Stories and Songs as History

The relationship between stories and songs telling the legendary tales of a given people and the history of that people is not always a clear one. The songs and stories in "Cupe�o Genesis" are valuable less for what they say of history as we usually define it and more for what they say about the people who told these stories and sang these songs in their own language. These are cultural elements that have been passed down for generations, connecting the remaining members of this tribal group directly to their ancestors and to the world of their ancestors. Such texts provide the historian with a sense of the people about whom he or she writes and of the manner in which those people related to the world in which they lived.

The songs and stories in "Cupe�o Genesis" has been derived from the Cupe�o villages at Oala and San Ysidro in San Diego County in Southern California. The songs were published in 1953, and the informant had been born in 1874, making her a bridge between the two centuries and covering much of the history of her people in conflict with the developing of the United States. Since her mother and grandmother were important religious and ceremonial leaders as well as cultural historians for the group, the informant was well versed in the tales by which her people expressed their sense of the world and their place in it. She learned much from her grandmother, who by marriage was connected to a second important family and whose husband was a famous singer a

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