My Heart Sings as the Sacred Túupentak Rises after 127 Years
Joseph Torres, Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Member gathering willow for a historic Túupentak (sweat lodge), the Muwekma’s first in 127 years. Photo taken by Nestor Gonzalez
By Joseph Torres, Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Member
As an Indigenous Muwekma man, I have spent my life aching to revitalize the beautiful traditions of my ancestors. Our dances, regalia, songs and ceremonies connect me to work with our community with directions from the ancestors and our land in a profound way.
That is why my heart fills with immense emotion and pride as our first túupentak (round house or sweat lodge) in 127 years takes shape at Emma Prusch Park on the east side of San Jose. This humble and temporary structure, partially built into the earth, represents the sacred center and balance of the Muwekma universe. It is a place of powerful prayer, purification, singing and dance that reaffirms our identity and spiritual beliefs.
After centuries of oppression, displacement and cultural disruption, we Muwekma people are finally able to gather again on these ancestral grounds for ceremony. The ancestral fires will be relit and our ancient ways reborn through the sacred space of the túupentak. I can hear the voices of my ancestors and ek mayan echo through the centuries in joyous approval.
My own family's lineage traces back over 260 years to the original Ohlone villages of the East Bay before the Spanish missions sought to obliterate our traditions. I am ninth generation Muwekma. I descend from a long line of resilient and resistant survivors - people like my great-great grandmother Ramona Marine and great-grandmother Dolores Sanchez who maintained our identity through immense hardship.
Reviving and passing on these sacred teachings to the next generation has been my life's mission as a dance keeper. However, that journey has been made infinitely more difficult by being pushed off our lands and having no permanent home to fully practice our ways. The last túupentak was taken down in 1897 at the Alisal Rancheria after the death of Captain Jose Antonio.
Now after 127 long years, we finally have this opportunity again. In March 2024, the túupentak will be the centerpiece for sacred rituals and dance ceremonies for Muwekma Ohlone people and other Native American and Aztec dancers as part of the Aztec Mexica New Year (Yancuic Xihuitl Matlactli Ihuan Ome Tecpatl) hosted by Calpulli Tonalehqueh - one of the largest gatherings of Indigenous dances in the United States. Over 100 nations and 10,000 attendees from across the continent will join us in this powerful spiritual homecoming.
Words cannot fully express what this modest willow structure means for the Muwekma people. The túupentak is quite literally the sacred center of our universe and a symbol of our identity, resilience and survival against all odds. As I step inside and the vapor rises, I will feel the embrace of my ancestors and the continuity of life. After being displaced for so long, we are home again on hallowed ground praying on the spirits of our ancestors blood of the earth.
With immense gratitude, I thank the Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation supporters, City of San Jose staff, and all those in the community who made this possible. You have given an invaluable gift in aiding our cultural revitalization and healing.
I want to thank San Jose Councilmember Peter Ortiz for his support of this historic milestone and thank him for his testimony: "As the City works to build partnerships with indigenous nations around its parkland, that relationship should not just end at land stewardship agreements. We have an obligation to also make our parks available for cultural practices such as sweat lodges to build true partnerships with our indigenous community. It was my honor to support the conversations that made this possible, and am looking forward to ongoing partnerships."
I also want to specifically recognize Sundance Family Wahokizaluta including Razzle Dazzle of the Nisenan Miwok, Nestor Gonzalez of the Skeetchestn Indian Band, and Mashan Camp of the Ogala Lakota Tribe, who have working alongside me to assist this process.
The sacred fires will burn brightly once again.
More about the Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation
Formed by a vote of the Muwekma Tribal Council in 2021, the Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation (MOPF) is a nonprofit with a mission to collaborate with Muwekma tribal members and allies to advance the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe's goals of resilience, cultural revitalization, community education, and efforts for access, ownership, and stewardship of ancestral lands.
More Background (prepared by Alan Leventhal, Tribal Ethno-Historian and Tribal Archaeologist)
At the time of Spanish Contact in 1769, various military and religious representatives on several land expeditions recorded the presence of large semi-subterranean round house/sweat lodge structures that the Spanish called a “Temescal,” and the ancestors of the Muwekma Ohlone called it a “túupentak” in their native language. Temescal is a Nahuatl language spoken by various tribal nationalities in Mesoamerica and was deployed by the late 18th century Spanish explorers and still later employed after the American Conquest of California.
During the Portolá’s 1769 land expedition the group entered into Quiroste Ohlone territory along the Pacific Coast. On that expedition was Miguel Costansó, who provided a detailed account in his journal entry for October 23, 1769 writing:
“We shifted camp … close to a heathen village which had been discovered by the scouts, and situated in a pleasant pretty spot at the foot of the mountains, opposite a gorge covered with pine-trees and savins, among which ran down a stream of which the Indians availed themselves. The land, covered with grasses and nowise scant of wood, was plainly well-favored.
“The heathens, who had been warned by the scouts of our coming to their lands, received us with a great deal of affability and kindness, nor failed to make the usual present of seeds kneaded into thick dough-balls; they offered us also bits of honeycomb of a kind of syrup which some said was wasp-honey: they brought it elaborately wrapped up between cane-grass leaves, and its flavor was not to be despised.
“In the midst of the village there was a great house of spherical shape, very roomy; while the other little houses, which were of pyramidal form and very small-sized, were built of pine splints. And because the big house stood out so above the rest, the village was so named [Rancheria de la Casa Grande or Big House Village].”
—Journal of Miguel Costansó, translated by Alan K. Brown [1]
After missionization 1776-1834 various Indian land grants and Rancherias were established during the mid-to-late 19th century, at Ulistac in Santa Clara, San Lorenzo, and at the Alisal Rancheria near Pleasanton. Although usually mentioned in passing, one of the Muwekma Elders who was interviewed by relations in 1965 as the Tribe was trying to save its Ohlone Indian Cemetery, was recorded providing the following information.
OHLONE INDIAN CEMETERY (Marine Family History 1965)
Mission de San Jose de Guadalupe, Fremont
Approximately one mile west from the Mission on Washington Boulevard on this day THE OLDEST OHLONE INDIAN, DARIO JOSEPH DARIO (sic), [Marine] age 77 visited this Burial Ground.
When JOSE ANTONIO died his wife HACOVA ordered the TEMESCAL removed and never allowed it to be built again. RAFAEL C. MARINE torn it down around the year 1900.
The Rancheria was located at Verona Station between Sunol and the town of Pleasanton.
The Rancheria was composed of eleven casitas with the Temescal in the center. In the Temescal various ceremonies were held.
Dario Marine was born 1888 on the Alisal Rancheria and appears on the 1910 Federal Indian Census at “Indian Town” at Pleasanton. His father was Rafael C. Marine who was charged in taking down the Round House/Sweat Lodge in 1897, after Capitan Jose Antonio died in January that year.
Over the past several years, Joseph Torres has emerged as one of the dance leaders who has been engaged in regalia making and the revitalization of Traditional Muwekma Dances that were exported from Pleasanton to the neighboring Central Valley Miwoks, Maidus, and Coast Miwok tribal communities during the 1870s. As a result of the Muwekma Tribe remaining landless due to the dereliction of duty by BIA officials, having no land and therefore, no place to build their túupentak to hold ceremonies and to continue their traditions in the Bay Area, it is only recently that the opportunity has arisen for the Tribe to be engaged in the construction of a túupentak.
A Central California Maidu Round House
Túupentaks [traditional Round Houses and Sweat Lodges] are places sacred to the Muwekma Ohlone and other California Indian tribes. These túupentaks were constructed by partially digging into Earth Mother, and were used as places of prayer, dances and ceremonies for their respective communities. Some were built as a Sweat Lodge for purposes of purification and healing, They represent the center of the Universe that needed to be kept in balance in order to guarantee the future survival of the People, Plants, Birds, Animals, Fish, the Earth, Waterways, Sky, and the air we all breath.
As a Dance Leader Joseph Torres who Muwekma Ohlone lineage has been traced back through the Missions San Jose and San Francisco baptismal, marriage, and death records to their aboriginal villages of the East Bay represents his Muwekma Ohlone history and Heritage spanning the past 260 years (1764 to Present-day). (See Joseph Torres’ genealogical lineage below.)
Therefore, it is a great honor and tribute to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area whose ancestors have resided within this region for over the past 10,000 years, by constructing the first Túupentak (Round House/Sweat Lodge) for ceremonial and dance-related purposes in Prusch Park since the last one was dismantled 127 years ago.
Joseph Torres’ Muwekma Ohlone Ancestry and Heritage
Joseph Torres represents the ninth generation of a line of Ohlone Indians whose lives were disrupted by the expanding Hispanic Empire and the American Conquest of California. All of Joseph’s mother’s maternal Ohlone ancestors came into the Mission San Jose. Joseph’s lineage is descended from his great-great-great-great-great grandmother Efrena Quennatole who was born in 1797, and was of the Carquin Ohlone/Napian Tribe Coast Miwok of the S.F. North Bay and his great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Liberato Culpecse who was born in 1787 and baptized at Mission San Francisco in 1801. Liberato was of the Jalquin Ohlone and Saclan Bay Miwok Tribes of the East Bay. Joseph is further descended from Liberato’s parents Faustino Poylemja who was born around 1764 from the Saclan Bay Miwok Tribe (Walnut Creek/Concord/Lafayette area) and Obdulia Jobocme who was born around 1766 from the Jalquin Ohlone Tribe from the greater San Lorenzo/San Leandro/Hayward region.
Efrena and Liberato’s daughter was Maria Efrena Yakilamne. She was born in 1832 and was baptized at Mission San Jose, and buried at the Ohlone Indian Cemetery. Maria Efrena had married Panfilo Yakilamne (Ilamne Plains Miwok Tribe), and their daughter was Avelina Cornates. Avelina was born in 1863 and was baptized in 1864 at Mission San Jose. Avelina died in 1904 and was buried at the Ohlone Indian Cemetery. Avelina had married Rafael Marine, and one of their daughters was Ramona Marine who was born on June 15, 1893, on the Alisal Pleasanton Rancheria, and baptized at Mission San Jose. Ramona had married Porfirio Sanchez and their first daughter was Dolores Sanchez born on December 25, 1911, and was baptized at Mission San Jose. Dolores went to the Mission San Jose Orphanage after her mother died in 1921, and by 1930 had married Manuel Martinez. One of Dolores’ daughters was Julia Martinez who was born in Milpitas in 1940. Julia had married Octavio Lopez in 1957 in San Jose, and one of their daughters was Geraldine Lopez born in 1960 and later married Jose Torres. Geraldine is the mother of Joseph Torres who was born in 1981. Joseph’s great-great grandmother Ramona Marine Sanchez and great-grandmother Dolores Sanchez Martinez were born into the federally recognized Verona Band of Alameda County. Later, Joseph’s mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were enrolled with the Bureau of Indian Affairs as Mission San Jose Ohlone Indians.
Joseph Torres’s Ohlone Ancestry
