Last Full-Blooded Kwaaymii Indian Dies at 87
The last full-blooded Kwaaymii Indian, Tomas Lucas, died Thursday in the same area of the Laguna Mountains where his ancestors had lived for centuries. He was 87.
Lucas was born during a snowstorm in 1903, in the same area of northeastern San Diego County where he died. He attended public school and later moved away from the reservation and married.
During World War II, he moved with his family to the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego, working in defense industry plants and then for a San Diego building contractor until he retired at 70.
About five years ago, Lucas returned to the former Kwaaymii reservation land where he was raised. The 320-acre Lucas Ranch was once the home of Kwaaymii tribe members, who lived high in the Laguna Mountains most of the year and moved their entire village to the desert during the coldest winter months.
Lucas’ daughter Carmen said her father fought for 18 years to obtain title to the Kwaaymii lands, which he was entitled to as the last surviving member of the tribe. She said the deed of patent was finally approved by Congress and signed by President Harry S. Truman in 1947.
During his later years, Lucas told and retold the story of his people to anthropologists and archeologists who visited his home off Sunrise Highway. His voice took on a singsong quality as he repeated the legends that had been taught to him as a youth, stories of the abundance of nature and the heroic deeds of his ancestors.
The Kwaaymii elders, aware that he was the last of the tribe, forced the youth to learn and repeat the tribal history. In recent years, Lucas, despite failing hearing and eyesight, repeated the tales hundreds of times to educators and scientists who sought him out.
“I guess that I’m the only one today that remembers the past,” he told a reporter last year. “I was the only child and no kids to play with. At night, I was bound to listen. Listen to stories, listen to prayers.
“By keeping my ears open, as I most generally have, I picked up quite a few things. Some things I wasn’t supposed to know I heard anyway.”
Children of Spencer Valley School, near Julian, and their teacher, Luanne Lynch, often visited Lucas to hear his tales. With the aid of a school video camera, Lynch captured hours of Lucas’ monologues.
Lucas told of his people dying from white men’s diseases--scarlet fever and influenza--and of being driven off their lands by settlers seeking rangeland for their cattle.
When Lucas was born in 1903, the Kwaaymii no longer journeyed to the desert each winter for fear that white ranchers would seize their mountain lands while they were away. But Lucas could point out the trail down the mountain to Mason Valley, which his ancestors took, and would describe the pile of tiny pebbles that grew to a mound because each passing Indian would toss on a stone as a prayer to the Great Spirit for a safe journey.
His land contains the site of a Kwaaymii village whose residents died mysteriously. Lucas speculated to a reporter that the mass deaths were due to food poisoning, caused by contamination of a communal meal.
The land still holds the metate stones that Lucas’ mother and other Indian women used to grind acorns into meal and encompasses meadows where deer and other game were plentiful.
Lucas’ mother, Maria Alto, also lived in both the Indian and Anglo worlds, becoming an accomplished horsewoman, artist, successful cattle rancher and fighting to have her son enrolled in a “white school” where he could learn English and receive an education.
In his final days, Lucas contracted pneumonia, Carmen Lucas said.
“He knew he was dying. He told us so,” she said. “He told us of his disturbing dreams where he was surrounded by angels, but when he reached out to touch them, their wings turned to paper.”
In addition to Carmen, Lucas is survived by a second daughter, Jacquelyn Pfingst of San Diego, and three grandchildren.
His death will be marked by Indian and Anglo funeral services. Tentative arrangements call for Lucas to lie in state Tuesday from noon until 8 p.m. at Paris-Frederick Mortuary in El Cajon. His body will then be taken to Lucas Ranch, where an all-night wake is scheduled to begin at sunset Wednesday.
Burial services are tentatively scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday at the former reservation burial grounds on the Lucas Ranch, where his mother and more than 90 other Kwaaymii ancestors lie.