News From Native California - Spring 2016 Volume 29 Issue 3 | Page 19
Isabel Meadows with John P.
Harrington.
Isabel Meadows as a young woman.
“It was Omesia that
Isabel got to hear talk
the most.”
(Harrington Reel 80, page 353)
Omesia passed away in 1883, but not without ensuring
that her knowledge and experiences were shared with
another generation of Rumsen people. Omesia’s knowledge
and experiences were preserved through Isabel Meadows,
who Omesia called Šappela, the last native speaker of Rumsen. Before she passed away in 1939, Isabel spent the last ten
years of her long life working with John Peabody Harrington
to extensively record the language and stories of the people
of Carmel. A frequently repeated phrase is “Omesia decia”—
“Omesia said.” The documentation ranges from the mundane
to the extraordinary, from the heartbreaking to the humorous,
and from the painful to the uplifting.
Omesia lived along the bank of the Carmel River in great
poverty. She once lived nearer to the mission in Carmel, but
the sadness that came to them when they remembered all
the people they had lost there drove Omesia and other old
women to move away (Harrington Reel 61, page 881). In her
own appearance Omesia reflected the pain and beauty of
her life. The Harrington notes include some detailed descriptions, seemingly dissonant images of this incredible woman’s
countenance. In one, Isabel describes fleas “just swarming on
her collar, and [she would] reach and catch one of them and
crack it between her teeth (“katt, to bite a flea, headlouse,
or bodylouse”; Harrington Reel 62, page 22). This passage
comes when Harrington elicits the word raax, louse, from
Isabel. Another description of Omesia’s appearance comes
from the elicitation of ‘umšiliwx, a beautiful red flower that
grew after the first rain of springtime in the Carmel Valley.
She would always wear ‘umšiliwx in her hair, or in the large
holes in her ears through which, as Isabel describes, “the Indians
had anciently worn tufts of quail feathers” (Harrington Reel
62, p