Nearly thirty years ago, after having taught four or five years of travel study and photography in the Death Valley area, and after having been introduced by Roger Mitchell's book to the magnificent canyons of the Panamints, my Spring itineraries took a decided turn for the better. We'd move from one campground to another over the week of instruction with my wife, Wanda, whose role was well defined by her CB handle, Chuckwagon, fixing meals for the group from our portable kitchen-pantry that moved along with the class because it was fastened to a tow vehicle.
On the particular day that I claim that my desert life changed so dramatically, my fellow teacher's family and we were enjoying the fact that everyone else had headed home and after descending some canyon or another, we noticed a sign on the Indian Ranch Road that offered ice and cold drinks for sale. Pulling in under giant Tamarisk trees we saw a building built from concrete test cores, with a "Store" sign affixed to the front. We went in and I saw nothing of the interior because I was dazzled by the beauty of the young woman tending the "bar" (to use the word loosely). I guess I must have finally quit staring, or else she was used to being stared at, and she introduced herself as Carol Barker, daughter of the ranch lessee, the legendary Kirk Barker, who is worthy of an autobiographical sketch of her own. Carol told us that her family had vacationed for years in a place her father had built in Goler Wash, had gotten the opportunity to lease Indian Ranch, and invited us to camp there on the green grass, in the wonderful shade, and with water running everywhere. Anyway, as most of the readers of the Bugle already will know, the Barker Ranch up in Goler was being enshrined in infamy, and probably fortunately for us in every respect except for not having another story to tell, we had not taken Roger Mitchell's advice in that first edition of Death Valley Jeep Trails to stop and ask to take a swim with the hippies who were hanging out there. We camped out at and enjoyed Indian Ranch for more than twenty years until the Barkers' lease ran out, at which time we were told that we wouldn't want to be part of the ranch scene with the impending return of the owners. Stupidly we heeded that advice for a year or two.
Upon our return to the Ranch, we began a second era of great friendships and oasis living, and most importantly we met and got to know Dugan. Dugan Hanson, owner of Indian Ranch, is the grandson of Indian George Hansen or Hanson, who as readers will know, watched the first wagons of the white pioneers come into Death Valley in that December of 1849, and because of his fear of these strange looking people, became according to Anglo histories, Bah-vanda-savany-kee, "The Boy Who Ran Away". While on the subject of names, let me point out that Dugan says that the family name from his grandfather on down has always been spelled Hanson, regardless of how many times it has been spelled Hansen in biographical or historical articles. Dugan also says that George's Indian name was really Pon-se-quatta (this phonetic spelling is only an attempt to allow the reader to pronounce the name as neither Dugan nor I have any idea how it should be spelled, but remember that the Shoshones never spelled it and any Anglo spelling came about by exactly the same process as I used here)
Ten years later as I talked to Dugan in preparation for writing this story, it hit me again: I was talking to a person who had lived with and talked with Indian George for twenty five years. I was talking with a person who had talked at length with the person who had seen the Bennetts and Arcanes come across the salt of the place Mrs. Bennett was going to name Death Valley during her escape from the great sink, and which the Indians called Tomesha (Ground Afire). ...... Or did Dugan listen and talk with his Grandpa ?
Dugan was born in Darwin in 1923 to the son of Indian George Hanson and the only -child daughter of George Gregory from Darwin. Dugan tells us that offspring related to George Hanson tended to get the last name of Hanson regardless of the father's last name. But then that's not strange if we remember that George Hanson was called George Hanson because folks thought that he should have an Anglo name and so he was named after a man Dugan says worked at Panamint City with his grandfather. There is another version of the source of the Hansen or Hanson name that is interesting but not authenticated by Dugan. Supposedly a Bureau of Indian Affairs census taker decided that George Inyo, as he was known at one time, was not an appropriate name for one of his Indians, and named him George Hansen for the Bureau's purposes. It seems likely that George was Hansen at first, but his progeny became Hansons by the next generation at the latest, probably as a result of a bureaucratic guess as to how the name was spelled. (Entry into school or birth records seem a likely time for this to have happened)
Dugan's father, Mike, worked as a cowboy for the Olancha cattle ranch Summers and Butler for some years and then undoubtedly because of better money, went to work on the Los Angeles Aqueduct. In his thirties, Mike began to have, seemingly without apparent cause, severe swelling and cramping in his leg, which put him on crutches for the rest of his life. A number of the Hansen family, and indeed Dugan himself, have battled diabetes, in some cases contributed to by alcoholism (not in Dugan's case) and as one listens to Dugan's description of his father's misery, one can't help wondering if diabetes was not at least a contributing factor.
Dugan had two sisters and three brothers, none of whom were fortunate enough to have the longevity of their grandfather. (Is a much shorter life span one of the contributions of civilization to the Shoshone ?) Dugan went to school in Olancha and in Darwin, but much to his later regret, quit school at 4th grade, maybe partly because his mother died when he was five or six. Dugan remembers whispered talk about his mother's death being accompanied by hemorrhaging from the orifices of her head and one suspects that Dugan's thoughts turn often to the little he remembers about his mother and how life might have been if she had lived through at least his adolescence.
Dugan married Vivian, a Paiute and Shoshone, in 1952 and they raised two sons of Vivian's by a previous marriage and their daughters Barbara and Elaine. Fortunately, for Dugan in the early 1960's a number of things happened that changed his life.
He acquired the deed to Indian Ranch in 1962, shortly thereafter leased the Ranch to the Barkers, and left for trade school in Bakersfield for three years. The trade school trained him in a variety of mechanical skills and upon his return to Ridgecrest, he worked at the China Lake Golf Course for three years. During those golf course years he repeatedly tried to pass the Civil Service exam for employment at the Weapons Center and after failing seven or eight times, feeling ready to give up, Merciful Providence or the spirit of his grandfather or what ever you believe is responsible for these kinds of things, intervened and he not only passed, but recollects that he got a 100 % on the test. For nearly twenty years he welded targets together, welded up super strong igloos in which dummies could be placed for testing of the devastation of new bombs, and in general recalls work as being a pleasure and satisfaction to him.
At the end of his time with the Navy, Dugan had a surprise retirement party at Indian Ranch in the middle of July, and guests who were there remember best that the 120+ temperature kept all the guests in the swimming pool for the duration of the party.
Since the very beginning of our friendship,
I have asked Dugan about his grandfather, wanting to get as much
only-second-hand information as possible from this direct recipient
of the tales of Indian George, but alas in most cases, Dugan just
looks downcast, smiles, and says that he was just a kid like most
kids and didn't want to be bothered with listening to his Grandpa's
stories. As is often the case his Grandpa didn't get wise until
Dugan was older and by that time, George was dead and it was to
late to hear the stories about their people and the early days.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, when Dugan tells his own
grandchildren that he has some things he needs to tell them, they
usually tell him something like:
" Not now, Grandpa, we're too busy".
So Dugan tells me, probably wishing it was his grandchildren that he was telling it to, about the encampments of the Shoshone near Ballarat before the arrival of the Anglos, and about the relative of George who was an outlaw and would raid the Mexican ranchos and come roaring back into the Panamint Valley with two or three hundred horses, sometimes pursued by the Mexicans, once with a story about stopping to water the horses and having them drink the watering hole dry. Dugan says that a few of the horses would be picked out for riders, but mostly the horses were a source of food. Dugan tells me about his Grandpa's love of gambling, and the night in Ballarat when he was the big winner at cards, announced that he was leaving, looked around the room at the nasty tempered men who had lost their money, and decided that he'd play a little longer, long enough to lose what he had won, in return for which he was able to leave in one piece.
In California, we refer to Ishi as the "last of his tribe" and indeed he was, but in a sense Dugan fits that description also, in that he is the last of the Panamint Shoshone able to give us the direct conduit to the man that to many of us Anglos was the first of the Shoshone.
In our minds Dugan and Indian Ranch are inseparable complements. The Ranch is now an island of private land surrounded by the new "wilderness". Unlike some of the other pieces of exempted land within the wilderness it is making no one monetarily rich, but certainly enriches the souls of those of us who use it as a base of operations for our desert exploration in addition to providing a common ground (in both the literal and figurative meanings of the word ground) for the Hansons.
Indian Ranch , of all the places in the desert I think we love you best, and Dugan Hanson, we love and admire you too, even if you didn't listen to your Grandpa as well as we, and you, would have liked. Gee, I wonder what my Grandfather would have told me if I'd cared anything about it then. Stop to think of it, my grandchildren are coming down here soon and I think I'll tell them about .........
Postscript: After many years of Dialysis necessitated by failed kidneys, Dugan died June 21, 2001 at Loma Linda Hospital. He was buried at Darwin, the town where he was born and raised.