad situation just to get him buried. So-
[00:50:00]
Johnny:
Well I want to go back to that, but when Richard was out here and he was on camera, how did people feel about that?
Eloy:
When he was here, actually all of the people that were on the Island originally, they actually voted him to be the spokesperson.
Johnny:
Ah. So you were at those meetings and saw that go down?
Eloy:
[00:50:30]
Yeah. Yep. And that was with all of the other people that were here. That was what Lenada, Wilma, Joe Bill, Bill Means.
Johnny:
Why did they choose him?
Eloy:
I don't know. Maybe because he had already been speaking, and he's the one that focused the attention on the group from the beginning. So it was pretty much trying to just let the natural transition for him to keep on. 'Cause he pretty much said what they wanted him to say. Yeah.
Johnny:
Would you guys meet before, say a TV camera was coming out to talk? Or how often did you have meetings?
Eloy:
Pretty much every day.
[00:51:00]
Johnny:
Really?
Eloy:
Yeah. There was always some kind of strategy going, I mean something to, "what if? What if kind of thing.
Johnny:
Right.
Eloy:
You deal with that situation. But it was pretty much left to one person, that way a lot of stuff didn't get confused. You didn't get more than one opinion out there. It was a consensus.
[00:51:30]
But Richard pretty much handled that pretty good, I thought. And I thought he was probably ... But then, see like, there's a lot of just a lot of different things that happened on the Island that probably shouldn't have happened if people would have been a bit stronger. And I wonder sometimes if Richard would've just kept on, what greatness could he have reached.
Johnny:
Yeah. What, what do you remember? Were you here when Yvonne fell?
Eloy:
[00:52:00]
No, I was pretty much ... I wasn't here when it happened. My wife was here and my son was here, but I wasn't here on the Island. After the fact I was pretty much running around doing everything I could do to ... But I was just like pretty much the gopher person for a long time. I was a person nobody ever seen or they'd see me once in a while. And I was just kind of like ... I think there might just be one or two pictures of me on the Island. The only picture I've seen is I'm carrying up a box like this. And the only reason I know it was me, it was 'cause the box broke right after the picture was taken. Right?
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
But other than that, I didn't ... There wasn't ... I never got too many photos around here and stuff. I just kind of stayed pretty much away from all the politics.
[00:52:30]
Johnny:
Yeah. But you heard the stories. I mean, what did you hear? What happened to Yvonne?
Eloy:
[00:53:00]
There's a couple of stories. Some say she was, they were just running around, she slipped and fell and others say that she was pushed. So it just depends on who you want to believe, but I kind of think that there was a lot of sabotaging going on back in that time. So I don't know. I kind of tend to think that maybe something might have been a little on the other side of the foul play kind of line. But I don't know. Never could prove nothing. But I heard different stories.
Johnny:
That must've tore the Island up. The energy.
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
It was not a good energy at that point.
Eloy:
Nope. There's a lot of stuff happening. And that's pretty much when one group took over from another group.
Johnny:
Because Richard left.
Eloy:
Yep.
[00:53:30]
Johnny:
He took the whole family off the Island. There were a lot of kids still from her previous marriage, I guess. She had some children.
Eloy:
Yeah. She had five children from her ... When her and Richard got together she had five children of her own already, and Fawn, Little Fawn and young Richard are from Richard.
Johnny:
So he took the whole family off the Island. And what happened? Did you continue working with the occupation?
[00:54:00]
Eloy:
I kept bringing stuff over here, but I didn't. I pretty much went with Richard. I just went with a different group. I didn't want to be on ...
Johnny:
What did he do? What did you guys do afterwards? You were more involved on the mainland?
Eloy:
He went to Pitt river. Took over Fiji station over there, got arrested there.
Johnny:
What year was that? Pitt river.
Eloy:
That was in '69 also.
Johnny:
Oh, okay.
Eloy:
'70. No, '70, '71. '70, '71. '71, I think.
Johnny:
Okay.
Eloy:
[00:54:30]
Might have been '71. And then when he got hurt, then I pretty much took all ... took half the kids with us. 'Cause he-
Johnny:
You took his family?
Eloy:
Yeah, I took half of his family. They lived here in Oakland. I actually went to school in Oakland for about a year when he was injured. And then I take him back and forth to the reservation because they were all living at the Shi'a reservation at Stroke point by Fort Bragg.
Johnny:
Oh, okay.
Eloy:
[00:55:00]
And his folks lived there. So that's where they were staying because they had two little houses over there. I'd take them back and forth. And then that's actually, that's where he ended up getting killed right there on that reservation right there at Stroke Point by MCA at a camp there. And Richard had already, I mean he was, he couldn't hardly get around and he had to walk on a crutch, kind of lurched. His whole side was messed up.
Johnny:
Was that due to the previous fight? Didn't he get into a fight in San Francisco in a pool room?
Eloy:
Yeah. Yeah. That was from that in San Francisco.
Johnny:
Down in the Mission, right?
Eloy:
Right. Yeah.
Johnny:
And that kind of messed him up. I've talked ... I think you told me that.
[00:55:30]
Eloy:
Yeah. That messed him up really bad. But he was still strong in his heart. He still was doing, even then he went and bought a big ol' yellow school bus and he was going to go around the country, just, talking about different things. And he could still speak a little bit, you know what I mean? Not as clear or coherent, but he could still ... he was still strong. But none of that happened.
Johnny:
What year did he pass away?
[00:56:00]
Eloy:
'72. '72. He had a YMCA camp; they had a bunch of horses at the corral down there. The Indian kids would go down and ride them. One of the guards down there was a special service officer, ex-green beret. And his name was Michael Morgan. I forget his name.
[00:56:30]
Him and Richard had a confrontation. One of the kids that he was actually a Mohawk kid that was staying on the reservation with him. I think it was Richard's cousin from New York. Him and a couple of other kids had been riding the horses. So they got ... said, Hey man, you can't be doing that. You know? And says, Hey, okay. You know? So they had a discussion the day before and I guess they kind of left it half unsettled or half undone.
[00:57:00]
Anyway, it happened again the next day. And they held the kids long. Richard walked down there. And anyway, they got in another confrontation. The guy's sitting on horseback and then just shot him right there on the spot. Said Richard had lunged at him, and emptied the nine millimeter on him and left him laying in the road there for hours, for the coroner to come up there. Just left him ready.
I actually drove from here up to there, and he called me and told me what had happened because I had the kids here. I got there before the coroner was there. So that's how long he was in the street. Right there, just down from the reservation. They would let nobody go down there. Wouldn't let Andy or nobody go down there.
[00:57:30]
Johnny:
And so you actually saw him still in the street.
Eloy:
Yeah. I was there when the coroner picked him up. Was there all through the whole process. They had to go through with getting him buried.
Because everybody talk about money this, money that. Richard never had no money. I never seen no money. I've had people tell me, "Oh, they had a mansion." And I said, "I never saw a mansion."
[00:58:00]
"They had a big car." I says, "I never saw a big car." "They had clothes." I never saw that.
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
Food: never saw a lot of that. You know? So I don't know who, where, when he was supposed to come from, but none of that was available for him. 'Cause when they had, when Annie wanted to bury him, she said, Richard always wanted to just a brown leather coat. And I never could get it for him.
[00:58:30]
So I went down there and got him a brown leather coat that he wanted, and that's what we put on him. And she put his little teeny ... some of the pictures that you guys got. That's what he went with. That and the leather coat. And took him to the mortuary and mortuary put him in a thing in there. And there was no money. People were supposed to kick in and do all this. There's no money coming in. Nothing. Mortuary didn't want to cut him loose. They left him in there. They didn't even embalm him.
[00:59:00]
They left him there, couldn't get him out. And finally, when getting ready to get him out, they said, no, you got to pay money. And this and that. I said, didn't have no money. No, no nobody's coming through and under. And there was like 2000 people sitting up on the rez waiting for him, the body to show up.
[00:59:30]
And the only reason they let him go was for some white people called and complained about the smell in the funeral partner. And they let him go. They finally released the body. And back then those days it was two rows. You head up to the reservation, you go around the front room, highway 101. Like going up to Fort Bragg. You can go backside, and backside cut off your time by about an hour. At least an hour. Anyway, they said they couldn't go the back way, 'cause the road was too narrow. So they took the long way getting over there. They got over there and finally got the body out of the thing.
[01:00:00]
And then the mortuary and the cars went on the short way. I'm ready to pick and go down, why can't it come up? But that was the stuff that they were running into. And it was bad. But if I was kind of disappointed, a lot of the people that should have been stepping up, they didn't step up. I didn't think they stepped up enough for somebody like Richard that deserved more than that.
Johnny:
That's a very sad ending.
Eloy:
[01:00:30]
I remember being there when we got there, when the body finally got there and stuff. They were going to put him inside their Annie's father's house for put the casket in there. Couldn't go through the door because the doors were real skinny, little doors. Reservation doors. So we had to take out a window. Anyway, I took out a window and fit the casket in through the window.
[01:01:00]
And Madbury Anderson was there, Peter Mitten. And I can remember some other, somebody else. Anyway, they had this big, old piece of, I want to say obsidian, but it looked like obsidian or something like that. It was a big, big stone, like a spike and a Blackberry had this mallet and he taught me, hold this. So he whacked it and I can't do it like that. Now he says my hands are hurting. He says, you do it. So I say what I got to do? And he says, you got to put a hole in the casket.
[01:01:30]
A hole in the casket? And he said, yeah! So he gave me the mallet and I held it like that, and I punched a hole in the casket. He was like, man, all the hair on my arms and my neck, everything just stood up. And it was like ... 'Cause it was letting his spirit escape, but I don't know, that was like the spookiest thing that ever happened to me in my whole life because I never felt nothing like that.
All over, wherever I had hair, the sucker just stood out just like that. It was, but that's how a Richard's spirit got out. Yeah.
Johnny:
And he was buried in a local cemetery though?
Eloy:
[01:02:00]
He was buried right there on the reservation. Right there at Cachiot. and that was another interesting story. 'Cause me and all of Annie's brothers dug the grave. Me and Chick and Moss and Say, and they're all gone. Anyway, when the last one passed away not too long ago, Say, and-
(NOTE: speaker names may be different in each section)
Eloy:
When the last one passed away not too long ago, say... And you met Elijah.
Johnny:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Eloy:
[01:02:30]
His grandson. And we were at the funeral. Yvonne called me up, says, "You know. I got... You know." So I went up there with them and we were at the funeral and Elijah's wearing some short pants. And this bee got under and bit him on the nut. And he's "Ow." And so the lady's giving him first aid and stuff and doing all this other stuff. "Well, you've got to get him to the hospital." And Yvonne says "We're going to take him to emergencies." I said, "Okay.". So, we take him to emergencies. He's crying and making all these noises. And I've got my hand like this. I had my hand on the table and he looked at my finger and he said, "What happened to you there? You don't..." And I said, "A bee bit me and they cut it off." He said, "Whoa. Whoa. Let's go. I'm feeling fine." And he got up and the nurse said, "Are you okay?" "Yeah. I'm good."
[01:03:00]
That was his grandson and great grandson. But he just sat down over there, he wagging in the mud and I'm out of here. You know? That was the last of Annie's brothers that passed away.
Johnny:
And you've kept in touch with his family all these years. You came back to the island with Annie and told me the story earlier that she didn't want to come back. That was just recently. What? A couple of years ago was it?
[01:03:30]
Eloy:
Yeah. It's been about two years.
Johnny:
And she'd never been back to the island since?
Eloy:
Since they left?
Johnny:
Yvonne's death?
Eloy:
[01:04:00]
No. And all of her children... At one time or other, some of them have been here. But not all of them together. But when she came, they all came to make sure that she was coming, because they was like, "Hey." Because I had called her and told her that she needed to come out here; because her kids had been telling me she needs to get closure over that. You need to come out and go. So I went over and talked to her a couple of times and she promised me one time. And I waited out here and she didn't show. So I said, "Okay." So the next time I went out, so I just said, "I want to go over there." And I went over and I spent the night. And I told her, "Come on, you got to get your coat ready. You got to get your purse ready. Got to have the coffee ready for the morning. So all you got to do is..." She said, "Okay. Okay."
[01:04:30]
She got all that ready and in the morning I get up, she's got the coffee ready and she says, "I'm not going." I said, "What do you mean you're not going? You said you was going." "No. I'm not going. I'm not going. I don't care what you say. I'm not going." I said, "Annie, you need to come. You need to come." So, it took me two cups of coffee to talk her into getting ready. So, she came. Once we got her in the car and all, the kids blocked her in so she couldn't get out, like it's too late. Yeah. That's when she came out here.
Johnny:
And what was that like when she made it out here?
Eloy:
It was pretty interest- [crosstalk 01:04:45].
Johnny:
Pretty powerful stuff?
Eloy:
Yeah. Pretty powerful, because she started showing all the kids, all the grandkids and all the rest of them, because none of them had been here. Some of them hadn't... They knew about the island buy they had never been here.
Johnny:
So she got to relay some of her stories to the kids?
[01:05:00]
Eloy:
To the kids. Yeah. And they all... Because two or three of Annie's kids aren't here anymore either, that were here. Rocky's another one that passed away tragically. He was one of the older kids that were here. I think you've got photos of him standing next to one of the old trucks. Him and some of the kids. He looked a lot like Yvonne.
Johnny:
What about your kids now? You said you had a boy out here?
Eloy:
I got one son.
[01:05:30]
Johnny:
One son out here?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
Has he been back to the island?
Eloy:
Yeah. He comes out every couple of two, three years. Brings his family out.
Johnny:
For the sunrise service? He's been out?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
But he doesn't remember much? I guess he was just a little boy? Or how old was he when...?
Eloy:
He remembers all of Richard's kids.
Johnny:
Oh. Really?
Eloy:
They all grew up together.
Johnny:
Okay.
Eloy:
[01:06:00]
[01:06:30]
He remembers all of that. And that was another interesting story. Because when we got little Richard, he was just like a year old. He wasn't even a year old. Yeah, he might've been a year old because he was barely walking. But I remember we couldn't afford diapers, so my wife went out and bought a bunch of cotton diapers and washed the diapers every night. I said, "This shit's got to stop." So, we told the kids, I said, "Hey man." Just told them, "Take him to the bathroom. Every time he pees it's a nickel. Every time he goes and poops it's a dime." So man, Richard was the most bathroomed kid in the whole block, because every time they wanted some candy, "Come on, Richard. You got to go to the bathroom." So it worked out pretty good for a couple of times. But once he figured out that his stuff was worth money, he wanted to get paid. But that's how he got potty trained. Nickel and dime. Nickel and a dime.
So, he's talking about doing his kid, and I told him that story and he cracked up laughing. He says, "You guys really did that?" And bother Joseph says, "Hell yeah, we did it." He says, "And sometimes we'd do the stuff and say it was yours." To get that nickel and dime.
[01:07:00]
Johnny:
Hey, there's graffiti in here. Now, I've been told that you've seen your graffiti down in the dungeon. I think we should go down there and look for that Eloy on the ceiling. What do you say?
Eloy:
All right. Yeah.
Johnny:
Let's go down there.
Eloy:
I haven't been down there for a long time. Yeah.
Johnny:
All right.
Eloy, maybe you want to tell us a little bit about what happened down here when you guys were on the island? You mentioned, as we came down, the kids...
Eloy:
[01:07:30]
[01:08:00]
This is where all the kids used to come down here. It was kind of like a spook house. Scare each other. And they had the whole area to cover. I remember one time they had a... There was one time I can remember, exactly when it happened, but they had a dead body. Somebody jumped off the Golden Gate bridge and the body washed up down here in the bottom. And I remembered them telling John Whitefox that there was a body down there and John Whitefox says, "Hey man. You guys had better not be lying to me." "No. There's a body down there." He went all the way down there. Sure enough, there was a body down there. It was all bloated up. Ready to call up the Coast Guard and the people. And they just laughed, and they said that's the only time they said the island belonged to us, because of course the Coast Guard station... "It's your island. You take care of it."
Johnny:
So they didn't respond?
Eloy:
No, they came and got it later. But that's the only time they said the island was ours. "This is your island. You take care of it." I don't know. I think it had to be a jumper from the Golden Gate or somebody [crosstalk 01:08:21] Florida. There was a body down there.
Johnny:
[01:08:30]
The currents went back and forth. We've seen it happen since I've been out here. So, the Coast Guard, they gave up in blockading the island?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
And...
Eloy:
I think they very much called them off. I don't think they wanted to give up on their own. I think it was just called off, off higher authority.
Johnny:
Yeah. Would you remember the negotiations with the government? Were you involved in any of that?
Eloy:
[01:09:00]
No. But I remember them being out here on the island. I remembered them talking about stuff. You know? When Poole... I think it was Poole... Stanley Poole or somebody came out here, and he pretty much said that they weren't going to do nothing about it. I remember that. And everybody being like, "Wow. Really?" And everybody's saying, "No. No, man. It's sort of a sneak attack. They're coming in the middle of the night."
Johnny:
And that was early on? They were talking that way?
Eloy:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. That's pretty much when they called the Coast Guard off, I think. Right about that time is when they started letting people come out here freely.
Johnny:
I mean, I've heard stories of sailboats going by and arrows flying.
Eloy:
Yeah. That only happened one time, I think.
Johnny:
Tour boat?
[01:09:30]
Eloy:
Yeah. And somebody fired. It didn't hit nothing, but they made a big media thing. Ships under attack. Indians attack ship, with an arrow clinking off the side of a bow 50 foot high. Clink. But it made pretty good publicity for them. For the...
[01:10:00]
But all in all, I think that the occupation pretty much accomplished what it was meant to accomplish, because there's just a lot of positives, a lot of stuff that people don't like to talk about. But there's a lot of positive stuff that people need to talk more about too; because a lot of stuff came out of that occupation.
[01:10:30]
And I think, probably now more than ever, because a lot of that stuff is still happening on the reservations. Nothing's really changed, and a lot of the monies that are getting... Right now I think one of the tribes won a big award, and they're trying to get individual people to sign checks. What they do by that was they can piecemeal the reservations again. Just take a piece at a time, because that's what they're doing there. Most of the property, like in Navajos and the Pueblo Laguna, all their property's held in common and nobody can own stuff. You can live there, you can do what you need to do but, if you move on, it stays with the tribe. It doesn't...
[01:11:00]
[01:11:30]
And what they're trying to do now is circumvent that, by giving people individual monies for individual partials of their piece, their portion of the land. But nothing's really changed. Anytime there's any kind of resource or something. There's developers now. It's like we were talking about the Ohlone's. Right over here, on the other side of the Bay right here, you can see it from here, the holy shell mounds, where Ikea and all that's sitting on top of probably the biggest Ohlone burial ground in the state of California. And they got a little shell mound over there says Shell Mound Street and that's it.
Well, what's interesting there was some of the people that were picketing there, before they built that, some of the people that actually were working there, they found out about it, were wondering why they were getting sick and they quit working after they found out. Because they were actually getting sick from it. So, maybe it was bad medicine. I don't know.
[01:12:00]
Johnny:
Do you remember talking with Richard after the occupation was over? And did you guys debrief a little bit and go, "Wow. Look at that. We got an apology from president Nixon for genocide against the American Indian." And restoring tribal lands, preserving the reservation.
Eloy:
[01:12:30]
I think that was the biggest part of... The satisfaction was from sitting and listening to him talk about stuff like that, because you could see tangibles. It wasn't just a promise. You could see stuff happening. Before it was in the wind and nothing ever happened. But this stuff you could see; it was happening. I don't know. I think he just gave a lot of hope to a lot of people, and inspired people to make something of themselves; to do something. I don't know. Why would he say that? Leave a mark somewhere. But I think he was a little disappointed in some stuff but I think, all in all, I think he knew what he had done.
Johnny:
And what about you? You must take pride in what you...?
[01:13:00]
Eloy:
Well, me, I didn't really want to come back out to Alcatraz, but I had a couple of friends that used to come all the time and they told me, "Man, you know, they don't even mention Richard no more." And that's the only reason I came back.
Johnny:
You're talking about the sunrise services? So what year was that? That you came back? You started coming back?
Eloy:
Late seventies. Right after they started them up. I just started coming back because of that. And so, every time they had the ceremony, I made sure I went over and told whoever was M.C. I said, "You mention Richard Oakes."
[01:13:30]
Johnny:
[01:14:00]
Well, we got a little graffiti here, Eloy. Sioux Indian, South Dakota. Cola man or woman. And so there's a lot of tagging down here. We looked around, we couldn't find the Eloy. I'm sure it's down here somewhere, your name. But, as you said, this was a playground for the kids. The kids that kind of thought it was a haunted house down here; down in the dungeon. And I asked you just a minute ago about what you thought about... If you and Richard had talked about what you guys had accomplished out here by taking the island. And when you come back for the sunrise, you and I have worked together building a fire, driving up and bringing the wood up to the parade ground there. And I have been working for years out here. Does it surprise you to see what this place has turned into?
[01:14:30]
Eloy:
Yeah, because it's pretty much turned into what they wanted it to turn into. It's partly a cultural center. People are learning and you guys keep it out there in the forefront. So, people are pretty much alerted to what's going on. And...
Johnny:
[01:15:00]
People ask us. "Why do you have that graffiti on an Indian land? What's that all about? Custer had it coming. Why? And my response is it's historic. It's a tool to relay the story of the Indian occupation to the public. So, there's been talk of actually having an Indian artist come back and redo- [crosstalk 01:15:05]
Eloy:
Redo it.
Johnny:
That graffiti, so that it doesn't disappear. You can't have a G man go out there and paint it, but a native American to come back. And the sunrise services are, to me, very powerful.
Eloy:
[01:15:30]
Yeah. Yeah. I like them because they're pretty much a lot of diversity there and I think there's a lot of spirituality going on there and people that attend feel it.
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
You know? And, for me, it's that time of year just for inner peace. Right our souls.
Johnny:
Right. Well, you mentioned that you came back to the island because people had forgotten about Richard Oakes and his involvement.
Eloy:
[01:16:00]
[01:16:30]
Yeah. Seemed to be they weren't mentioning his name anymore. And I just thought that they needed... Just something that needed to be done. And there's a lot of things that came out of what Richard did, and I don't think there's too many places in the Bay area that were giving him any kind of recognition. You know? So, few years back when I was at Intertribal Friendship House, I was leading that. And that's the oldest Indian center in the United States, outside of the one in New York. But when I was there, I pretty much got the board to go along with the plan. And we had a first annual Richard Memorial we came for. And that's actually the first time that Annie came out. I got her down to that one. Derek and I had to go up and pick her up, because she wouldn't come. But I brought her and her whole family down there.
[01:17:00]
And I think Craig went down there and some of the other people and took some photos down there. But Intertribal Friendship had, over the years, it fell into a bad state of disrepair. And a lot of people were stepping up and doing what they needed to do also. But money's always been kind of scarce in the Indian community, so... My wife told me the last time we were down there, because she used to hold functions there all the time, to make fundraisers for the organization. And she told me last time we were there, "Boy, this place is really getting bad and you need to do something." And I kept putting it off, because to me it sounded like, "Oh man. When they say I need to do something, that's like a lot of labor."
[01:17:30]
[01:18:00]
But anyway. So, after she passed away, I went back down there. I started going back down to tribal friendship house and got it all back together. We put new floors in; new plumbing and just fixed it up pretty... Went back to fixing it up. After it was all... I had one of the local artists from up at Jackson Rancheria, Don Anderson, he's a muralist. He painted a nice Californian mural on the wall. On one of the walls down there. So, we had a grand opening. Put new floors on the floor. And that was another little story there because, when they put the floor in, the Rebuilding Together outfit came in and helped us up, right? So, they got donations and stuff and one of the guys had gone up and they gave him about 10 different colors of tile.
[01:18:30]
They didn't have any one color. So, they gave him all these bunches of tile and the guy says, well, "We got this and this." We said, "We'll make it work and we'll do something with it." But they've sent us enough that we made some Indian designs and stuff and it worked out perfect. The border, the whole bit and turned out beautiful. Matter of fact, he put it in their book. But me and my son did the job and had a couple other people help us out doing it. We got all back together and had Don do the mural. And then we opened up the house. That's when Richard Oaktree did the memorial for him.
[01:19:00]
And shortly after that they did the San Francisco one. And so other stuff started. They started bringing his name back up to the forefront, which is what needed to be done. But that worked out pretty good, because they had good food and you had the magician and you had clowns in there. Got a whole bunch of different people... People that are local Indian artists and stuff. They donated stuff and it was a nice turnout. But that was the first time Annie had came out and it was nice to see her smiling and cracking up; see the whole family have a good time.
Johnny:
[01:19:30]
Annie never made it back for the sunrise, but I know a lot of the veterans, and you're one of those veterans, that are always brought to the front of the circle at the fire there. And the mic has been passed around and people have talked. And Joe Morris was somebody that would play the trumpet. You know?
Eloy:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Play Taps.
Johnny:
And he would say Taps and to remember all the warriors that have gone on. And that circle is getting smaller and smaller now. The veterans from Alcatraz... How many do you think are still alive that were here, originally, in the first month? From the occupation?
[01:20:00]
Eloy:
[01:20:30]
Well, see, Wilma's gone. So LeNada's still here. Annie's gone. Richard's gone. John Whitefox has gone. Ed Castillo's still here. Ed unfortunately, he wasn't one of the 14. He was here, but he wasn't one of the guys who was original on there. I mean, he was instrumental, I think. Coyote's still around. Elaine's still around. There might be, of the original, there might be probably 35 or 40 left. Yeah. Of the original 14, probably less than that. Less than 50%. Because every year somebody else has gone.
Johnny:
Robert Free, he's the...
Eloy:
He's here. He's here, Robert Free.
Johnny:
[01:21:00]
You have the... I don't know if we can get a shot of the tee shirt there. But there's a great visual there with San Francisco in the foreground and that teepee there on Alcatraz. Do you remember that teepee being and set up?
Eloy:
Yeah. I actually spent some time in it. I didn't spend a whole night, but I spent some time in it.
Johnny:
A little kid?
Eloy:
Yeah. Yeah. But I remember him. Isn't he trying to do something?
Johnny:
Yes, he is. He is. The Park Service has been negotiating with him. I think one of the problems is that the birds are nesting where that teepee was.
Eloy:
Oh.
Johnny:
So, you know...
Eloy:
Time to move the teepee.
[01:21:30]
Johnny:
We won't go there. And then also, since we're panning in on your tee shirt here now, can you tell the story about the medallion here? The bead work? The Alcatraz- [crosstalk 01:21:38]
Eloy:
[01:22:00]
Yeah. This was made by an Apache warrior named Coco and he's from White Mountain in Arizona. But he made three of them. Myself and Richard and Joe Bill had one. I don't know. I haven't seen neither one of those in a long time. And this one was pretty much kind of kept... I don't take it out too often. Once in a while I bring it out at different ceremonies. In fact, I got this on in that calendar. They were doing it that day they gave me the bike. They were doing a ceremony and I had my regalia on. That's the only reason I had it on. But I couldn't pass up getting on that bike.
Johnny:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm honored that you wore it today here. I mean, that is a beautiful piece.
Eloy:
But I'm going to give this to young Richard, because I think he should have it.
Johnny:
Richard Oakes' son?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
Yeah. That's beautiful, man.
[01:22:30]
Eloy:
I think he'll take better care of it.
Johnny:
[01:23:00]
The sunrise... Back to the service... That seems to be getting larger and larger. It seems like more people are coming out and there's a lot of non-Indian people, but I like the gathering of the tribes. You've got African tribes, you've got Tibetan monks coming. I know we mentioned the Islanders coming out. Tribes of the world coming and gathering. I remember a few years back, there was an Israeli and a Palestinian, came out into the circle and embraced each other as brothers. So, this is a real powerful thing that is still going on on Alcatraz.
Eloy:
Yeah. I can- [crosstalk 01:23:12].
Johnny:
Go ahead.
Eloy:
[01:23:30]
I think that ceremonies, it does a lot for people. And I think it's a source of pride for Indian people too, because it's like a stage, and you don't get a stage like that too often. So, I think people are able to get their opinions, and what's going on in their countries, across the other people; because you share a lot of similarities. I mean, the struggle over there is probably no different than it is here. It's just different languages and stuff. So, I think it's a good unity builder.
[01:24:00]
Johnny:
[01:24:30]
Definitely. Definitely. I remember the first time... I've told this story maybe to you... But I started 20 years ago out here and I worked the sunrise; and of course I got the uniform and the badge and I'm representing the government. A native American Indian came up to me and said, "Ranger, you ought to thank me for your job." And I looked at them and I said, "Sir, what do you mean?" And he said, "Well, think about it. If my people and I hadn't taken this island over, you couldn't afford to come here on your government salary." And I looked at him and I put my hand out and I shook his hand. I said, "Right on brother. Thank you very much. You're absolutely right." Because this was going to be a big gambling casino. And it was going to be a $1000 a night hotel out in the middle of the Bay. It wasn't going to be a national park.
And so, that man had a point there. And I always think of that at the sunrise; that the occupation did- [crosstalk 01:24:50]
Eloy:
It was pretty close. Yeah.
Johnny:
[01:25:00]
It opened it up to become a national park site for people to learn about the island's history. And now you're part of that history, man. Does that blow you away a little bit? To think, you know...?
Eloy:
Yeah. Yeah. Because you never expect to be... I mean, things happen. Me, I just kind of been lucky. I just seem like I've been in the right places at the right time sometimes. Sure, bad things happen, I mean, what the hell? If you're not living, you get no experience of this bad things happened to you. That's what experience is. That's what they tell me. I don't know.
Johnny:
No. I'm into that.
[01:25:30]
Eloy:
But that's how life is. You know? And I think by being able to come back here and do this... Even just this interview and stuff... It's like you're reaching people; and that was the whole goal.
Johnny:
Yeah.
Eloy:
You know? To reach people and to say, "Hey. There's still Indians out there. They're not just on that Buffalo nickel." And, by the way, that Buffalo nickel now, if you want to get it, it'll cost you about 50 bucks. They made it a $50 gold piece or something.
Johnny:
Oh? No kidding? Okay.
Eloy:
They upgraded the nickel, man. It's now got to cost you more money to get.
[01:26:00]
Johnny:
Well, in that documentary we were talking about, I think it's Shirley Guevara that says this. So, maybe it was LeNada, but she said the occupation... The Indian people in this country... It was like a flame that was just ready to go out. And that this occupation brought that flame back to be a powerful. And it rippled across...
Eloy:
[01:26:30]
Yeah. It's just like starting that fire in the morning. And you just look at that little flame and all of a sudden that wind hits it. You got a fire.
Johnny:
You are the fire meister. I've seen you start that fire out there without hardly any kindling or anything. I hope we can continue making fires together for many more years to come out here.
Eloy:
Yeah. Me too.
Johnny:
Well, I thank you, Sir, for this interview.
Eloy:
Thank you.
Johnny:
It's been a real pleasure and knowing you has definitely being historic.
Eloy:
Remember, you will give me that trip for this interview, right?
[01:27:00]
Johnny:
Oh, that's right. Good job, man. Good job.
So Eloy, we're in front of this old prison building here and there's a little bit of graffiti up above on it; the eagle there. You remember some of this graffiti going up?
[01:27:30]
Eloy:
Yeah. I remember a lot of that going up. That's says free right up there. It's pretty hard to see now, but it was pretty clear back in those days. Yeah. I think a lot of that paint was part of the Golden Gate bridge paint.
Johnny:
Yeah. Okay.
Eloy:
Couple of 50 gallon buckets. And so you see a lot of red paint around here. That's pretty much where the red paint came from.
Johnny:
Lighthouse was painted red for a while.
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
There's a red fist just up on the beam there, as you come in, for Red Power.
Eloy:
[01:28:00]
Red Power. Yeah. It was appropriate, I think, that they left all that red paint here, because of Red Power. I mean, everything was perfect for that.
Johnny:
Definitely. Definitely. Well, it helps us tell the story of the Indian occupation and I'd love to go inside and maybe settle a little bit with you and walk around, take a look at the old prison and catch your stories about the Indian occupation.
Eloy:
All right.
Johnny:
All right.
Eloy:
Okay.
Johnny:
[01:28:30]
Let's head in. Well Eloy we're on Broadway here, in the cell house. And this was the main thoroughfare for the convicts going through to the mess hall down at the end there. What do you remember about Broadway here at the cell house? Do you remember people living in here?
Eloy:
[01:29:00]
Yeah. I remember a lot of people were... A lot of them wanted to be up the top floors because it's like being top dog. It was a lot of activities. There was a lot of pretty much people fighting for the corner. Nobody wanted to be in the middle, but they wanted the end units. There was a lot of... I used to hear a lot of the kitchen noises behind in the background yet today. There was a lot of activity and this was kind of like a new found toy when you came out here. It was like a giant playground for the kids. And mostly for adults too, because a lot of them never been inside of a prison or a jail, you know?
Johnny:
And you guys had free reign of this place.
Eloy:
[01:29:30]
Yeah. Everything was wide open. So, kids everywhere; Adults everywhere. People picking spots; people hiding out and land claim. You know? A lot of them had their cells marked right away. Names went up and don't come in. This is [inaudible 00:27:34].
Johnny:
Right. How many people would you say were actually staying in the cell house?
Eloy:
[01:30:00]
At first it was pretty much most of them. For the first couple of days, till people started out and started looking out at different places, and picking different spots for themselves. And the ones that decided they were staying longer, went to different places. And families, pretty much according to need. But a lot of people picked what you call strategic places, where they kind of keep an eye on. You couldn't pretty much sneak up on nobody, because somebody is always looking out. Some of the people live right down closer to the dock, because they overlooked the Bay.
[01:30:30]
In fact, Richard lived right in a... As you look up to the top line, the first window there. Last time we were here, Annie was pretty much pointing everything out where they had gone. From here, to here, to here, to here. It was interesting. And it was interesting to have Annie come back to the island, because she hadn't been here in a long time. But...
Johnny:
That is a good thing that she made it back, pretty much just before she passed away. Right?
Eloy:
Yeah. Yeah. I think she needed it, because we had a couple of conversations thereafter and I think she got a little bit of closure on Yvonne. You know?
Johnny:
Yeah.
[01:31:00]
Eloy:
[01:31:30]
That was one reason she hadn't wanted to come back for a long time. But it was interesting, because I literally had to go up to her house and spend the night. And most of the night we were just talking and the kids were asking questions. All of Richard's grandkids were there and his daughters and granddaughters. There was a house full of people and we all spent the night and she said, "Okay, I'm coming. Okay, I'm coming." And I said, "Pack your stuff up." So she said, "No."
I said, "Come on. You got to pack it up. It's just for tonight. And get your coat on. Get your coat and get everything ready to go out the door." So, everything was ready to go and the next morning I get up early and she was making coffee. She says, "I'm not going." And I said, "What do you mean you're not going, Annie? You're going." She says, "I'm not going. I'm not going. I'm not going. You can't make me go." And I says, "No. You need to go." So, we got her in the vehicle and she actually came out.
Johnny:
You talked her into it?
[01:32:00]
Eloy:
Yeah. She actually came out that day. And I don't know, I think there's about 30 of Richard and her family that came out that day. The whole family came out and it was kind of nice.
Johnny:
I missed that. But Craig was with you, wasn't he?
Eloy:
Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny:
So, you got a chance to hang with them.
Eloy:
So, that was good, because she got to come back out here at least one more time and just get closure, I think. She felt good about it after. She had mixed feelings about coming out, but she was glad she did afterwards. But she says, "Don't ask me to go again." So it's a...
[01:32:30]
Johnny:
I've heard that from a few folks over the years. So, you stayed in the prison? You remember staying here for- [crosstalk 01:32:36]
Eloy:
Yeah. We stayed down on the other end. Down there by the middle. My wife and my son. I didn't stay here that long. I stayed here about a month total. My wife stayed here almost two months. But I was mostly on the back and forth, because I had a vehicle. I had a Volkswagen bus that was like an Indian bus. It looked like an Indian bus. It had five or six different colors of lacquer and patch on it. And extra fenders and...
Johnny:
Indian taxi.
[01:33:00]
Eloy:
Yeah. And that's what it was used for on Alcatraz, because I ran.
(NOTE: speaker names may be different in each section)
Eloy:
[01:33:30]
... and it was pretty much... That's what it was used for on Alcatraz, because I ran back, I was going to UC Berkeley at the time on a leadership training program. At the same time I was in the Building Trades Union over on the other side. So I got to meet a lot of people that were active in the unions, because that program that I was going to was a total of like 65 Bay Area unions, from communication workers to SEIU, automobile work. Pretty much one in every union that was in the Bay Area at that time. So I got to meet a lot of people. I got to meet a lot of the people that were going to the Indian school, learning welding and different stuff like that. And I met Richard, actually, met him at one of Vietnam demonstrations, right about the time that they were starting to kick things up over there.
Johnny:
[01:34:00]
I was going to say, so you were in Berkeley, going to school there when all the protests against the Vietnam war and people hitting the streets?
Eloy:
Right.
Johnny:
So you were right in the middle. What year would that have been?
Eloy:
That was 1969. '67, '68, '69, all that was happening back in there. There was a lot of stuff, the-
Johnny:
That was a hot time.
Eloy:
Black Panthers was going on, Eldridge Cleaver, a lot of that other stuff, George Jackson, there's a whole bunch of stuff that was going on all through all the years.
Johnny:
Did they ever involved with the occupation, Black Panthers?
[01:34:30]
Eloy:
Actually, I think the Black Panthers, they had a lot of donations coming to the island. Actually, I think the biggest part of the people that donated money to the people that were on the island was black people, African American people.
Johnny:
Really?
Eloy:
[01:35:00]
Because the churches gave stuff and individuals gave money. And I think they could identify probably with the Indian situation from way back in the day, because a lot of people don't realize that when we had slavery back then, there was Indians that were slaves also. Nobody ever mentions that, because, I guess colonization, they just invent the wheel of a lot of different people and the Indians and the black people were pretty much the defenseless people at that time. So, it's kind of pretty much been... Now, they're doing it to everybody. So it's a circle going around.
Johnny:
Well, in the African American community, it was intermarriage with American Indians too.
[01:35:30]
Eloy:
[01:36:00]
Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of them, West Virginia, Florida, all over. Now, it's probably even more so because the urban Indians are all mixed. You go up the coast, Pomo Land, there's a lot of Hawaiian. There's a lot of people that, because they were driven on the end of the ocean. Boats came, and a lot of... Just a couple of years ago, I think right here in San Francisco, these guys came over in them long boats all the way from Australia or somewhere. And big, big guys, these guys were like 6'8", 6'9", and then they'd throw their eyes and their tongue out at you and make that scary noise. They're some big Indians.
Johnny:
Well, at the Circle last year, or the past a couple of Sunrises, there was a gentleman that did the native dance, and he did tongue thing that you're talking about.
Eloy:
[01:36:30]
Well, these guys came over, they came over to Sunrise right over there. And I was over there because they had an Indian group from East Bay over there to meet them in Sunrise, early in the morning. And they came across and they had a motorboat, one of them little kind of escort boats coming across and these guys out pedaled that thing, they was going hoof, hoof, hoof and they was going with long strokes, hoo, hoo, hoo, and that thing just went hoo...
Johnny:
Nice.
Eloy:
Then, they got out and they did their landing thing, they did the landing ceremony. They all danced and stuff. But these guys were like 6'6", 6'7". And I don't think none of them was under 400 pounds.
Johnny:
Wow.
[01:37:00]
Eloy:
[01:37:30]
They were big, big dudes. They were muscular dudes. They were just big guys, man. And they did that dance, and at the end of the dance, they rolled their eyes and threw their tongue out and they were tattooed on their tongue. These guys were, "Woo." And so everybody jumped. But it was a nice ceremony, and it was interesting to watch a group that could go that far the way these guys... I mean, just say, "Hey, let's head out." That's a part of the native tradition, I guess, when you think about it, they just set it out.
Johnny:
It's nice to see them involved in the Sunrise service now, too coming around, it very cool. Hey, it's getting kind of loud here. I say we go up to the theater and maybe get a quiet space there.
Eloy:
Sure.
Johnny:
[01:38:00]
All right. Hi. My name is John Cantwell. I'm a national park ranger on Alcatraz Island. And today is April 3rd. It's a Sunday, and we're going to do an oral history with Eloy Martinez, a former Indian occupier from Alcatraz, and we'll get Eloy's story here today on The Rock. Eloy, how are you doing today?
Eloy:
I'm doing fine.
Johnny:
What's your full name, Eloy?
Eloy:
My name is Eloy Martinez and I was from Four Corners, born and raised in a mining camp close to Walsenburg, Colorado.
Johnny:
What year were you born, Eloy?
Eloy:
I was born in 1940, so I'm an old dog.
[01:38:30]
Johnny:
So, tell us a little bit about your family. What'd your dad do?
Eloy:
[01:39:00]
Actually, we were out here in about 1941, 42, he was stationed at Treasure Island, he was in the Navy and then we went back to Colorado and he shipped out and then he got wounded on... I guess he's the guy who used to put the shells in the guns and stuff and messed up his hand. So they put him on disability and he went back to Colorado and it was just a progression of moving from one place to another, and alcohol came into play a lot. And-
Johnny:
Back to your mom and dad, how did they meet? Just in Colorado?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
That's where they were both from?
[01:39:30]
Eloy:
[01:40:00]
They were both from Colorado. Partially, there was a lot of dairy farmers there, but there was a lot of sheep ranches and stuff like that in that area. But there was a lot of dairy, and then there was what they actually called the big four mines there. And that was in... I don't know, did they call it Tioga or some place like that, something like. But mostly they had miners from all over the world. And so there was a pretty good mix of everybody there. There was people from Yugoslavia, from Russia, Germany in almost any... Mexicans, people from Spain, almost any kind of... I think it was pretty much biracial all the way around. There was African American people there, Indian people. There was a pretty good mix in all those little towns.
Johnny:
But what was your parents' nationalities now? You, your dad, was he American?
Eloy:
[01:40:30]
Yeah. My dad is part Yakama and Ute. In fact, he's buried in the Yakima cemetery in Washington. And my mom was Dené and Mexican. And probably, I don't know, back in that area, you probably got a few more people we don't even know about. Everybody's pretty much of a mix.
Johnny:
Yeah. But they met in Colorado?
Eloy:
[01:41:00]
Yeah, but they both met in Colorado. Shortly after my dad... I think he was about 17. I think he might've even lied about his age to get into the Navy. I can't remember, because he wanted off the farm. They had a sheep ranch and he used to do a lot of sheep shearing and stuff like that.
Johnny:
But they never lived on the reservation?
Eloy:
[01:41:30]
Yeah. Early on they both... Peabody Coal pretty much wiped out the reservation we were from. They came in and that was during, I guess it was termination, when the termination policies went into effect, a lot of people just had to... They were no longer tribes, I guess you could say, no longer recognized. I think it's pretty much just like it is today, whenever they want something, they pass another rule or another law. And then the mining companies move in shortly afterwards, either that or speculators.
[01:42:00]
Whenever there's some kind of a valuable resource or anything that they can sell or make a profit from, they're going to revise some kind of way to get it. And now, they're trying to send people individual checks that on communal tribal lands so that people sell their share of the land and they say, "Well, this guy already sold it," and tribes are not accepting the checks, but a lot of individuals probably are, and that's happened throughout all the reservations. You could see different reservations all over and people that were allowed to come onto the reservations with say a little grocery store, stuff like that, right now, they own like two thirds of the reservations, because they've done the same thing. They do it through pawn, say, "Hey, well you need some credit. You need this, you need that?" Comes time to pay, you don't got the money so you lose what you got.
[01:42:30]
[01:43:00]
I don't think that's changed too much. And especially in a lot of the areas where the tribes are not recognized anymore, because not everybody got recognized again. Right here in California, the biggest tribes in California, the Ohlones are not recognized. Everybody knows, they got colleges named after them, they got the Ohlone Shell Mound, and they got all kinds of... But the tribe itself is not recognized. So they need recognition. And a lot of people don't realize too, that their recognition came as part of something that happened here on Alcatraz because Nixon returned a lot of... he ended termination policies and he returned a lot of land back. The Navajos got a lot of land, the [inaudible 00:10:09] got a lot of land, tribes all over.
Johnny:
[01:43:30]
Nixon really... Pardon me, he did really side with the American Indian during that occupation. He had an Indian coach, I think in high school, the football coach that was native American Indian. So your parents went through the termination program and they were affected by it. And you do remember that happening too as a child, going through that?
Eloy:
[01:44:00]
Yeah, because my godfather still lived on the reservation, they were right out of Ignacio on the Southern Ute part. And I remember going up to that reservation, but the other part where they took over, where Peabody Coal took over, there's nothing left there. Now mother earth's kind of reclaiming it, but you see these mountains look like mountains, but they're really coal slag [inaudible 01:43:55] shells where the cold slag has got the built up on us, growing grass and trees and stuff on it. So it's pretty much returning from slag coal, I guess.
Johnny:
Excuse me.
Eloy:
But the termination policies put a lot of people into different situations. And the mining camps opened up a lot of work. It was cheap work, but it was dangerous work.
Johnny:
So your dad looked at possibly a better future with getting in the military, you think?
Eloy:
[01:44:30]
Yeah, because right around that time, I think it was not too long before he went into the service, I can't remember exactly what year, but they had the Ludlow massacre in that area. That's when they killed all the Indians with the CF and trains came on railroad tracks. I don't know if that was some... I always hear rumors, but I don't quite remember. But I remember that they said that was kind of the first armored vehicle that they had made with a turd on it and they had mounted it on a flatbed car and that's how they killed all the striking miners. It's pretty much a world famous massacre, I don't know. But that's just pretty much right outside the mining camps where I grew up.
[01:45:00]
So there was a lot of history back there of a lot... And I remember when I got back in the forties, because I was born in the forties and I went to a couple of schools back there, and I remember my father had gone, after that he had got a job at Pueblo Ordinance Depot. That's where they used to make... because he can do desk work. He couldn't do physical work, but they said that he could do work.
Johnny:
Was he still in the military then when he was doing that work?
[01:45:30]
Eloy:
[01:46:00]
No, he had just got out. I think about 44, something like that. 45. I can't remember. I must've been four or five years old. We moved to area in Pueblo, Colorado where all the steel mills were at. I guess it was what would you call the outer limits, the ghetto kind of, I don't know. It's way back then it was part of an area, it smelled so bad, everybody called it Pew-town, where you-
Johnny:
What?
Eloy:
Pew-town. Pew.
Johnny:
Pew-town.
Eloy:
You know, like pew.
Johnny:
Other side of the tracks? Okay.
Eloy:
Yeah. But they actually called it Pew-town and now it's Pueblo, Colorado. And that was where all the smelting plants and all the steel mills were. All stuff drifted from there and all that sludge that went right down the river from there.
Johnny:
So you would say that's probably your earliest memory, was dating back to that time, Pew-town?
[01:46:30]
Eloy:
Yeah, going back to that. That was first town we moved to after my father got out of the service. Grandma still lived on the farm with my uncles and my father's other relatives were all kind of, I don't know, always in conflict about stuff. So he decided to move on. And that was-
Johnny:
Did you spend any time on the farm as a kid? Did you visit your grandmother?
[01:47:00]
Eloy:
Yeah. I learned how to ride horses. I grew up on horses actually. So I go way back on a horse. I worked in the lumber mills when I was little and that's back-
Johnny:
When you say little, how old were you when you were working in the lumber mill?
Eloy:
About five.
Johnny:
Go on. Really?
Eloy:
[01:47:30]
Yeah, because what they used to do, they didn't have a big machinery back then. This was way back in the early... it was about 1945, 46 I guess, when they first got a... I might have been going on six. But they used to have horses, a team of horses. So they'd take the horses up to the top, hook them onto the logs and he pulled the logs all the way to the bottom, but they needed somebody at the bottom to unhook the horses and bring the horses back up. So that was my job. I would run behind the horses-
Johnny:
A little kid?
Eloy:
[01:48:00]
Yeah. I would run behind the horses and the log, in case he got tangled up, somebody could pull the chain or whatever. And then you take them down to the bottom and unhook the chain and they just go down into flume or a skid thing and you go on, and I'd get on the horse and ride the horses back up and I get to run down the hill again. That's what I'd do all day long. After that we moved from there. They pretty much clear cut everything that was up there, so we moved from there to... My father, went to work at the Ordinance Depot then. And then-
Johnny:
What did your mom do?
Eloy:
She was pretty much a stay at home lady.
Johnny:
Did you have siblings?
Eloy:
Yeah. There was a total of nine of us in my family.
[01:48:30]
Johnny:
Nine kids to the family?
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
Wow.
Eloy:
Yeah, there's four boys and three girls left. So there's no one to... it's the other way around. Three boys left and four girls left. Two have passed on.
Johnny:
Where were you, in the middle somewhere or-
Eloy:
No, I'm right at the top.
Johnny:
You're right at the top, you're the eldest?
Eloy:
Yeah. I'm the one that took the brunt of stuff. Got blamed for everything, even if it wasn't your fault, it was your fault, because you was the oldest, "But you should've known better."
[01:49:00]
Johnny:
Right. Now, when you're a young kid working, what about school?
Eloy:
[01:49:30]
Back then, school was lik a one room school house, and at five, I still wasn't in school. I didn't go to school, because I kind of missed that part where you're almost one year older than you're supposed to be when you go to school because you miss them by a couple of months, they don't let you enroll. So I was one of those kind of guys, but I picked up stuff. But what was good about then is back then is in this little town where we were out on the farm, that's where I started school where my grandma owned a farm, it was called Yellowstone, Colorado. It's not Yellowstone National Park. It's Yellowstone, Colorado.
[01:50:00]
[01:50:30]
And they [foreign language 00:16:41], and what it is, is just a bunch of sandstone cliffs all long, it's like a Valley up there, it comes off the top of the mountain. And they lived up there. And then it was the same old conflict. The property had belonged to different people for a lot of years. There's a lot of Indian people up in there and they lost their stuff because the Texas investors or ranchers, I guess a lot of Longhorn people came into that Valley and what they did was they bought up the land way up at the top and then they shut the water off. Because at that time, people would share the water like, "Okay, you got water on Tuesday, Wednesday I water, Thursday he water."` And that was life, but as soon as they bought the property up on top they just dammed it up, started... So they pretty much stopped every...
They bought the top and he bought this and it's kind of like a totem pole in reverse, they bought it, but they ended up with a whole Valley. So pretty much, the people that were left that were growing, because most of them grew their own crops. They grew beans, potatoes, and a of seasonal, dry kind of land crop stuff, corn and I don't know, a bunch of other... I can't remember everything that was growing, wheat.
[01:51:00]
Johnny:
So did you have interaction with other Indian kids, native Americans in that area?
Eloy:
[01:51:30]
Yeah. They used to have... they were like powwows, but not powwows. They were more like gatherings. You go there and you know, everybody share fried bread and the kids would race on horseback, have lay wrestling contest. And it was just kind of a get together. Actually, I guess they were maybe market days, because I remember people would take whatever they had, like whoever had chickens, they took eggs. Wherever had milk, took milk. Whoever had material. It was a barter kind of a system like, you need this and you need this and this costs you this much, you got the credit coming. And there was no money exchange. It was pretty much a-
Johnny:
Kind of the old Indian way then.
[01:52:00]
Eloy:
[01:52:30]
Yeah. And most of the people there, they had any kind of a parcel of land and stuff, like there was a lot of older people, and their kids, they grew up and they boogie. As soon as they was old enough to get out, they was gone. They never came back. They just [inaudible 01:52:14], they had enough of that. It was hard work. But a lot of those people, they would have been probably left out in the cold, but they had kind of a cooperative thing where the people would go buy and say, "Okay, it's harvest time." And they say, "It's going to cost us 10 bucks to get this big old harvester over here." They said, "So you line up your stuff, you line up your stuff, you line up..." And one day, everybody from down below to the ranch, they start at the top and one day they pretty much will call the five ranches if everybody got in together and it only cost them 10 bucks.
Johnny:
Wow. Were you involved with that at all, as a kid?
Eloy:
[01:53:00]
Yeah, we would have to grab the sheaves of the wheat and stand it up in line so they can go blow it out, but it was all that stuff. As a kid, I don't think that there was any such thing as child labor. You was old enough to pick up your own stuff, you was picking up your own stuff.
Johnny:
Right. And it sounds like there was a sense of community where when you grew up, you knew a little bit about your Indian ancestry. I mean, was it talked about in the family?
Eloy:
[01:53:30]
Yeah. Yeah. Well, all the grandmas, pretty much, most of them talked their own language, and they would sit around, that's when they did the blankets. Most of the people still had their own looms, and that was like winter work. And I don't remember seeing any of the elder ladies or the younger ones not doing something.
Johnny:
Was that passed down to you, do you remember your grandmother working a loom?
Eloy:
Yeah. Yeah. I still got some of her stuff.
Johnny:
No kidding.
Eloy:
Yep. Yeah, I still got something.
[01:54:00]
Johnny:
And so that history, that Indian history was passed down to you as a young boy?
Eloy:
Yeah. I can still fix them. I never worked on it, but I used to fix hers whenever it broke, and I used to watch her thread and stuff. But all that stuff, just after a while, whenever stuff busted up people just didn't take care of a lot of stuff.
[01:54:30]
Johnny:
[01:55:00]
I got to say that, there's a video that they've interviewed some of the occupiers, and this one guy in the video says that he was watching TV and he turned to his mother after watching the coverage of the Indians on Alcatraz, and he turned to his mom, and he said, "I wish I was an Indian I'd go and help them." And she turned to him and said, "Well, son you're half Comanche." He never knew that he was native American until seeing that on the TV screen. And he came to Alcatraz and learned what it was to be an Indian. But it sounds like you did have that instilled in you from early on.
Eloy:
[01:55:30]
Yeah. Well, I think that in those communities, because it was different, even 4th of July, which is kind of a... Back then they would get firecrackers. That was the only time I remember they always had firecrackers, but there was a place that was called... Kind of reminds you this place, because they always had the top of the mark. This was the top of the hill and they used to call it Tope, because it was La Veta Pass. If you were coming from Four Corners, you'd have to come down this past to get down into Walsenburg and [inaudible 01:55:42] and all the little... down Arkansas Valley, down the highway 10.
[01:56:00]
But that place up there, they would have all the fireworks and every year people would come from everywhere and they'd come on horseback. Most of them would come on horseback. And it was just like a giant trading post and everybody had beef jerky, deer jerky. I mean, anything that... and it was there. Their handiwork, if you needed furs, rugs, whatever, it was all there.
Johnny:
Was it almost like a powwow, kind of like the Crow nation has their big fair, Crow fair?
Eloy:
[01:56:30]
It would be like a powwow, because they would dance. I mean, they had everything. Most of them didn't have the regalia, but a lot of them did have regalia and stuff. But most of them just... If they came from the upper area where there was a lot of gear, there was a lot of leather work done. Purses and dresses, a lot of nice, beautiful looking dresses, buck skin coats and shirts. There was a lot of that because a lot of them live in areas where the deer were plentiful. There's a lot of deer up there. You never even had to use a gun to kill a deer up there. You get up early in the morning when they're sleeping, you head out there and whack them with a shovel. Boing.
Johnny:
Wow.
Eloy:
That's how my uncles used to hunt.
Johnny:
No kidding.
[01:57:00]
Eloy:
He said, "Them Rangers can't hear the shovel," you know what I'm saying? Boing. When you get up early in the morning and they're laid up in the alfalfa. They ain't even probably hear you coming up on them, man.
Johnny:
No kidding. Well, and you mentioned termination program. So it doesn't sound like the government was really laying anything on folks in your area, at least. The people were doing Indian crafts and meeting and...
[01:57:30]
Eloy:
Well, the termination, I don't think it affected the people doing the crafts, because a lot of those people kept on doing what they were doing and they're still doing it, even the ones that were here. A lot of people that were terminated that they shipped out here, never made it back to the reservations.
Johnny:
[01:58:00]
Well, that's what I was going to ask you too, because you weren't on the res, but you still had a connection with your Indian past. But a lot of people were moved off the reservations and came to the big cities across the United States, and that's why Oakland in San Francisco, in the Bay Area had a huge population of American Indian.
Eloy:
Yeah. Well actually, San Francisco had the Friendship House, that burned down maybe not too much before the Alcatraz takeover. But Oakland is probably one of the oldest. I think it's the oldest outside of New York, the Friendship House that's over in Oakland. And they started out on, I think it was Telegraph. They moved there a couple of times. They moved to where we're at now around 1955, I think.
Johnny:
Well, when did you come to the Bay Area?
[01:58:30]
Eloy:
I came here in the sixties, early sixties.
Johnny:
Okay. So all before that it was in Colorado or-
Eloy:
Yeah, pretty much in Colorado. I grew up and got married.
Johnny:
How old were you when you got married?
Eloy:
I was 17.
Johnny:
17?
Eloy:
Yeah, and my mom and dad was going through a lot of stuff. So me and my wife kind of took over the family to keep them from getting sent off, shipped out.
Johnny:
So you had eight siblings-
[01:59:00]
Eloy:
Yeah, we were instant parents. But they all turned out pretty good. They all turned out pretty good.
Johnny:
So we jump from six, seven years old, you're working horses. So you went basically through grammar school, up into high school?
Eloy:
No, I made it as far as the eighth grade, and then I didn't want to go back to school, it was too much of a hassle and my mom needed help. I needed to go to work. So-
Johnny:
So what did you do?
Eloy:
I used to go to work in the broom fields where they make brooms.
Johnny:
Oh, really?
[01:59:30]
Eloy:
Go pick up that broom corn and just stacks and stacks. They charge you by the weight. That stuff don't weigh much, man. But you got to work hard to make a few dollars. But they would hire you. You needed-
Johnny:
How old were you when you were doing that?
Eloy:
I was about 13 when I started doing that. But I already had my own car.
Johnny:
At 13 you were driving?
Eloy:
[02:00:00]
Yeah. 14, I got kicked out of the house when my dad came back and he started back in his old ways, and I stuck up for my mom and I told him, "Man, you can't be doing that all the time." He said, "What are you going to do?" And I said, "Nothing," I said, "but you can't be hitting her no more. If you want to hit on somebody, hit on me." Anyway, it was turned down that he didn't hit me, I didn't do nothing, but my mom said, "You know you're going to have to leave." And I said, "Yeah."
Johnny:
So you were on the road at 14?
[02:00:30]
Eloy:
Yeah. But I had been working a couple summers, I used to go work with my uncle at his farm. And he'd basically take me off the streets, is what he would do, keep me out of trouble, because would've really got in some serious trouble if he hadn't done that, because my dad was in between doing some other stuff, and it was hard. So he pretty much...
[02:01:00]
He used to work for the County as a heavy duty grater operator, machine operator. And he'd take me down to the County and tell me, he said, "Well, you clean up all this grease and stuff, clean up around there and I'll give you a few dollars." I'd go down there and I'd clean up and then a guy that was running the shop, he had this old car in the back and I kept telling him, "What are you going to do with that old car? What are you going to do with that old car?" And he said, "One of these days I'm going to fix it. One of these days I'm going to fix it." So I worked there for about six months in the evenings and stuff, go by there all the time and a couple of summers and bought the car one day and told me, "Take it apart." He said, "I'll pay you to take it apart." So I got underneath and took the whole thing all apart.
[02:01:30]
I was about 12 then I guess, but I was already pretty active with tools and stuff, by just learning how to ranch, you had to do everything. You had to fix everything and they actually had their own blacksmith shop where you make your own stuff with the forks and stuff, you fire up your own steel. I learned all that stuff when I was little, make horse shoes. In fact, I think I still got a couple of horse shoes I made when I was kid. So all of that stuff, you just learned it.
[02:02:00]
So after I took all the car and then I was there to shop just watching my uncle and them, just watching them do the machine, I got to move heavy equipment around for him. I just move it, and they'd come in the yard, they say, "Gas it up, kid." So I just move it over, gas it, do whatever I had to do, fill it up, park it. And so I learned all their stuff.
[02:02:30]
[02:03:00]
I took the car apart and he sanded everything down and took all the rust off, undercoated it and then he made me put it all back together and stuff. Got it all back together. And I was about, I guess I was 13 and he tell me, he says, "You came out at eighth grade kid," and back that can in Colorado, you can get a license at 13 if you worked on a forum, they give you a farm license. You could drive on a highway if you had a 18 or somebody older to drive on a highway, but on a farm, as long as it was a County road, you can drive anywhere. You could tear up them County roads in your own car. So anyway, when I turned 13, the guy had the car all pretty much put together and he gave it to me.
Johnny:
Nice.
Eloy:
Yeah, it was a little 1946 Chevy, a coupe.
Johnny:
Wow.
Eloy:
Had defender skirts on it, sun visor, big old-
Johnny:
Two door?
Eloy:
Two door, the deluxe one with all the little trim on it. It was a nice little car. And what I did is I took the backseat out of it. I took the whole backseat completely out of it and I had a big old mattress, big mattress back there and took-
Johnny:
And that was your pad.
[02:03:30]
Eloy:
That was my house.
Johnny:
So you grew up pretty fast then, man.
Eloy:
Yeah.
Johnny:
You're on your own at 13. How do you meet your wife?
Eloy:
Actually, I'd already met her before-
Description
An Oral history with Eloy Martinez about the Native American experience on and off of Alcatraz during the Indian Occupation
Copyright and Usage Info