“An American once went to Santa Cruz Island with a Ventureno boy, and he wanted to go and get abalone at a certain place where they were so thick on the rocks that they were touching each other. The boy objected to this but the man insisted. While they were gathering the abalone the American found a cave in the rocks and looked into it. He saw old men inside- one with a bullroarer and the other had an elder wood flute- and they were dancing and singing as do the ?antapin the naxalyikis. When the tide came in the cave was covered, but at low tide the old men could be seen in there practicing their ceremony. When the water dashed over them they were unaffected by it, it was nothing to them. On the way back from the island the American was drowned and the boy returned to Ventura alone. He told his mother what he had seen and she immediately gave him toloache to counteract the effects.” (Harrington/Blackburn,1975, p. 290)

The Two ?antap
from The Harrington Papers Series
8”x10”
Mixed Media Collage on Art Board
2006
$400.

The Harrington Papers Series works incorporate printed text from some of the Chumash Oral Narratives that were collected by John Peabody Harrington. The text functions as a puzzle of sorts. It appears to be piled in random layers and only part of the story is revealed.

A note on the text: the ? is a phonetic rendition of a glottal stop sound that is not found in the English language. For more information visit Inezeno Chumash Language Tutorial