A Stream of Elders: Lavina of the Klamath
Lavina Bowers, the matriarch of her large Yurok family, sits with her daughter, Susan Masten, in the living room of her home, perched above the mouth of the Klamath River on a shoulder of Req-woi Hill. Below is the stretch of the river where Lavina, when she was 43, and her mother, Geneva Mattz, then 74, rowed a wooden dinghy out to confront heavily armed federal marshals in what became known as the 1978 Klamath Salmon War over tribal fishing rights.
Lavina’s house was built by her great-grandfather, Billy Brooks, who was born nearby in 1847, before Whites came to the area. Billy spent two-thirds of his 89 years living with his family in a traditional Yurok redwood plank house a few hundred feet up the hill.
Lavina’s mom, Geneva, was raised in Lavina’s house and was the last family member who spoke Yurok as her first language. What follows are some of Lavina’s recollections of growing up in Yurok country on the Klamath.
“I am Lavina Bowers and I am 91. I was born Lavina Mattz, and I come from the Brooks family at the mouth of the Klamath at Req-woi Road. We lived up the river when I was young.
“I didn’t really know any White people. The family next to us had children and across the river were several Indian families with kids. For school, they had a boat that brought kids down to Klamath as there was no road.
“My mom, Geneva, lived here with her grandparents. She went away to Chemawa [an Indian boarding school in Salem, Oregon] when she was about 8 and stayed there until she was 16. The only thing she ever got in trouble for was talking Yurok at school, and got her little hands slapped because she did that. They wouldn’t teach us kids Yurok because we’d get in trouble.
“After she was back about a yearand- a-half, she married my dad, Emery. He was Tolowa, Yurok and Portagee. We lived up the river and came to town maybe once a month by boat to shop. My dad worked in a mill across the river near where we lived.
“My mother was the smartest woman I ever met. She was smart. She was kind. She was many things. She was gentle, she was good, she was a very good woman and, you know, she had a lot of heartache because she had nine children but lost five kids.
“Mondays, we carried water from up the hill and my mother washed on a wash board. Tuesday, she ironed with an iron heated on the top of the stove. She even ironed the sheets. I asked why, and she said so that they would look nice for us children to go to sleep.
“My grandma [Agnes] Mattz, my dad’s mom from Crescent City, spent lots of time with us. My other grandma, [Martha] Brooks, was bought the Indian way by our people and brought down here from Orleans. She was the last bought Indian wife.
“I had all five of my kids by the time I was 23, and a son later. I can’t ever remember that it was hard. People knew that you take care of your kids when the diapers were washed and on the line by 8:30 in the morning.
“There’s nothing more precious than having a baby. From the time my kids were little, I always said, ‘I love you.’ They went to school, I love them. Come home, I love them. Go to bed, I love them. And I think that’s what parents have to do. You got to say, ‘I love you’ because you love them. And they need to know that. I don’t think a lot of kids get told that.
“It seems like they [her grandchildren and great grandchildren] just get better and better. Except I think I’ve seen two of my grandkids talk back to their mama. I think I will talk to both of them — because who do you have but your mama? Why would you be mean to your mama? Right?”
Peter Pennekamp lives in Eureka. Part One of his account of the life of Lavina Bowers appeared in the March Senior News.
