A Cry for the Lost: A Transitioning Native Worldview in Colonial California

Abstract

Historically, people have used legends across cultures as a means of transmitting moral values and socializing the young while providing a source of entertainment and education to their listeners. Contemporary versions of legends have the ability to provide insight to the underlying worldviews, which are shaped by the cultural context within a particular timeframe of history, that inspire revisions of a particular legend. In this essay, I use the methodology presented in Domino Perez’s There was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture (2008) to examine a story told by one of the characters in Jorge’s Ainslie’s novel, “Los Pochos” (1934), as a revision of the legend La Llorona that serves as a non-traditional historical narrative of the effects of Westernization on the native population within the missions of Alta-California. I argue that the areas of revision within the telling demonstrate a transitioning worldview of the villagers of San Fernando del Rey that is shaped by the cultural, societal, and historical contexts of Spanish Colonialism within mission communities of Alta-California.