No summary at this time, please refer to the detailed index below.
0-5:00 (Section 1 of Recording)
Maria Onaindia and Juanita Malaxa did not come to the US together, they came as separate times. When they first arrived, they went into the hills with their street shoes as their husbands didn’t tell them that they needed boots. It was quite an experience going down steep hillsides, etc. with those shoes. In the Basque Country they lived in a small town, very different from Hells Canyon, Oregon. There was no comparison between the two with the big mountains and fifty some miles to get to town in the Hells Canyon area. They had never been in that kind of country before. But the sisters say that little by little they adapted to their new life in the United States.
When they were in Hells Canyon, Maria and Juanita used to get their groceries and the mail by a boat that would come up the river every Wednesday up from Lewiston, Idaho. They’d keep a list of what supplies they needed and would take it down to the river on Wednesdays. They looked forward to Wednesdays as not only would the groceries come, but letters from Spain too. They say that at that time they had to be really strong and that many times they surprised their husbands because they were stronger than their husbands even thought.
They explain that in the Basque Country sheepherders have little ranches with some sheep, but they do not have big sheep bands like in the US. However, the sisters were already used to taking care of sheep, because in the Basque Country they used to milk the sheep from their family farm and make cheese with it. Their mother would make wonderful cheese from the sheep’s milk.
Maria and Juanita have very good memories about staying in the sheep camps with their husbands. They used to go to the sheep camp during lambing time, from late March until the end of April, and stay there cooking for themselves and their husbands. The stove was small and in the tent.
Juanita says the sisters say that the Basque language and American English are probably related, because she finds both of them hard to learn. She then gives an example of what Euskara, the Basque language sounds like.
0-5:00 (Section 2 of Recording)
The sisters say that you cannot pay enough money for a good dog. For them, dogs are a sheepherder’s best friends and they say that their dogs would always be very well-trained. They used border collies and other types too.
Juanita explains how difficult it is to pack a mule. In the fall of the year they’d have to pack everything in and then once a week the boat would come down the river from Lewiston to bring supplies and mail. The boat would regularly deliver seven cases of milk, four or five cases of tomatoes and string beans, peas, sugar, jam and coffee. They would pack in with them as much as possible because from Lewiston, Idaho, the freight was quite expensive.
The interviewer asks Juanita to describe her husband and she said that he was extraordinary at counting sheep. She explains that she and her husband could count hundreds of sheep, she would mark every hundred he counted with a knife on the ground. He might just miss one or two out of 2,300 sheep, and sometimes not even miss one. As the interviewer is looking at a picture, Juanita describes her husband walking down the Snake River, after it froze, from Cherry Creek all the way to Lewiston. They had been hit with so much snow that they didn’t have feed for the animals so he walked out the 49 miles and commandeered an airplane to bring grain and drop it in so they could feed the sheep. On the other hand, Maria says that her husband was a good cook and that he knew how to bake homemade bread.
0-5:00 (Section 3 of Recording – “Shoot 2”)
Maria and Juanita explain that the origin of the Basque language is still unknown. Their children can speak Basque as good as they can. Both sisters are proud of their language and of being Basque, and they do not like it when people identify them as being Spanish.
Maria and Juanita married their husbands in Bilbo, Bizkaia, on the same day, March 17, 1951. A few months later, on July 3, Maria came to Salt Lake City, Utah, together with her husband because that is where he worked as a sheepherder. Her son, Joe, was born in Tremonton, Utah, five months after she left the Basque Country on Christmas Day. The family stayed in Utah for two and a half years.
In Juanita’s case, after marrying her husband, she stayed in the Basque Country. She was already pregnant and she stayed in her home country until her daughter was born. Finally, a year and a half later, she joined her sister and her husband in Utah.
For the sisters, coming to the US had been hard because they could not speak any English. Juanita says that even now they cannot speak really good English, although they both know enough to communicate. Besides, Juanita adds that the food did not even taste right in the US and Maria explains that when she came here she could not count in American dollars, so she always paid with more money and ended up having a purse full of coins.
5-10:00
Juanita says that when they moved from Utah to Enterprise, Oregon, the neighbors were very nice and friendly. At first the sisters could understand a little bit of English, but they were unable to speak. Maria says that it was frustrating because she wanted to be a part of the conversation but she could not speak. However, little by little they started feeling more comfortable speaking in English.
The sisters explain that passing their culture on to their children had been easy and natural. Because they could not speak any English, they only spoke Basque with their children, so they did not have to really try to keep their culture at home.
Juanita says that coming to the US at first felt really bad. The Basque Country is a small region and when she saw the big mountains of Utah she felt scared. Besides, before they got their driver’s licenses, they always had to depend on somebody to drive them some place, whereas in the Basque Country they could walk everywhere.
Despite the situation, Juanita says that they never complained because their parents had raised them to be strong. The sisters were born into a family of seven children, so they learned to work hard at a young age. They also say that their dad used to tell them: “If you know how to work, you’ll never be hungry” and Juanita totally agrees with that. The sisters say that this work ethic is not something exclusive from their family, but rather a cultural aspect of the Basque Country.
10-15:00
The sisters did not live far from Gernika, Bizkaia, the town that was bombed by the German air force under the orders of Franco, and they say that they saw the airplanes coming and heard the bombs landing. The sisters had a cousin who lived in Gernika and who, after the bombing, went to stay with Maria and Juanita’s family.
The sisters explain that during Franco’s dictatorship Basque people suffered many injustices, such as the prohibition of speaking their language. Maria relates that her sister-in-law’s husband, who was a mayor in a town in the Basque Country, was taken to jail without any reason and he never returned home. Later they found out he had been killed and thrown into a mass grave. Maria adds that the Spanish soldiers could even enter someone’s house, take people by force to the cemetery, shoot them and leave the body in the cemetery. Nobody could say anything, because if they did, they would be killed too. They explain that the repression continued until Franco died.
15-20:00
Both sisters came by plane to the US. Juanita says that when she first came to the United States she missed the Basque Country a lot. Besides, she says that people sometimes made fun of them because they could not speak the language. However, she adds that Basque people earned a good reputation over time. What Maria loves the most about the US is the landscape.
Both sisters have their US citizenship.
They talk about their cabin in the mountains that burned. They feel that the Forest Service staff was to blame for the cabin burning. They had 3 men over watching the cabin and no trees around and it had a metal roof. The same thing happened to a supply shed. Maria feels strongly that the Forest Service does not want any evidence of the sheep industry in the area they manage.
20-25:00
When the sisters were helping their husbands with the sheep at the sheep camps, they had to pack the mules with their possessions and the groceries. In the fall they’d have to pack in as much as seven cases of milk, four or five cases of tomatoes and string beans, peas, sugar, jam and coffee.
Juanita says that when they retired and sold their ranch, called the Cherry Creek Ranch, and their sheep, the new owners of the sheep did not know how to handle the sheep in a proper way.
The cars that they used to use at the ranch were Chevrolet pick-up trucks.
25-30:00
The sisters are mad that the cabin was burned, because that shelter had been part of their life.
The sisters explain that during the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship every time they saw a plane their father would tell them to lay down on the ground in order not to be bombed, and the sisters kept doing the same thing even when they arrived in the US.
30-35:00
Maria and Juanita also say that during the dictatorship Franco’s soldiers would go to every house in the Basque Country in order to check on how many cows and chicken people had. The soldiers did those checks every 6 months and if an animal was killed at the house [for their own use], the family had to pay a fine.
The sisters love Basque music and still keep tapes of Basque songs in their houses. They will both attend the Jaialdi International Basque Festival in Boise. Juanita explains that many people from their home town in the Basque Country, Gizaburuaga, Bizkaia, came to the last Jaialdi.
The sisters say that they often did not have decent shoes to wear. For example, Juanita tells the story that one August the two sisters went with their three children to the sheep camps wearing tennis shoes, and even though it was summer, it was snowing.
35-40:00
Juanita recalls that one day they had to make three trips from Enterprise to the Cherry Creek Ranch to transport the sheep. They would take the sheep, move them to the ranch, return to town to check on how their kids were doing, and then go back to the ranch. On the third trip they killed a beautiful buck [deer], but when they told their husbands what had happened, they did not care much.
40-45:00
Before coming to the US Maria worked 8 years in the fish industry. Maria loves eating fish, especially salted cod. She has a cookbook and she knows how to prepare the cod in a variety of ways. She used to buy salted cod from Seattle, Washington, put it in the river to remove the salt and cook it for the sheepherders in the camp, who really loved eating cod.
On the other hand, Juanita prefers eating meat more than fish. Both sisters used to bake their own bread, and they still do it and give it to lots of people. The herders used to make a sourdough started from water from a potato, then keep the starter going and use it every day. Juanita said that her husband used to make the best sourdough hotcakes in the world! They make their bread now with dry yeast and water.
45-50:00
The sisters are ask to say something in Basque… so Maria begins by saying that there are animals out there to eat, but no animals are in plain sight, that they are probably hidden. They say that the mountains in which they are right now are really beautiful.
Speaking in English again, Juanita explains that their parents only knew Basque and could hardly speak in Spanish. However, the sisters learned to speak and write in Spanish in school. During Franco’s dictatorship Spanish was the only language that was taught in school; however Juanita says that she can also write a little bit in Basque, although she makes a lot of grammatical mistakes and it’s difficult. They talk about their mother using the Basque language to buy things in town to bring home for the family. They said that their mother, even with very little education, could do mathematics in her head like figuring out the cost of a beef almost to the penny. During the time of their parents, they didn’t have a chance for much education.
Juanita tells an anecdote about taking classes to become a nurse’s aide. She said that when she went to work, she didn’t know if she was going to like it or not, so she decided that she would work for three weeks without pay. At the end of the first week, she was doing as well as the other employees, so her boss offered to pay her, but she declined. She kept her word to work for three weeks for free.
Juanita worked with the sheep in the summertime and she’d work as a nurse’s assistant in the fall. She could lift more than most other people. She attributes her strength to eating lots of meat – elk and other meat from animals in the mountains.
50-55:00
Maria says that both of her children can speak good Basque. However, her daughter Juanita usually uses English to communicate, even with her relatives, and she only speaks Basque when she has company in her house or when she doesn’t want other people to understand what she’s saying. Maria’s daughter has not taught her own son how to speak Basque. On the contrary, Juanita is proud that both of her children can speak good Basque.
The sisters are happy that the Basque community in Boise has worked so hard to keep the culture alive.
NAMES, PLACES AND THEMES
NAMES:
Onaindia, Juanita: Maria’s daughter
Onaindia. Joe: Maria’s son
PLACES: (alphabetized)
Bilbo (Bilbao), Bizkaia, the Basque Country (Spain)
Boise, Idaho
California
Cherry Creek Ranch: Maria, Juanita and their husbands ranch in Oregon
Enterprise, Oregon
Gernika, Bizkaia, the Basque Country (Spain)
Gizaburuaga, Bizkaia, the Basque Country (Spain)
Hells Canyon, Oregon
Lewiston, Idaho
Salt Lake City, Utah
Seattle, Washington
Tremonton, Utah
THEMES:
Adjusting to life in the US
Bombing of Gernika
Children
Cooking
Education
Family Relations
Food
Franco’s Dictatorship
Immigration
Language
Language Barrier
Marriage
Nationalism
Prohibition
Ranching
Sheepherders
Spanish Civil War
Work