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Top Comments: The Ramona Pageant Edition [1]
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Date: 2023-05-11
The Cavalry
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Ramona is a novel written by Helen Hunt Jackson and published in 1884. It was wildly popular, spawning plays as well as movies (5 of them between 1910 and 1946). It is a romance that has racial discrimination at its center, and was intended by its author to highlight the mistreatment of Native Americans in a way similar to how Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought attention to the depravity of slavery. The title character of Ramona grows up as a foster child on a rancho that raises sheep. At the beginning of the story, she does not yet know that she is the daughter of a white father and a Native American mother. The crisis that initiates the drama is California coming under the control of the United States. The new government of the territory does not recognize the claims of the ethnically Spanish settlers and supports Americanos claiming those lands for themselves. As such, the rootin’-tootin’ American cowboys in the story are, for once, portrayed at the bad guys (mostly). The matriarch who runs the rancho, after she reveals Ramona’s heritage to her, also reveals her deep hatred of Native Americans. Ramona then runs away to marry a Native American shepherd (and thus ends Act 1). I don’t want to reveal any more of the plot in case you don’t know the story and would like to experience it for yourself, in one form or another.
In 1923, the people of the town of Hemet, California (in the region of California where the story of Ramona is set), decided to produce an outdoor adaptation of the story (complete with horses and gunfights). This year marks the 100th anniversary of that production, which continues. I went to see it with Hubby and my mother-in-law last Saturday. The production is entirely done by members of the town’s population, and includes performances of music and dance by local Mexican-American and Native American performers. Nowadays, the pageant is performed in an outdoor venue called the Ramona Bowl. Much of the set, including the rancho’s hacienda, are permanent structures. The area is so vast that it’s hard to imagine how actors managed to make their dialog audible before the advent of wireless microphones.
Considering the cast consisted of local townspeople, the performance we saw was quite good. The story, though its heart is in the right place, paints a picture that is too pretty. At the beginning of the story, relations between the Spanish-Mexicans and Native Americans are portrayed as being cordial, but we know that after the Spanish began settling California and converting Native Americans to Catholicism, the Native American population began to drop. This was due to mistreatment of Native Americans by the Catholic Missions. That mistreatment only got worse after the United States took control. At no point is the right of white people, be they ethnically Spanish or Anglo, to claim Native American land for themselves ever questioned.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the pageant, and particularly the dance performances of the Native Americans. Following are some photos I took of the performances. Note that due to the size of the venue, it was impossible to either zero in on any one performer, or to include the entire tableau in any detail.
The fiesta (Act 1)
Native American dancers celebrating the birth of Ramona’s first child.
Native American hoop dancers (something I’d never seen before).
Comments are below the fold.
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