Introduction to Francesca Fryer's SANDSPIT
by Gary Schmechl, November 1999
(excerpted from his longer essay)

Gary Schmechl, poet, painter and translator, born in Eureka California, resides in Seattle, Washington. His manuscript of translations of The Songs and Ballads of Absence by Miguel Hernandez, the famous Spanish poet is currently under consideration by the University of Iowa Press

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Sandspit is above all, a human history, told from a personal viewpoint, which incorporates a broader historical perspective...lt is an awe inspiring, profoundly insightful, sprawling, beautifully written, heartfelt, nonlinear historical narrative. lts structure... in the words of the author is “a patterned and plotted tapestry: one which unrolls back and forth in time...” One which broadens out from its beginning with Francesca’s initial visit to the sandspit in 1964. As she states, she was hardly aware of the tremendous overtones this event carried for her life as she walked out onto the sandspit, paid the entry fee and encountered the salmon-fishing frenzy of the early sports fishermen crowding the estuary shoreline.

The particulars on which she focuses... revolve out of the thematic axis of historical Indian/White encounters in the Klamath River area of California’s northernmost stretch of coastline.

The books start off with a historical tale about a unique young woman, Sa-as-mel’or, who divides her life between two villages, two families. She was someone who “travelled-between”.... This tale then operates as the metaphorical background for the intertwinings and interactions - the “encounters” of all the major figures of the book, who all end up “travelling-between” the two vastly different cultural and spiritual worlds of the Indians and Whites that lived and who came to settle near the Klamath River area.

These figures fall into two categories. The first is that of the Participants of whom there are four: Haaganors, or Captain Spott, “the last high Indian on the Klamath River”, his adopted son, Robert Spott, called the “Yurok Intellectual”; Alfred Kroeber, the famed Californian anthropologist, who worked with the Spotts in his ground-breaking research of Yurok ways; and Harry Roberts, a Whiteman adopted as a boy by Robert Spott and his sister Alice, and ultimately chosen by Robert Spott to carry Yurok tribal knowledge into the future so it would not die. The interaction of these four men is of central importance... for from them and through them much of what is known and remembered of an entirely oral culture is bequeathed to us today, though not without its attendant controversy and turmoil, as is revealed in Sandspit also...

The second category is the Witnesses, five people of central influence and importance in the lives of the Participants. These Witnesses are Ruth Roberts, Harry’s mother; Florence Shaughnessy. a wise woman of mixed-descent; Frank Douglas, “one of the last tribal singers”; and Sam and Audrey Jones, a mixed couple who played a large role in the defense and preservation of Yurok rights. Sam Jones. a full-blood Yurok, became one of the central figures in the Yurok battles to retain their traditional hunting, fishing, and land rights - and by extension a central figure in the struggle of all California Indians to retain such rights. Audrey, his White wife, became known as the "Weitchpec Lawyer" by the Yurok for her stubborn and dedicated defense of native rights.

And then, of course, we are left with the role of Francesca Fryer herself in all these complex interactions. She is both Participant and Witness. She is a Participant because she has shouldered the burden of Harry Roberts Promise to Robert Spott: to see that the knowledge he had been given be written down and not lost for all time. This... also makes her a Witness to all the history and people involved...

The other main base lies in the interaction between the human and the non-human worlds as shown by the interplay between the different human groups and the geographical location in which they live - the Klamath River Estuary and its famous Sandspit, which becomes the controlling image for the entire work, emblematic of the human/non-human interactions, which, like the sandspit itself, are never in the same place from year to year, but shaped and shifted into unknown configurations - sometimes beautiful and beneficial, sometimes tragic, demeaning, and destructive - by tides, winds, floods; by seasonal hunting, fishing and gathering activities; by economic, political, and social forces and decisions...

Francesca’s Sandspit books... are important to our society in general and to our understanding of the Native peoples of Northern California. I believe them to be some of the most important and pertinent historical books about California that have been written in the late 20th century...Her work and her achievement deserve greater recognition and praise, for she has struggled long and hard to see that this unique history of an obscure corner of the western United States does not pass into oblivion. I urge you to take the journey these books open before you. Your life will be richer for it.

Author's Side-Bar & On-line transcription of Chapter 1