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Wednesday, April 17, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Euskal Herria
Juanito Mendiolea was a
Basque immigrant who over
many years donated con-
siderable time and energy
helping my family with our
sheep. He was an endur-
ing presence at our place,
during winter lambing sea-
sons when we carried bum-
mer lambs into the house to
warm up by the woodstove,
at spring shearings when the
wool piled up in lanolin-rich
mountains, or when the coy-
otes killed our lambs and we
set out to deliver a measure
of frontier justice.
Memories of Juanito
and his quiet, determined
demeanor came flooding
back this week as I perused
the summer schedule of
Basque festivals across the
northern Great Basin, from
Susanville to Winnemucca,
from Elko to Boise.
The Basques are an impor-
tant, and often overlooked,
piece of Western Americana,
and they have made an out-
sized contribution relative
to their population. From
We’ve got you covered
from head to toe!
John Ascuaga, who built The
Nugget hotel-casino in Reno,
to U.S. senator and former
governor of Nevada, Paul
Laxalt, from Olympic swim-
mer Ryan Lochte to Frenchy
Bordagary 4 who dreamed
of a career as a violinist but
settled for professional base-
ball 4 Basque immigrants
and their descendants have
quietly made a lasting mark
in the story of the modern
West.
The Basques began immi-
grating into the United States
in considerable numbers after
the gold strikes in California.
Those early waves of Basque
people came largely from the
Spanish colonies of South
America, settling in the cen-
tral valley of California and
along the foothills of the
western Sierras.
Today, in many places in
the high Sierra, it is possible
to wander through aspen
groves where the carvings
from Basque shepherds cre-
ate a kind of living-history
exhibit. Those carvings,
sometimes X-rated, remain a
fascinating window into the
life of the lonely mountain
shepherds.
Over time, and particu-
larly during the dictator-
ship of Franco, waves of
European Basques came
into California, eventually
spreading widely into the
Great Basin. Franco was no
friend of the independent-
minded Basques, banning
their language and imprison-
ing their leadership.
During the manpower
shortages of World War
II, thousands of Spanish
PIZZA
Basques were recruited into
the United States by the
Western Range Association,
who put them to work as
cowboys and shepherds tend-
ing enormous herds of cattle
and flocks of sheep across
the high deserts of California,
Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho.
Those immigrants, and
their descendants, played
an important role in shap-
ing the character of small
Great Basin towns like
Winnemucca, Lamoille,
Fallon, or my own hometown
of Susanville, California. The
legacy of Euskal Herria, the
Basque Country, remains
vivid in each of these places
and the Basque festivals are
a great and inspiring way to
enjoy an intensely proud,
warm, and accomplished
culture that stretches many
thousands of years into the
past.
One fascinating aspect of
Basque culture remains the
language: Euskara. Unlike
English, which is a Germanic
language, or French, Spanish,
and Italian, which belong to
the family of Latin descen-
dants, Euskara is an isolate,
meaning it has no known
relative in the world. Many
scholars believe that Euskara
is the last remaining link
to the mists of old Europe,
before mass migrations swept
the Indo-European languages
across the continent.
Theories abound to
explain how the Basque were
able to retain their language
after so many wars of con-
quest and waves of immi-
gration, but there is general
consensus that the rugged,
resource-poor nature of the
Pyrenees Mountains, and the
fiercely independent culture
of the Basque people com-
bined to preserve an irre-
placeable legacy.
Even President John
Adams, touring Europe in
1786, found much to be
praised in Basque forms of
government. He wrote: <...
this extraordinary people
have preserved their ancient
language, genius, laws, gov-
ernment, and manners, with-
out innovation, longer than
any other nation of Europe.
Of Celtic extraction, they
once inhabited some of the
finest parts of the ancient
Boetica; but their love of
liberty, and unconquerable
aversion to a foreign servi-
tude, made them retire, when
invaded and overpowered
in their ancient feats, into
these mountainous coun-
tries, called by the ancients
Cantabria...=
My affinity for the
Basques was born of an
endearing friendship, and
apprenticeship, with Juanito
Mendiolea. Juanito did not
speak English, but he had a
manner of communicating
that transcended language,
erasing the barriers of culture
and tongue. He was a natural
teacher, and so my parents
would send me off to work
with him on the Susan River
Ranch, where he ran his own
sheep as part of his wages,
and tended the owner9s
cattle.
And so it was, one blister-
ing summer afternoon when
we had been stacking hay
off an elevator into the pole
barn, that Juanito whistled
loudly and waved me over. It
was break time.
We sat sweating in the
dust and the chaff of the hay-
stack, and Juanito brought
out his bota bag. He held
the bag up and squeezed,
his head tilted slightly, until
a stream of wine hit the cor-
ner of his eye, where it ran
slowly, like a red tear, trac-
ing a path along his nose and
down into his mouth. And
then he tossed the bag over
to me, gestured for me to try,
and laughed and laughed as
I blasted my face with errant
streams of wine.
Juanito is gone now, but
that warm laughter echoes
down the decades, and I can
still hear it whenever I drive
by his old place and see the
chair where he would sit in
the evenings, drinking his
wine on the porch, dreaming
of Euskal Herria.
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