Ramona Epic #33: R.I.P. Ramona and Juan "Alessandro" Diego

This is the conclusion of this little "mini-series within the series" of blogs dealing with my time near Cahuilla Mt.

Let me preface this one by saying that I am going to be a little more sensative in how I present this than normal. I am not posting any GPS coords, nor any directions how to get to where I was. Although one could probably figure things out just by what I have said previously and what I will say now.

I could probably do everything as normal, but I want to be a little more respectful on this one...I hope anyone reading this blog realizes I try to be respectful everywhere I go. Technically speaking, the graves I visited are on reservation land which can be considered trespassing. On the other hand, the cemetery is literally right next to a casino that anyone can visit (yes, they want you to!) even though it too is on reservation land.

In doing my homework for this one I read a few books and articles. I then corresponded and talked to a few people about this. The main rule I found out is no drugs or alcohol in the cemetery. Other than that, I just used common sense and did not do anything stupid.

Let me also add there are other pictures I have seen of these gravesites on the web. In fact, some are better than mine because I went during the time of the year when the weeds were really growing. Also, I have been told, and read, that in the past Ramona Pageant people have come here and have acted out parts for groups of people. So, it is not like I am the first one to discover these gravesites, or done anything online about them since others have.

Without that out of the way...

The two grave markers in front of me are the gravesites for Ramona Lubo and Juan Diego. Of course, Juan's history was mentioned in Ramona Epic #31.In the above picture is the marker for Ramona Lubo. She was the wife of Juan, witnessed his murder, lived in that same area I was at for #31, then came down here, and lived out her life not too far from the cemetery.

Now below is the grave marker for Juan Diego. These markers were put in long after their deaths by people obviously influenced by the Ramona book or pageant.

Most pictures I have seen of these graves are always clean with no weeds, but forgetting about all the weeds growing nearby you can tell these graves are visited often by the items that are left for them.The woman we know as Ramona Lubo was probably not born with the name of Ramona. Helen Hunt Jackson commented as if it were a major coincidence, but more than likely the woman was given the Ramona name after the popularity of the novel.

The sad truth of the matter is she lived in poverty, and reporters would come to visit her thinking of the images they got from reading the romanticed story of Ms. Jackson's book only to be shocked by this woman's appearance. She was old and not the most attractive woman in their eyes to say the list.

Ramona Lubo was able to take advantage of her fame based on the novel by making some money from the people that would visit her. For example, some postcards were made with her. There is one I have seen that has her look as if she is crying near her husbands gravesite. The Ramona Memories book by Dydia DeLyser covers some more about her in her chapter on who the "real" Ramonas.

So is this the real Ramona? Well, Helen Hunt Jackson knew about this woman since she used the murder event of Juan Diego as the basis for her fictional murder of Alessandro. Other than that, there really isn't anything else known about Ramona Lubo that would connect her to the main character of the novel. However, with that said, she can probably be identified with the main character more than anyone else just based on that historical incident.

There are a bunch of women that have been considered candidates that came from a lot of the places I have been to in this series. More than likely, the main character is a composite of many people Ms. Jackson met, or just an ideal she came up with. At the end of the day it does not matter.

As for me, this was a fun one to come to. Ironically, it was almost one of the first things I did for the series. This one goes way back before I started really thinking about putting something like this series together. At the time I was just thinking of doing this and hiking to the areas I mentioned in the parts #31 and #32. That was all I intended to present. So, I guess you could say this was really what triggered the series. Had I not been here I probably would not have done this whole series.

As I remember from that day, I was only there for about five minutes. I got there, found the graves, took a few pictures, and I was off again. We drove by the cemetery again on the way to the hikes near Mt. Cahuilla.

When I come back to this series in December I will be putting the final touches on my official canon for the series. We are coming to the end, but I still have a bunch of things I need to cover on this one before the year ends.

Ramona Epic #33: R.I.P. Ramona and Juan "Alessandro" Diego (Youtube Version)

The short section at the end samples Wounded by Incompetech.

Ramona Epic #31: The Murder of Juan "Alessandro" Diego (Part 2)

(N33 35.655 W116 48.145)

In the previous blog I showed a road that continued to the final destination. In reality, it was less than five minutes to go down the road and take a left to this:

At this point, far enough away from civilization, just to the left of the above picture is this.You can click the picture (or, right click and open in a new window) to see that it says:

JUAN DIEGO FLATS
In this valley a conflict between the culture of the Indian and the White Man resulted in the death of Juan Diego (Alessandro in the play Romona [Sic]) by the hands of Sam Temple.
Billy Holcomb Chapter
E. Clampus Vitus
May 1979

The above is just looking into the open field near the monument.

What happened here is Juan Diego returned home from San Jacinto with the wrong horse. Apparently, having one of his mental spells, left his pony at a stable in San Jacinto, and then took a gray work horse back home. Unfortunately, this horse belonged to Sam Temple. Temple was a rough man that had been in fights before, and had a temper, especially when drunk. So, the very next morning, March 24, 1883, Temple went the 16 miles up into Juan Diego Flats. He got his horse back, but then killed Juan Diego with his guns.

Sam Temple claimed that it was self-defense and that Juan Diego confronted him with a knife. Juan's wife was not allowed to testify against Temple. As pointed out in the article I will link below, while technically an Indian could testify in court against whites, in practice for that time it was not allowed. So, Temple was able to get away with murder.

Helen Hunt Jackson did know of this event and wrote an article about it called, "Justifiable Homicide in Southern California". Eventually, the outrage of this historical event is what led her to use it in her fictional setting with the names of the people changed to the characters in her book that was published the very next year.

As I began the last blog, I really enjoy going into backcountry areas to find these types of tributes to the past. The area has probably not changed very much since the time of Juan Diego and his wife living there. The day I went the clouds were out to make it overcast. Due to the way schedules work out I had already committed myself to come here on the day I did it. So, I was sort of disappointed I did not have a sunny day. Then after thinking about it and looking back at what I was trying to do for this series, maybe having a gloomy day was for the best in how this worked out.

The Murder of Juan "Alessandro" Diego (Youtube Version)

The background music for this one is called Wounded by Incompetech.com.

The Killing of Juan Diego: From Murder to Mythology by Phil Brigandi and John W. Robinson (The best article about the history of this event from The Journal of San Diego History)

Ramona Epic #31: The Murder of Juan "Alessandro" Diego (Part 1)

(GPS: N33 35.755 W116 48.095)

When I created the Youtube channel for Ramona a year ago today I knew it would take me a year to be able to show something about this particular adventure. I had almost all the fieldwork done for the series, and it was just a matter of preparing everything at the computer. In order to do this series the way I wanted to present it, I knew that some of my favorite parts of this series would not come until about now.

If you have read some of my blog, you will know that my real favorite places are the ones where you go into the backcountry where few people go, and find something unique. Whether it is some human artifact remains or just something really beautiful to look at, I enjoy those times more than anything else I cover on this blog.

This was one of those times. I kind of knew what to expect based on an article I have (I will link it below) and a book or two. The hiking part of it was not that difficult relative to what I normally do, in fact I considered it quite easy, but the drive to get to the trailhead was a rough and bumpy ride. On this day, my brother drove me to the other side of Cahuilla Mountain seen below:

The above picture is taken near Anza, CA. Almost everything you will see in the next few blogs took place on the other side of that mountain. The picture below is very close to the trailhead. We hiked to two different areas from here. While you do see a vehicle in the distance, I would not suggest driving on these roads unless you know exactly where you are going and what your vehicle is capable of.For example, while hiking along the road we were taking I saw drops and turns that would be very dramatic for many cars.The hike was rather easy on the way because we dropped down some elevation, not much, but it would take a little more work coming back than getting here. After about 45 minutes or so, we came to the following:In the above picture, just ahead and around the corner on the left, was the final destination for the first hike. That will be in the next blog.

The whole idea of coming out here was to explore the location that was the inspiration for the murder of Alessandro in Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona book. In this area, on the day of March 24, 1883, Juan Diego was murdered by Sam Temple in the area you are seeing. Like the fictional story, Juan Diego was an Indian (a Cahuilla Indian) that had mental lapses that would cause him to do very irrational things. He was a likeable person to everything that knew him, but they also knew he was a little nutty. Like Alessandro in the novel, he worked as a sheep shearer and other jobs for the locals. This area is named after him in that it is called Juan Diego Flats.

In the above picture, there is a short side road off to the right that goes uphill some and then stops. It was here I investigated this area for what looked like human activity at some point in the past. I am at this spot in this next picture, and it also is looking in the direction of what I will show in the next blog. Now whether Juan Diego and his wife lived right here at their adobe I do not know. The little map in the article makes it look like I would have been really close; the map is not totally to scale, but it would make sense. Then just turning around I had this behind me; far in the background is where the hike started from.
So the remains and foundations of something are still here. What it was exactly that was here I do not know. The bigger picture that I just wanted to experience on this day is to see the area of where Juan Diego and his wife lived and where he was murdered. I will continue this in the next blog.

The Murder of Juan "Alessandro" Diego (Youtube Version)

The Killing of Juan Diego: From Murder to Mythology by Phil Brigandi and John W. Robinson (The best article about the history of this event from The Journal of San Diego History)

Ramona Epic #30: The Murder of Alessandro

Happy Halloween! The time has come for the final tragedy of Ramona and Alessandro. When I was planning this series out over a year ago I knew today was going to be the day this video would come up. In my mind, since the time I started this series, there has been a countdown until this day. So here we are...

Check RamonaEpic Youtube channel for video.

In the book, Chapter 24 starts:

"THERE was no real healing for Alessandro. His hurts had gone too
deep. His passionate heart, ever secretly brooding on the wrongs
he had borne, the hopeless outlook for his people in the future, and
most of all on the probable destitution and suffering in store for
Ramona, consumed itself as by hidden fires. Speech, complaint,
active antagonism, might have saved him; but all these were
foreign to his self-contained, reticent, repressed nature. Slowly, so
slowly that Ramona could not tell on what hour or what day her
terrible fears first changed to an even more terrible certainty, his
brain gave way, and the thing, in dread of which he had cried out
the morning they left San Pasquale, came upon him. Strangely
enough, and mercifully, now that it had really come, he did not
know it. He knew that he suddenly came to his consciousness
sometimes, and discovered himself in strange and unexplained
situations; had no recollection of what had happened for an
interval of time, longer or shorter. But he thought it was only a sort
of sickness; he did not know that during those intervals his acts
were the acts of a madman; never violent, aggressive, or harmful
to any one; never destructive. It was piteous to see how in these
intervals his delusions were always shaped by the bitterest
experiences of his life."

In the book, Alessandro returns home to Ramona with the wrong horse. He left his own horse in Jim Farrar's corral down below the mountain. Ramona questions him about this right away, and Alessandro replies that it was a mistake due to his illness. He further reasons they (Farrar and others) would see that he took the wrong horse and not think he was intentionally stealing the horse. It was too late to return the horse so he intended to do it in the morning.

Unfortunately, that is not how Jim Farrar reasoned about this. Alessandro is awakened by dogs barking, runs out the house to see what the problem is, some shots are fired, and Ramona comes out just in time to see Alessandro drop to the ground dead. Ramona calmly holds him realizing there is nothing she could do.

One thing to point out, in the play it makes sense to have a bunch of people around observing the murder and a posse that quickly goes after Farrar. That did not happen like that in the book. Ramona is all alone after the murder takes place.

In a daze, she then decides to hike during the night to the Indian village of Cahuilla. In the village of Cahuilla, she and Alessandro had friends that would help them. I should note that at this point of the story Alessandro and Ramona do have another child which is called "Ramona" at the end of the book.

When I get back to this series in a week or two I will have a few blogs that cover the real historical incident that Helen Hunt Jackson based this on.