When Carolyn
”
Carrie
”
Higuera died Sunday at the age of 102, she took with her the
last living memory of her native Amah Mutsun Indian tongue being
spoken in the home.
She grew up in financial poverty but cultural wealth amid some 500 members of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of Ohlone-Costanoan Indians who lived in and around San Juan Bautista.
When Carolyn “Carrie” Higuera died Sunday at the age of 102 at her home in Pacific Grove, she took with her the last living memory of her native tongue being spoken in the home. Her grandmother, Ascencion Solorsano de Cervantes, whose gravesite is at Mission San Juan Bautista, was the last member of the local tribe to indigenously speak the Mutsun language.
“She loved her Native American heritage,” said Charlie Higuera, one of Mrs. Higuera’s two surviving sons. “She was proud to be an American Indian – a California Indian.”
Mrs. Higuera instilled that pride in her four children.
“She wanted me to be active, which we are,” her son said. “Her legacy is just making sure we do everything right, keep our Indian culture going.”
Higuera chairs the Amah Mutsun Tribal Council, whose greatest goal is to retain federal recognition of the tribe that was dropped in 1927, along with that of some 135 other California Indian tribes. The council petitioned for recognition with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1990 and is still waiting, but holding out hope through the recent recognition of the Bay Area’s Mukwema Ohlone tribe.
“We’ll follow in their footsteps,” Higuera said. His mother would be proud.
Born Aemitium Corona on Aug. 8, 1900 in San Juan Bautista, Mrs. Higuera attended school and learned English at the mission, but was forbidden to speak it in her home, where Mutsun or Spanish were the rule. Christened Carolyn in the Catholic church, as a young girl she and her family followed the crops and the seasons, working in the vineyards of southern Santa Clara County.
When she was 9, her father died unexpectedly, leaving her mother, Claudia, to care for five children. Grandmother Ascencion adopted the youngest and the others, including Carrie, were raised by the Mutsun tribe.
At 16 she fell in love with Jose “Chico” Higuera, a Mutsun. The couple moved to Gilroy, where he became a butcher and she bore the first of their children. When the Depression forced the family to move to Monterey in the 1930s, Mrs. Higuera worked in the fish canneries on Cannery Row and her husband opened a butcher shop in Pacific Grove.
In 1945 the couple bought their first home, but Mr. Higuera was killed in a traffic accident soon after. To keep her home and family intact, Mrs. Higuera worked in the pantries in restaurants on the Monterey Peninsula and did housework on the side.
“My brothers were in World War II and my sisters and I were growing up,” her son said. “She was holding down three jobs just to keep food on the table. Housework, the canneries, gardening – anything to keep us going.
“She was an amazing woman. She just wanted everybody to be strong. That’s the way she raised us.”
From birth, Mrs. Higuera’s destiny seemed to be one of little promise. Eight of her aunts and four uncles died before they reached the age of 30. Yet, her son said, she was never in a hospital – except to give aid to dying members of her tribe in the early 1900s – and didn’t even have a personal physician until she was 101.
“She just had it in her,” Higuera said. “Her brother (Vince Corona) is 98 and still driving. He’s another one that’s strong.”
More than 150 people attended Mrs. Higuera’s 102nd birthday party last summer in Carmel Valley. Two years earlier, her son said, more than 225 people came from all over for her centennial celebration at a party on the picnic grounds at Mission San Juan Bautista, near her grandmother’s grave.
“We kind of centered around her all the time,” Higuera said. “Naturally, you respect your elders (but) she never had a bad word come out of her mouth. She just loved life.”
Though her health began to fail about 18 months ago, Mrs. Higuera remained stalwart. Shortly after her 102nd birthday in August she broke her wrist in a fall and couldn’t use her walker. But being bedridden was not an option for a woman who had worked all her life, so her family helped her maintain mobility with a wheelchair. She soon caught a cold, however, which weakened her heart.
“The day before she passed away, she had her eyes closed. She didn’t get up until after 1, which is late,” her son recalled. “I went to get her up Sunday morning and she was calling (his) niece, Barbara. She wanted to get up.
“We got her up and she said, ‘What a nice day this is.’ I said, ‘Barbara, look at her. What an amazing woman this is.'”
Later that day, in Mrs. Higuera’s final moments, paramedics were summoned from the fire station next door to her home. But her wish was to not be revived, her son said.
“I was lucky enough to be with her when she was taking her last breath,” he said. “That was just so super.
“You think your mother’s going to live forever,” Higuera added. “She was more or less the backbone of our family. Everybody had the highest respect for the elder.”
Mrs. Higuera is survived by her sons, Charlie Higuera of Pacific Grove and Lawrence Valdez of Southern California; her brother, Vince Corona of San Jose; her sister, Antonia Ketchum of Gilroy; 16 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, seven great-great grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.
In addition to her husband, she was preceded in death by her children, Clarence and Joe Higuera and Dolores Pratt; and her brothers and sisters, Tony, Santos, Maggie and Sally Corona.
A Mass of the Resurrection was celebrated this morning at St. Angela Catholic Church in Pacific Grove. Arrangements were under the direction of the Paul Mortuary in Pacific Grove.
Memorials are preferred to the Hospice Foundation, P.O. Box 1798, Monterey CA 93942.
