It was early January of 1773, in the sprawling Rumsen village of Tucutnut that stretched along the Carmel River not far from where it empties into the Pacific Ocean. A young woman of about fifteen years old lay gravely ill. Powerful tribal doctors had been working over her for days, divining the evil forces responsible for harming this usually healthy and vivacious girl, and trying to drive them out. Some doctors were experts in the world of magic and unseen spirits, while others specialized in healing with plants. Equally powerful were the healing songs. In spite of it all, she seemed dangerously close to following her father and ancestors to the spirit world in the west.

Her mother was so worried that she found it hard to concentrate on her usual tasks. She stayed close to her daughter, doing what she could to support the healers who were summoning all of their knowledge and experience trying to save the child she had birthed, nourished, taught, and loved. She missed her husband, who could no longer worry for his daughter alongside her. But in this tight-knit village of nearly 150 people, there were plenty of relatives and friends to lend their support at this critical time, when her daughter seemed on the verge of death. She was, after all, not only the daughter born from this mother’s body, she was also the daughter of this village.

Two-and-a-half years earlier, strange people had appeared in the Rumsen world. Storytellers had told of ancient times when similar strangers had mysteriously appeared from the ocean. They had come and they had gone, staying a short time before sailing off and disappearing the same way they had arrived. These new strangers came by land and by sea, and they were very strange indeed, for they somehow traveled about on the backs of large animals. Unlike those of the past, they didn’t leave. They had settled, as if to stay, at Atchista — now known as Monterey — and at the mouth of this river.

Like the Rumsen people, these strangers had important men who were magicians and healers, and spoke to unseen spirit beings. From the time they had arrived, these men had visited local villages, trying to engage with the People. Only a few Rumsen parents had allowed these magical men to perform unfamiliar yet seemingly harmless rituals on their children. In fact, only about thirty such ceremonies had taken place, including a total of only eight in the entire previous year of 1772.

But on this seventh day of January, 1773, one of these spirit-talkers performed his rituals over the young Rumsen woman lying desperately ill in the village of Tucutnut. His name was Juan Crespí. Was he summoned? Or did he make a random visit to the village that day? This we don’t know. But we do know that the ceremony took place because he made a written record of it — number 32 in the Book of Baptisms — when he returned to the modest mission compound of San Carlos Borromeo at the mouth of the Carmel River. As part of the ritual, he had assigned a new name to the young woman — Margarita Maria — failing to record her true name, but noting that he had “baptized” her “in danger of death.”

Her health improved, and six weeks later she was baptized again — on February 22, 1773 — this time at Mission San Carlos Borromeo. The ritual was repeated to assure it was by her consent, since the first had taken place when she was seriously ill and perhaps had not been undertaken by her conscious and free will.

Margarita may have remained living at Mission San Carlos after this second baptism, under the influence of the clergy, for three months later, on May 20, 1773, she was married in Catholic ceremony in the church of Mission San Carlos to Catalonian volunteer soldier Manuel Butrón, a native of Valencia, Spain. She was thought to be about fifteen years old, and Manuel was forty-five, a thirty-year age difference and life experiences that were literally worlds apart. Three years later, their first son was born, and three years after that their second son arrived. Manuel and Margarita were together for nearly twenty years, until his death at the end of 1792. On the fifth of January, 1793, almost exactly twenty years after Margarita’s first baptism in the village of Tucutnut, Manuel Butrón was buried inside the Mission San Carlos church. He was interred at the front of the chapel, though a memorial marker is now located on the floor at the rear of the church, between the last pews on the left as one enters.

Margarita lived another twenty-two years. Before Manuel’s death, the family had moved from Monterey to the Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. In the census for the Pueblo de San José dated December 31, 1792, Margarita is listed as a 36-year-old widow with her two sons — Manuel (16) and Sebastian (14). No records have yet been encountered to document the trajectory of her life in the following years. However, her oldest son was co-owner of Rancho la Natividad, just north of present-day Salinas, and she likely lived there. As was common for the times, each of her sons had numerous children and it is easy to imagine Margarita surrounded by the bustle and chaos of her more than twenty grandchildren, keeping busy with feeding and cleaning and numerous other chores that were the tasks of all women on the rural ranches of central California.

On January 25, 1815, Margarita was buried in the cemetery of the Royal Presidio Chapel, now known as the Monterey Catholic Cemetery, not far from San Carlos Cathedral. While no visible markers of her gravesite remain, we do know the general location of her burial.

Margarita is the ancestor of many, many members of today’s Rumsen Ohlone Tribal Community. And while her baptism into a religious and social system that brought about the decimation of Rumsen people, communities and culture isn’t an anniversary we would otherwise choose to celebrate, the record of that occasion is the only reason that we know of her today. And so we celebrate this daughter of the village of Tucutnut, and through her the scores of other Rumsen ancestors whose names and stories we’ll never know.

—Linda Yamane, Member of the Rumsen Ohlone Tribal Community, 7 January 2023

Written content © copyright Linda Yamane, 2023. Not to be published without express written permission, except by recognized members of this organization — the Rumsen Ohlone Tribal Community — or other Margarita descendants, who are welcome to share it however and whenever they wish, as her story belongs to us all.