CALIFORNIA DREAMER
The Story of Isaac Jenkinson Frazee
By Craig Walker
Isaac Jenkinson Frazee was a high-minded, slightly eccentric visionary whose art, poetry, and personal philosophy helped to shape the cultural life of Southern California during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was one of Southern California’s first local artists, whose unique impressionistic style gave his California landscapes a dreamy, opalescent quality. His poems, published in periodicals and newspapers throughout the Southland, reflected his witty, philosophical personality, as well as his deep reverence for California’s natural beauty and its rich Spanish-American and Indian heritage. His Indian pageant, Kitshi-Manido, was an inspiration to thousands of Southern Californians who responded to its simple message of love and service. It dignified the Indian, and paid tribute to their ancient culture. He eschewed the comforts and conveniences of civilization, making his home in the rugged mountains of northern San Diego County where he was surrounded by the wonders of nature. In spite of his isolation, he loved people and had many friends and acquaintances throughout the world. In 1893 he built an authentic Scottish tower on his ranch, which served as both a romantic family castle and a Hopi estufa—or council chamber. Whatever dream he followed––living in a medieval castle among the wonders of nature, producing a pageant based on the spiritual beliefs of the American Indian, or developing a personal lifestyle of love, harmony with nature, and service to mankind––he always shared his dreams freely with those around him. And, his life ended just as he hoped it would; tired, content, and happy at the age of 84, he “climbed into Mother Nature’s arms, where she gently rocked him fast asleep.”
1858 - 1873
Isaac Jenkinson Frazee was born November 30, 1858 at Winchester, Indiana. He was the son of William Doniphan Frazee, a successful Kentucky lawyer, and Rebecca Jenkinson, the daughter of a prominent Indiana family. He was named after his maternal uncle, Isaac Jenkinson, who was owner and publisher of the Richmond Palladium, active in Indiana politics, and a long-time trustee of Indiana University. It was this uncle’s great honor to travel to Washington D.C. in 1860 and cast the deciding electoral votes for Abraham Lincoln on behalf of the State of Indiana. Under President Ulysses S. Grant, Jenkinson served as American Consul to Scotland. In his later years, he wrote a scholarly book on Aaron Burr. After his sister’s family moved to California, Isaac Jenkinson maintained a close relationship with them, encouraging nephew Isaac’s writing and painting and niece Isabel’s career as an educator. The Jenkinsons were early Pennsylvania Quakers who had immigrated to Indiana in the late 1700s. Isaac Frazee’s mother, Rebecca Jenkinson, was a loving and artistic woman, who gave Isaac his first art lessons when he was a small child. Although she died when Isaac was a teenager, he maintained his connection with her through his uncle and aunt in Indiana.
Isaac’s father, William Doniphan “W.D.” Frazee, was born in Mason County, Kentucky, in 1822. He was the grandson of Kentucky pioneers who settled in “the dark and bloody ground” following the Revolutionary War. W.D.’s maternal grandfather, Joseph Doniphan, came to Kentucky with Daniel Boone in 1879, but returned to Virginia to fight in the Revolutionary War. He served at both Brandywine and Yorktown under George Washington. W.D.’s paternal grandfather, Samuel Frazee, was a scout for George Rogers Clark and served with Simon Kenton in several frontier skirmishes. Both grandfathers settled in Mason County, Kentucky, where the families were united through the marriage of their children Susan Doniphan and Ephraim Frazee. Susan’s youngest brother, Alexander William Doniphan, moved to Missouri where he practiced law with David Rice Atchison and was a Brigadier General in the State Militia. Doniphan was featured in an episode of the television series based on John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage, for saving the life of Mormon leader Joseph Smith. Later, as Colonel of the 1st Missouri Volunteers during the Mexican War, he led an historic march to Santa Fe and Sacramento, Mexico, earning the nickname “The American Xenophon”. From his grandfathers and uncles, W.D. Frazee learned first-hand about the great heroes of the American Revolution, life on the Frontier, and the remarkable history of the Frazee Family back to their ancestors in the Highlands of Scotland. From his mother, Susan Doniphan Frazee, who was converted at an early age to the Christian Church through her close association with its founder, Alexander Campbell, W.D. grew up a devout believer and eventually became a respected Elder in the Christian Church. All of this he would pass along to his son, Isaac, whose own pioneering spirit, Christian faith, love of nature, and passion for American Indian culture would define his remarkable life in California.
W.D. Frazee was an amazing man in his own right. By profession he was a lawyer, having studied under John A. McClung, nephew of Chief Justice John Marshall, and started his practice with Phineas Cassady in Rushville, Indiana. He argued several cases before the Indiana Supreme Court before the family moved to California. One of his primary interests, however, was anthropology. When he was still a boy living in Kentucky, an old Indian council chamber on his grandfather's farm intrigued him. From the polished, notched stone weapons he found near the site, he correctly concluded that the Indians who lived in Kentucky at the time could not have built the chamber. At the age of 16 he did his own survey of Eastern Kentucky burial mounds, and not much later he traveled to Central America to study the Mayans and Aztecs who he believed had migrated south after building the Kentucky mounds. By 1868 he had developed his own theory about the origins of the American Indian, which he based partly on his study of their tools, art, and language, and partly on the Bible. In 1842 he traveled to Fort Des Moines and helped lay out the city that would become the capital of Iowa. In ’49 he sailed via the Isthmus to San Francisco and the goldfields of Tuolumne County. He even ran for Senator in the first California State election. After five years in California he returned to Indiana where he married Rebecca Jenkinson. W.D. continued his law practice at Winchester, and later Decatur. In 1870 the family moved to Indianapolis where, in addition to practicing law, W.D. opened a Christian bookstore. He lectured widely on the Bible and became one of the leading ministers in the Christian Church. He was an accomplished writer, publishing a Christian newspaper and authoring several books. One of his religious books, Reminiscences and Sermons, is still in print today. It contains many of his best sermons and a detailed history of the Christian Church--also known as the Disciples of Christ.
In 1873, while the Frazee family was living in Indianapolis, Isaac’s mother took ill with tuberculosis. This was at the time when people in the Midwest believed climate could cause, and cure, illness. It was also widely touted that California’s climate could cure anything, so W.D. Frazee decided to move the family to California in hopes of improving Mrs. Frazee’s health. Isaac was just 15 years old. After the long trip out by wagon, they stopped in Riverside for a while, staying with Scipio Craig, an Indiana family friend who was publisher of the Riverside Citrograph. As a man respected in Indianapolis for his analytical mind, moral character, and good judgment, W.D. was asked to help scout a location for a proposed new colony of Indianapolis immigrants. He recommended a site at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. The colony was established there later that year, becoming the thriving little community of Pasadena.
While the Frazees were staying at the Craigs’, a family from Wisconsin named Miller moved in across the street. Isaac became friends with the Miller’s son, Frank, who many years later developed his family’s Glenwood Tavern into the world famous Riverside Mission Inn. The Frazees eventually moved to San Bernardino, where Isaac and his siblings attended classes at the local schools. His father loved San Bernardino so much, he wrote a booster book on the area called San Bernardino County, It’s Climate and Resources. Isaac recalls that in 1876 some scientists from the Smithsonian Institution were planning a scientific expedition to the top of San Bernardino Mountain. He begged his father to let him go, and his father agreed. Isaac claimed he was the first boy to ever climb the mountain. While at the top, he discovered a new type of snow plant, which he showed to one of the scientists. Much to his dismay, the scientist took the plant and claimed the discovery for himself.
That same year, Isaac’s mother fell ill and died of tuberculosis. Grief stricken, the father moved his five children to Norwalk to be close to family friends, the Venables. Mrs. Venable, whom Isaac always called “Auntie,” became a surrogate mother to the children. A year later, the Frazees moved back to San Bernardino. One of W.D.’s new projects was the opening of a college, sponsored by the Christian Church, which would educate young men and women living in the Southland. Named Southern Pacific College, it was located in Downey and administered by Prof. James M. Monroe. Both Isaac and his sister, Isabel, attended “S.P.” for several months before it closed in 1878 due to financial problems. So memorable were the school’s two years of operation, however, that many years later Isaac and his family attended annual reunions for the short-lived college.
To continue his son’s education, W.D. placed him in the law office of San Bernardino attorney, John Brown, Jr. Isaac, however, was too much of a dreamer to be a successful lawyer—or even to spend his days in an office studying law. He soon took to working as a cowboy and farmhand on the large sheep, cattle, and wheat ranches that sprang up across the vast San Jacinto Plains. He herded sheep and cattle, and sometimes drove the horse-drawn header wagons that collected the wheat cut by the header machines. It was a rough, itinerant lifestyle, which Isaac eventually grew tired of. Although he was generally popular with the other cowboys because he sang clever songs, recited poetry, told tall tales, and sketched humorous pictures, he had some close calls in bunkhouse brawls. Once he narrowly missed being stabbed by a Chinese cook enraged because he thought Isaac had taken an extra piece of pie! For sport, Isaac and his friends would mount their horses and go “coursing” with greyhounds—chasing after jackrabbits. Sometimes they would meet one of the Lugo boys, members of the pioneer Mexican family that owned much of what is now East LA, in Boyle Heights and run all the way down to Long Beach. Other amusements included wagering on local “scrub horse races,” visiting the hot springs at Los Encinos, sharing a basket of fruit, attending church gatherings, and making occasional trips into the nearby town of Los Angeles (population 11,000).
In 1881, at the age of 22, Isaac decided to take a break from his life on the ranches and travel north to Yosemite. Setting out on his beloved horse, Antelope, Isaac traveled from San Bernardino to the San Fernando Valley, where he worked on the booming Kester Ranch to earn money for the trip. He then proceeded north through Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Salinas to Gilroy. From Gilroy he crossed the Pacheco Pass to Los Banos, on to Merced, and finally into Yosemite. It was a long, eventful trip, which he detailed in a notebook now at the Huntington Library in San Marino. Along the way, he saw very few towns that truly impressed him. Most were simply the same nondescript collection of ramshackle wooden buildings with false fronts and sagging boardwalks that made up most Southern California towns in the early 1880s. So intent were the Anglo-American settlers at eradicating all traces of California’s Indian and Spanish heritage that many of the Spanish Missions Isaac visited were covered with clapboard and topped with Midwestern-style steeples. He enjoyed the beautiful countryside, however, and the hospitable people he met—although a couple of times he found himself in dangerous situations where he barely escaped with his life. One evening, at the Haines Ranch north of the Mission San Miguel, the drunken ranch hands made him sing as they fired bullets into the ground next to his feet. Fearing for his life, he led his horse away through the fog in the middle of the night.
When he arrived at Yosemite, he was overwhelmed by the grandeur of God’s creation. Standing in front of El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, and Half-Dome he had what amounted to a religious experience. He saw that God was in nature, and that nature was a part of God. It was a turning point in his life. From that day on, he knew that he would always live close to nature, and that he would preach the spirituality of nature through his art and poetry. Years later, he wrote the following poem, entitled “Yosemite”:
Lord, I came to Nature’s sanctuary As a little child by intuition led, Seeking for mine hungered heart
A manna-morsel to feed my thoughts
on high
When lo! Thou spreadest before me
This banquet of the Kings!
1882 - 1885
Isaac hurried back home to San Bernardino where he began making arrangements to study art in Louisville, Kentucky. A year later, in 1882, he entered the Louisville Art Academy, where he studied for two years under Clarence Boyd. During his stay in Louisville, he opened a studio downtown where he lived and painted. His uncle Lewis Jacob Frazee, a respected Louisville physician, introduced him to a number of wealthy art patrons and got him established in the city’s Christian Church. To the people he met in Louisville, he was considered charming, witty, and the life of the party with his songs, poems, and magical stories of life “out West” in California. They considered him something of an eccentric, because of his Stetson hat, twirling cane, and cowboy demeanor. One day he went with some fellow art students to see Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West Show” He was not at all impressed with the rope tricks performed by “Lasso Jack”, so he returned the next morning with his own lariat and showed “these Eastern city boys” what a real cowboy could do. They loved his demonstration, and offered him $15.00 a month with board to join the show. Isaac laughed and told them that a Western hand usually made at least $20 a month plus board—which was what he made working on the Kester Ranch.
One day Isaac’s uncle introduced him to the pretty daughter of a wealthy Louisville businessman. She was Bettie Shryock Dickinson, recently graduated from Wittenberg College. Isaac began calling at the family home and taking Bettie for walks. They soon fell deeply in love. At first, Bettie’s mother enjoyed having “the California cowboy” around, because she also enjoyed his company. When she found out that her daughter was in love with him, and had promised to marry him, she forbade Bettie from ever seeing him again. When Bettie demanded to know why, her mother told her that she was hoping Bettie would marry a 65 year-old family friend who was extremely wealthy and “owned a mansion on the Hudson.” Bettie angrily challenged her mother’s views as materialistic and old-fashioned. Her mother replied, “Better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.”
Bettie was devastated by her mother’s reaction, but she refused to break off her relationship with Isaac. She met with him in parks, friends’ homes, and other locations around Louisville. The more she got to know him, the stronger her love grew. In 1884 Isaac’s health took a turn for the worse, and he began to yearn for the warm climate and beauty of Southern California. He left Louisville early the next year with a promise from Bettie to join him as soon as possible in California. Bettie’s mother was relieved to see him go, thinking their relationship was finally over. A few months later, however, Bettie led her parents to believe she was going to travel by train to Ohio to visit college friends. Instead, she went in the opposite direction--to New Orleans. From there, she caught the new Santa Fe line to Colton, near San Bernardino.
When Bettie arrived at Colton several days later, Isaac was not there to greet her as she expected. She asked at the station for directions to the Frazee home in San Bernardino, but was told the Frazees had moved away several months before! She spent the next three days in a small hotel, stranded and broken-hearted, before the Frazees were finally located and notified by telegraph of her arrival. When someone showed up, however, it was Isaac’s younger brother, Don. After introducing himself, he explained that the family was living near Oceanside and that he would accompany her there on the train. During their ride from Colton to Oceanside, Bettie kept asking why Isaac hadn’t come himself, but Don kept changing the subject. When they pulled up at W.D.’s ranch, and there was still no sign of Isaac, Bettie’s heart sank. As it turned out, however, Don had intercepted Bettie’s telegram from Colton and decided to surprise his brother. When Isaac emerged from the house and saw her, he was as overjoyed as she was. Two days later, on June 26, 1885, they were married in a small ceremony on W.D’s Oceanside ranch.
There was no time for a honeymoon, however. Isaac was eager to get situated in Los Angeles, where he planned to open a studio and begin his career as an artist. Because his studio in Louisville had done so well, he was confident that a studio in Los Angeles would be a success, too. A week after the wedding, he set out to find a suitable location in Los Angeles while Bettie stayed behind with Isaac’s sister. It was several weeks before Bettie could leave and join her new husband in Los Angeles. Finally, and with much anticipation, Isaac and Bettie opened their little studio for business. Their anticipation soon turned to disappointment when they discovered that Los Angeles had little interest for art in 1885—especially for paintings by a local artist. In her autobiography, Journeying Through The Years, Bettie describes what Los Angeles was like in 1885:
Los Angeles was just a sleepy little place in those days--more like a village than a city, with very few nice homes and few business buildings of any size. Mr. B. F. Coulter, the founder of Coulter Dry Goods House, a dear friend of my parents [and Isaac’s father], was its leading merchant…
Most of the streetcars in Los Angeles were still being drawn by mules but one street did have a cable line, a “double-decker”, which seemed to attract quite a bit of attention. On the whole it was still a dreamy little “mañana” Mexican place. There were not many places of amusement in those days. The Plaza was always a colorful place, with its groups of Mexicans in their bright serapes and broad sombreros. The nights were made merry by plaintive song, tinkling guitars, and the joyous voices of gaily attired senoritas, dancing the happy hours away.
Meanwhile, the dusty streets of Los Angeles aggravated Isaac’s health problems. On the advice of his doctor, they borrowed camping gear from their family friend, Mr. Coulter, and went to stay at Arrowhead Hot Springs. They pitched their tent in Waterman Canyon and took their meals at the Darby Hotel. Isaac’s health improved, but he knew he could not continue to live in Los Angeles. A few months after they opened their studio, Isaac and Bettie closed it, packed their things, and returned to Oceanside.
Both Isaac’s father and brother were caught up in the Southern California real estate boom that had been triggered by the recent completion of the Santa Fe railroad. W.D. was working on a booster book for the area--Oceanside: Gateway to San Diego County--and Don was selling real estate. Don located a government claim for Isaac and Bettie in the nearby San Luis Rey Valley. It was on a high ridge that overlooked the ocean on one side, and the Mission San Luis Rey on the other. Isaac and Bettie were delighted with the location and soon built a small redwood house on top of the hill. They named their new homestead Casa Loma.
From Casa Loma’s brow I gaze
Afar o’er land and sea,
Through a silvery mist of shimmering haze,
Wrapping all in a soft, weird mystery
From mountain peak to sand of sea.
When I behold this marvelous work
Of the great creator’s hand,
I realize how blest are we
Who live in this favored land.
Isaac had hoped to spend his days painting and selling his art, but he soon realized that he would have to work his land as well. He planted fruit trees, acquired some farm animals, and began plowing the flatlands of his ranch. To his surprise, he found that he enjoyed farming—that living off the land was part of living with nature, and a way to communicate with God. He would put in a hard, satisfying day working his land, or helping a neighbor, and then paint in the evenings. To publicize himself as an artist he painted an enormous picture of a dead woman lying on the floor with a stab wound in her chest and a knife lying beside her. He named it “The Wages of Sin Are Death” and had it hung in an Oceanside hotel lobby. The painting even went on tour to San Diego and surrounding areas. It created quite a stir, and brought in several new commissions for paintings.
Casa Loma was not only close to the old Mission, but also to Rancho Guajome—one of the last Spanish-style Ranchos. Senora Ysadora Bandini Couts, who lived there with her four sons and four daughters, owned it. Isaac became friends with the residents of Rancho Guajome, and many of the other old-timers who lived around the crumbling Mission. He often traveled to the nearby Pala Indian Reservation, where many of the original Mission Indians still lived. During the five years he lived in the San Luis Rey Valley, he learned much about the old Spanish days, and the devastation to the Indian and Spanish-American way of life with the coming of the white man. One of his Pala Indian friends was “Old Victoria”, a 113 year-old basket-weaver who told Isaac she had helped carry the adobe bricks for the Mission when it was first built. When the Mission was rebuilt in 1896, Father O’Keefe gave Isaac one of the Mission’s original wooden beams. “Old Victoria” told him that the beams had been cut from trees on Mount Palomar and carried to the Mission on the shoulders of neophytes. They considered the wood sacred, and so would not allow the beams to touch the ground. So taken was Isaac with the tragic loss of Spanish-American culture and the Indians who lived in the area, that he began work on a lengthy poem—a tragic love-story that also captured the tragedy of the Californios and Indians. He named his book Nahda: A Story of Spanish-American Life. It is the story of a half-Spanish, half-Indian girl named Nahda, her love for a young American artist, and the deceit of a real estate speculator who steals her father’s land and exploits her, too. The opening lines of the poem are:
‘Mong the hills of Casa Loma,
Where the wild bee sips the honey
From the dewy lips of sages,
Dwelt a maiden, with her father
Pedro Gomez, the sheepherder.
When her eyes first op’d to sunlight,
Life and Death met at her cradle:
Death smoothed out a mother’s pillow—
Life found there a little orphan;
One so little, that they called her,
Half in pity, half in derision—
Little “Nahda”, which translated
From the Spanish, means but “nothing”…
While living at Casa Loma, Bettie gave birth to the Frazee’s first child, young Will. The new baby was the joy of Isaac’s life, but even so he grew restless and yearned to further pursue his interest in art. In 1888 Isaac sold off part of his ranch, intending to use the profits to study art in Paris. Bettie made amends with her mother, and was planning to stay with the Dickinson family in Louisville while Isaac studied in Paris. She took the train to Louisville with young Will and was reunited with her family and friends. Meanwhile, Isaac prepared for his trip abroad. Before he left, however, he received word from Bettie that she was pregnant with their second child. Isaac immediately cancelled his plans and Bettie hurried home so they could be together for the pregnancy and birth of their second child, Sarah Elizabeth. It was a bittersweet time for Isaac, because he was so looking forward to Paris, but it made the joy of greeting his new daughter all the greater. For the next two years, the Frazees lived happily at Casa Loma, and lived well off the bounties of their land.
One day, the local Sheriff rode up to Casa Loma and asked Isaac to accompany him to a distant canyon in the mountains––the Pamoosa Valley––where a shootout had just occurred leaving several people dead and wounded. Apparently a claim holder, Levi Stone, left his claim to visit relatives back East and returned to find squatters who claimed the land by squatters’ rights. Mr. Stone returned with a bounty hunter and a small posse to run the squatters off. One thing led to another and gunfire erupted, resulting in the horrific carnage. The Sheriff wanted Isaac to draw a crime scene sketch for his report. When the two of them descended the narrow, dusty road into the Pamoosa Valley, its beauty overwhelmed Isaac. The hills were covered with native-California plants and granite outcroppings. The oak-clad valley floor was like a natural park. Upstream was a beautiful waterfall from which the valley got its name, Pamoosa meaning, “grey beard” because the waterfall looked like the long beard descending from a rock formation that resembled an old Indian. From that day on the valley was known as “Warland” because of the gun battle, but Isaac could only see the valley’s beauty--and that it was a place he wanted to paint, write, and make his home.
When he returned home, he eagerly told Bettie about his discovery. She was not happy to hear that he wanted to move—especially to a remote valley in the backcountry called “Warland!” She was happy at Casa Loma, and didn’t want to start a new life in the mountains. When she saw the valley, however, she fell in love with it, too, and eagerly consented to live there. In 1890 Isaac and Bettie rented out their home at San Luis Rey Valley and moved with their two little children to the Pamoosa Valley. At first they lived in a tent while Isaac constructed a small two-story wood-frame home. It was a beautiful home among the oak trees on the valley floor. When the house was finished, Bettie suggested that this would be a good time for him to study art, so he traveled to San Francisco where he enrolled in the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. He studied under William Keith, the great California landscape artist, who advised Isaac that all the great artists were self-taught and that he should just live with nature and paint what he saw. It was a great message for him, and gave him the confidence he needed to develop his artistic skill.
One day after his return from San Francisco, he and Bettie were on a walk when they climbed up a hill through some dense brush and discovered a granite ridge overlooking the valley. Isaac told Bettie that he would build her a castle on that spot—just like the ones his Scottish ancestors had built back in Scotland. He didn’t know anything about building castles, but he set about preparing the rocks anyway. For two years he blasted, broke apart, and shaped the granite stones, carefully stacking them so they would be ready. According to his daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Worsley, Isaac trusted in Divine Providence to provide a means for him to build his castle. One day, in 1893, a traveler stopped by the house to ask for drink. Isaac fetched him some water from the spring and began talking with him. Imagine his surprise to find the man, Donald McGilvry, was a Scottish stonemason who knew exactly how to build a castle. Isaac offered him $3.50 a day, plus room and board, and the stonemason accepted. Together, over a two-year period, they built the stone tower and adjoining ramada from the stones Isaac had cut and shaped. When this phase of construction was completed, Isaac found he was out of money, out of stones, and out of time, for the stonemason had to return to Scotland. Isaac was depressed that his stone house was not finished. To cheer him up, Bettie suggested that he attach a wooden structure next to the tower, which he did. He dismantled their wooden house board by board and reassembled it next to the stone tower. The tower was a wonderful home that drew the attention of people from miles around. Isaac named it simply Warland Tower, but an English neighbor, Mr. Wulff, said it reminded him of the castles back home and dubbed it “the Castle”. The name stuck. Some years later a resident of Oceanside mistakenly called it “Woreland Castle”. Isaac liked the name, and decided it would help the valley shed its bloody reputation. From that point on it was called “Woreland Castle.”
Isaac also transformed the castle grounds into a sprawling park, with many well-developed paths that led to various points of interest, such as Pamoosa Falls, The Spring, Mystery Mountain Overlook, The Sanctuary, The Garden of Good Will, The Adobe, and a rock formation he called “The Witch of Warland”. He named the large oaks on the valley floor after the various celebrities he knew, such as scientist Luther Burbank, opera singer Ellen Beach Yaw, Indian authority Dr. George Wharton James, writer Charles F. Lummis, poet Sidney Lanier, singer Arthur Collins, artist William Wendt, and many. He built a tennis court, croquet grounds, picnic area, and amphitheater, and tamed many wild animals that lived around the castle. He invited neighbors, school groups from Escondido, courting couples, and folks who just wanted a place to relax for a few days, to come out and use the park at any time—and, of course, at no charge. If someone ventured near the castle, Isaac or Bettie would often invite them in to comment on one of Isaac’s paintings, listen to their youngest daughter, Edee Lou, play the piano, or just sit and talk. Isaac’s giving spirit was infectious, however, so many of those who came would beg Isaac for the opportunity to help out on one of his many projects around the castle. After a few hours of moving rocks, smoothing a path, or carrying water from the stream, they would usually leave uplifted and happy.
Although the Pamoosa Valley was not well populated, there were a few residents scattered through the valley. Mr. William Kinkaid was one of the first residents of the valley. Also, Washington E. Irving, nephew of the famous author, lived there. There were about 10 or 15 families in the area, who would gather at the schoolhouse on Friday evenings for “literaries”. They would first share a potluck dinner, and then read literature, stage skits that Isaac wrote, hold spelling contests, sing songs, and engage in neighborly conversation. On Sundays they held their church services in the same schoolhouse. At Christmas they would put up a community Christmas tree and hold a Pamoosa Christmas party. Isaac and Bettie played a large part in pulling the neighbors together to form a tight-knit community.
Mr. Irving was the original postmaster, but when he got too old, Isaac took over the job. The valley is sometimes known as Moosa, because the post office abbreviated the name to avoid confusion with Pomona. Isaac built a small stand next to the road where he sorted the mail and put it into individual post boxes for the neighbors to pick up on their way in and out of the valley. The stand caught the attention of post office officials in Washington, D.C., who published an article in the Postmaster’s Advocate claiming the Moosa post office was “the smallest post office in the world.” Because it was a Fourth Class post office, there was no pay for the postmaster except free cancellation on family letters. This was worth a lot to a man like Isaac who corresponded with so many people. At one point a drought resulted in many residents leaving the valley. The postal officials told Isaac that they would discontinue his position if the volume of mail didn’t increase. By that time, he and Bettie had seven children. Their two oldest, William and Sarah Elizabeth, had been born during their years at Casa Loma in the San Luis Rey Valley. The others were born at their castle in the Pamoosa Valley: Narcissus Jenkinson, nicknamed “Jenks”, Helen, Nahda, Betty, and Edith Louise, known affectionately as “Edee Lou”. Although Pamoosa had an excellent school, Isaac decided that he would augment their formal education by teaching them to write letters. This would also save his job. So, he encouraged his children to correspond with famous people around the world. He would check each letter to make sure the grammar and punctuation were correct. Most of the letters were answered, and sometimes lifelong friendships were established. His daughter, Helen, for example, corresponded with Luther Burbank—and even sent him a new specimen of cactus. Jenks received several letters from Theodore Roosevelt. Isaac himself corresponded with numerous individuals from all walks of life. As the outside world learned about Isaac Frazee’s castle, his art, his poems, and his warm, engaging personality, some of them began to travel over the dusty roads to Pamoosa to visit. The Frazees were always the perfect hosts, who had a way of bringing their visitors together in shared conversation and community. In Journeying Through the Years, Bettie Frazee wrote:
We entertained many famous people through the years at our ranch, among whom were Ellen Beach Yaw and her lovely mother, Louis J. Stellman and his charming wife, artists; William Wendt, W.A. Griffith, Ami Farnam, Charles Freis, Roy Ropp, Joseph Kleitch, Flora Stigleman, Mary Sherer, and authors; George Wharton James, Charles F. Lummis and Marshall South. We touched elbows with Texas cowboys, Klondike miners, “bronco-busters, native Indians, soft-voiced Spaniards, as well as refined, cultured men of letters and artistic temperaments. All have eaten at our table, and each has gained something from the other, and found that, after all, the East and the West are not so far apart. There is a bond of sympathy running through each of us, which responds harmoniously when the proper chord is touched, causing us to live a deeper, richer, fuller life by the contact.
Isaac Frazee had developed a passion for American Indian culture while a boy growing up in Indiana and then San Bernardino. When he moved to the Pamoosa Valley in 1890, he was delighted to discover many Indian artifacts on his property, including hieroglyphic rock carvings, arrowheads, stone mortars, and other objects. He also began spending more time visiting his friends on the Pala Indian Reservation. Soon he was corresponding with other self-taught Indian authorities living in California such as Charles Fletcher Lummis, George Wharton James, and Hamlin Garland. His father, W.D. Frazee, lived at the castle from 1895 until his death in 1902, so Isaac was able to take advantage of his extensive knowledge of the Midwest Indians. During his years in the Pamoosa Valley, Isaac wrote several booklets about the Indian, and produced many poems and paintings with Indian themes.
As a devoted father, Isaac used his knowledge of the Indians to stimulate the imaginations of his seven children and sharpen their senses to the world around them. He transformed his family into an imaginary Pamoosa Indian tribe called the “Mushawallows”. The stone tower became their estufa, or “council chamber”, and the Pamoosa Valley their own “happy hunting grounds.” As Chief of the Mushawallows, Isaac would make each day an exciting adventure for his little band of braves. After cleaning their tepees, gathering fruit from the orchard, feeding the horses, milking the cows, or carrying water from the spring, the Mushawallows would hunt for Indian artifacts, tame wild animals, and play endlessly in the beautiful mountains around the castle. To call his tribe to council, Isaac would blow a blast on the Lincolona, an authentic Indian stone horn he had found on the ranch. As the Mushawallows followed him around the valley, he taught his them how to listen to nature--the huiticochee’s song, the drowsy bees, the babbling mountain spring--and to see God at work in the cycles of nature around them. He also shared with them the Indian lore he learned from the nearby Pala Indians, and showed them how to express their own creativity in song, dance, poetry, and art. In spite of its isolation, the castle was a magical place for the little Mushawallows. Under Isaac and Bettie’s loving guidance, each child learned about the world and excelled in the arts.
One day in late 1913, the Frazees’ friend, opera singer Ellen Beach Yaw, was visiting the castle. They were discussing the world tensions brewing at the time, and Isaac was telling her about some discord which had developed among the residents of the valley. He wanted to bring his neighbors together by writing a play they would all perform. Miss Yaw suggested that he write an Indian pageant that would put the Indian’s spiritual beliefs about love and brotherhood into dramatic form. Isaac liked the idea, and replied that he would write the play if she would agree to take a small role in it. She agreed. He set to work, writing a dramatic masterpiece which he named Kitshi-Manido, an Indian word for “Great Spirit”. It would include poetic drama, songs, dance, and artistic tableaux. Bettie took charge of the makeup, wigs, and costumes, creating them out of natural materials found on the ranch. Isaac cast his five children still living at home—Jenks, Helen, Nahda, Betty, and Edee Lou—in the main roles along with himself and Bettie. He created a supporting cast of fifty to be played by the neighbors. Kitshi-Manido: The Peace-Pipe Pageant would tell the story of Abnai, an Indian warrior, and his wife, Wahwona, following them through childhood, young adulthood, and old age. The parts of Ab and Wahwona as children would be played by the Frazees two youngest daughters, Betty and Edee Lou. Jenks and Helen would play Ab and Wahwona as young adults, and Isaac and Bettie as old Ab and Wahwona. Because Isaac and Bettie had taught their children acting, singing, and dancing skills, they were all accomplished performers. In truth, no more accomplished cast could have been found in Northern San Diego County.
The only problem was the lack of a musical score. Isaac had written many songs in his life, and had already worked out all the tunes and lyrics for the pageant, but he didn’t know anything about musical notation or arrangement. Everyone except Isaac began to worry as the play progressed and there was no music and no musicians. As with the building of the castle, Isaac trusted that Divine Providence would find a solution. With opening night only a month away, Isaac fell ill and went upstairs to rest. There was a knock on the front door and, as Bettie opened it, a handsome young man smiled and asked if he might get a drink. He was from Los Angeles and was camping among Warland’s oaks. Bettie asked him if he happened to be a musician, and he answered that yes, he was a violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Bettie ran upstairs and shook Isaac awake, shouting, “God has sent you a musician!” Isaac stumbled downstairs and explained the pageant to the young man. The violinist said that not only could he arrange the music, but he had lived on an Indian reservation when he was a child and could help create some of the music. He would also bring several musicians down from the Philharmonic to play in the performances. This young man was named William Bower. Whether he saw Isaac’s beautiful daughter Helen before or after he agreed to write the music is not known, but he says it was “love at first sight” when he met Helen. She was, indeed, a beautiful, talented young woman—and high-minded like her father. For her it was not love at first sight—he was a suave big-city guy, and she was a child of nature. Although she was attending college in San Diego, her heart was in Pamoosa. But eventually the magic of the theater worked its magic on her, and she fell for the handsome young musician .
The play was performed in a natural amphitheater below the castle, where Isaac shaped a stage and added benches. The Frazees had only intended that small audiences from nearby Escondido would attend. However, word got out about the play—with its outdoor staging, unusual family of actors, LA Philharmonic musicians, and cameo roles by Diva Ellen Beach Yaw and Indian authority George Wharton James. On opening night there were over 1,500 in the audience, coming from as far away as San Diego and Los Angeles, and even more came the second night. The play was a major success, with excellent reviews in the San Diego Union, the Los Angeles Times, and Sunset Magazine. Even more importantly for Isaac, the play had brought his neighbors in the Pamoosa Valley together and ended the earlier tensions and conflicts. The artistic purpose of the pageant was captured by Shakespearean actress Virginia Calhoun in the South Coast News:
An American Indian drama without red-man melodrama seems almost impossible. Mr. Frazee’s Indians present no big melodramatic scenes but still all is to be found of the tragedy of the Indians’ life of hate and revenge. This is a triumph of art itself, but especially so when love is convincingly the victor.
The language of this drama for the most part is poetry, sometimes sung, sometimes spoken…also poetic prose so simple in choice of words, however profound the thought, that a school child might grasp its meaning. Its drama of music and light, dance and song, is also a unique factor in this pageant play’s realization.
The high purpose of visioning the brotherhood of man in the fatherhood of God is effectively accomplished by projecting, as a great symbolic allegory, our human experience into the archaic Indian mold. The reactions on the mind is for a better appreciation of the battle every human being wages through his lifetime struggle between the primal passions of evil versus good, hate versus love, selfishness versus service, war versus peace, also a better knowledge of our American Indians as a member of one human family.
In a pictorial sense, from the orchestral overture to the descent into the tomb of the two Old Ones, magnificent pictures, vibrant with intense emotion, make up the scenes, as groups and individuals… and this spiritual quality is greatly enhanced by its woodland setting of rare beauty.
Although Miss Calhoun was correct in her description of Kitshi-Manido as a great allegory about the human condition, it is important to note that Isaac did not use the Indians simply as a story-telling device, like Orwell used the animals in Animal Farm. Far from it. Kitshi-Manido was about the American Indians; it was a tribute to their culture and their spiritual beliefs. If anything, Isaac wanted the audience to see that Indian and Christian spiritual beliefs are not so different—that they are merely two ways of comprehending the same Universal Truth. In this way he hoped to dignify the Indian in the minds of the audience, and allow the audience to learn from them. At the time, the only criticism of the peace-pipe pageant was that it contained too much preaching in the final act and not enough dramatic action. Yet this criticism missed the whole point of the play. Kitshi-Manido, “The Great Spirit”, was meant to be a religious play—like the Oberammergau Passion Play. It delivered a powerful spiritual message from the Indian world that Isaac Frazee wanted his audience to accept and take to heart—that evil is overcome through love, and love is made manifest through unselfish service. Because this message is also a Christian message, the audience could more easily take it to heart and see that they shared a brotherhood with the Indian through the Fatherhood of God. The fact that thousands of people flocked to the isolated Pamoosa Canyon to attend the pageant showed that people did take it too heart
Dr. George Wharton James, who was the coordinator of the Indian exhibit at the 1915-16 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Diego, arranged to have the play performed at the Exposition. But Isaac felt it was important to keep the play in its natural setting, and refused to move it. So, Dr. James helped publicize the play at the Exposition, and the following year even larger audiences made their way to Pamoosa. During the 1916 production, word of the play reached Los Angeles Impresario Len Behymer, who scheduled acts at the Hollywood Bowl. He offered to take over the pageant and stage it as an annual event at the Hollywood Bowl. He believed it could become the “Oberammergau of America”. Again, Isaac balked at moving the play to the city. Then Mr. Behymer suggested a location halfway between Escondido and Los Angeles, but Isaac insisted it needed to be staged in the wilderness. Finally, Mr. Behymer agreed and arranged that the Hollywood Bowl would run electricity to Pamoosa Canyon and install amenities for the audiences, who he was sure would come on a yearly basis. Unfortunately, the play’s message of peace and brotherly love did not reach the world community. Before a deal with the Hollywood Bowl could be finalized, World War I broke out and America’s attention turned to war. That put an end to any further talk of staging the peace pageant.
With the war going on, and the excitement of Kitshi-Manido but a memory, the Frazees decided their youngest daughters should have the benefit of a formal high school education. For three years they spent the school year in Los Angeles so that the girls could attend Manual Arts High School. One would expect that a teenaged girl would be eager to leave her isolated mountain home for a life in the city. It is a testament to the life Isaac and Bettie created for their family at Pamoosa that this was not the case. The Manual Arts High School newspaper published an article about Betty, the Frazee’s sixth child. “Manual Arts has just made a discovery. She is now able to claim a real poetess, a little writer of verse who feels the true emotion of life and beauty, and possesses the rare ability of being able to record her conceptions.” When the reporter asked Betty how she liked living in the city, Betty replied, “I suppose there must be cities, but I do not like to live in them. It is all so artificial here, compared to Pamoosa, as we call our place. It seems a pity that one must live where everything is built by man when the mountains are so wonderful and majestic as they stand. I can scarcely write at all here—I miss the inspiration of the hills. We have wonderful scenery around Pamoosa. My sister and I would go out in the shadow of the mountains and then when I felt that delightful sensation that one gets from the greatness of nature, I would write. Here I must walk about on paved streets…” She gave a helpless little shrug, expressive of so much. “Of course I want to go back to Pamoosa. I am going to hurry through school so that I can. It seems like wasting one’s time to have to go to school; there is so much to learn out of doors.” One of her poems the paper printed is called “An Evening in Pamoosa.”
The giant oaks are ever sighing;
Their massive limbs are bending low.
The sycamores in sympathy replying,
As winds of passing seasons come and go.
While through the wild rose thickets
Whirr the valley quail, disturbed from their repose,
And in the west the golden twilight fades
Into the evening shades of deepening rose.
1921 – 1942
Laguna Beach
It is an established fact that Isaac Jenkinson Frazee was the first artist to sketch a picture at Laguna Beach. While on a horseback trip through the area in 1878, he camped for two days on a bluff overlooking the beach. Although there was a small collection of tent-cabins on the bluff, there were no permanent structures. Isaac made a sketch of the location, which he later used to paint a full-sized picture. Both the sketch and the painting are now owned by the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. It was not until 1918––forty years later––that Isaac returned to the area. Although the little community of Laguna Beach still had fewer than 300 permanent residents, it was a thriving little art colony. In 1921, with their seven children either married or away at college, Isaac and Bettie began spending their winters in Laguna. Isaac enjoyed the company of his fellow artists and the opportunity the town offered for him to develop his art.
When Isaac and Bettie arrived in Laguna during the winter of 1921 the big issue for the artists was building a fireproof gallery where they could safely display their artwork. The most pressing problem was how to raise the money. Isaac offered to donate the use of his Kitshi-Manido pageant--also to direct, produce, and act in the play--if the artists and business community would get involved as a community effort. They readily agreed. Edgar Payne designed the poster, Anna Hills served as publicity chair, Frank Cuprien, Joseph Kleitch, Carl Yens, and other famous artists either acted or played in the orchestra. The local cobbler, who had once played in orchestras in Europe, arranged the music , and important roles were filled by the postmaster, a realtor, and a land developer. Virginia Calhoun, the famous Shakespearean actress, took the lead role of Wahwona as a young adult and helped to direct the play. The play was a huge critical success, and raised over $1,000 for the gallery fund. The involvement of the artists helped to make the pageant itself a work of art. In his review of the play, Los Angeles Times reviewer Antony Anderson wrote:
Know then, that the Peace Pipe Pageant is a thing of inherent, pervasive, and haunting beauty. The beauty dwells in the music, the dancing, the lights, the cadenced words and phrases of the actors and the color schemes of the costumes, especially when many figures are seen in groups. One group, in the last set, indeed, was so beautiful that it reminded you of one of Frank Brangwyn’s most wonderful color and mass ‘arrangements,’ the whole subtle scheme accented by the vivid red of one blanket. It takes artists to devise such perfection of beauty as belongs to this and many other scenes in the pageant.
Sometimes the beauty was so keen, so exquisite--this combined beauty of form, color, and sound--that it gripped me by the throat and forced the mist to my eyes.
Because Isaac and Bettie didn’t want to give up their summers at their ranch in Pamoosa, the play was not held again until 1927 when the Frazees moved permanently to Laguna. Once more the artists and business community came together in a spirit of cooperation and put on another memorable show. Once again, Isaac and Bettie played Old Ab and Old Wahwona, with Isaac both producing and directing the play. For this production, however, they cast real Indians in many of the roles. Chief Yowlache of the Yakima, George Thompson, Arlita, and White Bird were all experienced Indian actors who played major roles in the pageant. Following the 1927 production, however, the Frazees decided they were too old to keep producing the pageant. When the Laguna Beach Art Association produced its next community pageant in 1932, they changed it to the living tableaux of the current Pageant of the Masters. To this day, Isaac Frazee’s Kitshi-Manido is remembered as “Laguna’s original pageant”, which created the model of community participation that led to the world-famous Pageant of the Masters.
Following the success of the Peace-Pipe Pageant in Laguna, Isaac began writing a short book that would further explain the spiritual beliefs of the Indian––and relate them to the discoveries of modern science and the religious principles of Christianity. He had learned from Kitshi-Manido that wrapping a new idea in a fictional story helped to reduce people’s resistance to the idea, allowing them to examine it within the context of the story before applying it to their life. The idea proposed in his new book was that there is only One Truth, but that Truth can take many forms––specifically, the spiritual beliefs of the American Indian, the religious teachings of Christ, and the scientific theories of modern physics. These three seemingly different worldviews are not mutually exclusive; rather, they each provide a different, although equally valid, perspective on the same Truth. He called that One Truth “Evolove”, the evolving love, or Unselfish Service Impulse, that is the Good, or God, in All, and which, if practiced by man as it is by the atom, the cell, the leaf, the buffalo, satisfies man’s obligation to his Creator. This is the central Truth of the Indian’s spiritual beliefs as portrayed in Kitshi-Manido, but Isaac wanted to show that it is also the central Truth of Christianity and science. Isaac’s purpose was to elevate the much-maligned Indian culture to a level equal with that of science and Christianity, and to show his readers that they could learn as much from the Indian as they could from the priest or the scientist. Stating this idea directly in 1927 probably would have branded Isaac as a lunatic, but he wrapped it in a fictional story that made the idea provocative and interesting. The title of the book tells it all:
EvolovE
The Quest and Findings
Of
An Efficiency Expert as revealed by
The Life and Letters
Of
George A. Blanchard, Ph.D.
Compiled by his private secretary
Philip J. Ferguson
BY
ISAAC JENKINSON FRAZEE
The book is, therefore, a fictional story by Isaac Frazee, narrated by Philip J. Ferguson, the personal assistant to Dr. George A. Blanchard, who describes in several long letters to Ferguson his conversations with two white men––a famous scientist and a priest––who were thought to have died in the desert but who Blanchard discovers living among a lost Indian tribe in the Southwest. Presented in this way, Isaac gave his ideas the appearance of credibility while eliminating defensiveness on the part of the reader. Those who rejected the book’s ideas could dismiss them as “fiction” instead of attacking the author or the ideas themselves. As was his practice, Isaac sent complementary copies of the small book to many important people requesting their feedback. He received positive letters back from many of them, including John D. Rockefeller, Dr. Robert Millikan, Thomas Edison, Ramsey MacDonald, Edward Davis (adopted chief of the Mesa Grande Indians), Chief Yowlache of the Yakima Tribe, Prof. Irvine Outcault, Postmaster-General Harry New, Antony Anderson, and Ellen Beach Yaw.
Isaac was known in Laguna as “the Dean of the Laguna Artists”—not because he was the best artist, but because he and Bettie created a climate of sharing among the artists that drew them together for their mutual benefit. In addition to producing the Peace-Pipe Pageant, which raised funds for the new art gallery, the Frazees made their small home on Lombardy Lane the hub of the Laguna artist community. New artists were introduced to those already established, and transient artists kept in touch with the permanent residents. They all referred to Isaac and Bettie as “Mother and Father” Frazee. Among the Frazees closest friends were artists like William Wendt and his wife, Julia Bracken Wendt, Joseph Kleitch, Edgar Payne, Clarence Hinkle, Carl Yens, Alice Fullerton, Roy Ropp, and Anna Hills. Isaac was also friends with many in the business community so a close relationship was forged between the Laguna artists and the town’s businessmen.
As an artist, Isaac painted in the style of the California Impressionists. He mostly painted landscapes, but he also painted still life scenes, portraits, and pictures with Indian themes. Often he put people in his landscapes, but they were almost always included as a small part of the scene—much like in Oriental art where the emphasis is on Nature. Most of his paintings have a dreamy, opalescent quality, with colors that blend and fade together. Although he never achieved the stature of a Payne, Wendt, or Hills, his peers respected his work and he was successful in selling his art from both his castle in the Pamoosa Valley and his studio at Laguna Beach. According to an article in the Santa Ana Register, “His paintings were widely known for a delicacy of composition rarely attained by his contemporaries.” Many of his works are now in the permanent collection of the Laguna Beach Art Museum, the Bowers Museum, Palomar College, and other locations throughout Southern California.
Among the wider Laguna community, Isaac was popular as an eccentric, homespun philosopher-poet, whose witty, insightful poems appeared in almost every issue of the local press for over 15 years. Unlike his more literary, dramatic poems that were published in The Lyric West magazine, Overland Monthly, Los Angeles Times, and several literary anthologies, his poems in the local newspapers were mostly written in a folksy, hick dialect designed to disarm the reader to allow his message to get through. They included commentaries on current events, tributes to local heroes, insights into everyday life, and moral messages. “Pesterin’ Pa” reflects his homespun humor, and strikes a chord with every parent who has helped his or her child with homework:
Billy brings his grammar home
Fer me to help him out,
With adjectives, and adverbs
And what they’re all about.
But Gosh o’ Hemlock! Sure I live,
I never seed an adjective!
But I done heard “they qualify
The how, the when and where”
But this is only hearsay—
A seein’ I wasn’t there.
The teacher should a larn’t herself—
Accordin’ to the law—
With no need of askin’ Billy
To find out from his Pa!
Another, entitled “Forty Times a Day”, typifies many of his poems that turn everyday events into poignant spiritual allegories:
Little Sammy Peters, who lives across the way,
Has a brand new pushmobile which he got on Christmas Day.
And little Sammy Peters, who is almost nearly four,
Proudly pushes his Christmas car down by my cabin door;
Full fifty yards, I reckon, down a gradual incline,
Until it stops a-sudden, and Sammy starts to whine,
“Come, Muvver, come and get it,” full forty times a day,
And mother helps him with it, for that’s a mother’s way.
Yet we all are little children, and still helpless in some way,
And Mother Nature has to come, full forty times a day,
To help us with our troubles, when the path grows harsh and steep
‘Til she finally takes us in her arms and rocks us fast asleep.
During the 15 years he and Bettie made Laguna Beach their home, Isaac painted and wrote almost every day, producing hundreds of paintings and hundreds of poems. He also took on some historical projects, like writing a history of the Pamoosa Valley and helping his Louisville uncle, Dr. Lewis Jacob Frazee, research a family history book. Once, when visiting Dr. Frazee in Louisville, Isaac happened upon a volume on his shelf called The Personal Narrative of James Ohio Pattie. When Isaac inquired about the book, Dr. Frazee told him that his mother—Isaac’s grandmother—Susan Doniphan Frazee had kept one of James Ohio Pattie’s little sisters while the Patties made the first overland journey from Missouri to San Diego by the Southern route in 1822. On this trip James Ohio Pattie also became the first American to see the Grand Canyon. When the Pattie expedition reached San Diego the Mexican Governor, who accused them of spying for the Spanish, immediately imprisoned them. Sylvester Pattie, the father, died while a prisoner in the Presido, but James was eventually freed and went on to inoculate thousands of California Indians against smallpox. During his travels in California, he assisted in Joaquin Solis’ revolt against the Mexican Governor, but later switched sides—for which the Mexican Governor rewarded him. Isaac brought his uncle’s copy of the book back to California and shared the information with historians in San Diego. Although the book is written like an adventure story, Isaac helped to establish its historical authenticity. At Isaac Frazee’s urging, George Marston placed a bronze historical plaque on the Presidio wall honoring Sylvester Pattie and his band of explorers. At the dedication ceremony, Isaac read the following poem he had written for the occasion:
Fame is a foolish thing,
An empty breath,
A vain whispering
To the “cold dull ear of Death”.
And yet, ‘tis well for us to bring
Some tardy tribute of remembering,
To mark the spot, where brave
Sylvester Pattie found
A nameless grave
In this once “prison ground”
For he was first to lead a dauntless band
Of pioneers across this Southwest land.
This the “welcome”
California gave:
Suspicions, chains
And a prison-grave
Still that martyr-spirit survives the years
On, and on, through our pioneers.
‘Tis well for hurrying Life
To pause, and catch a fleeting breath
After the heedless, ceaseless strife
To keep a memory-tryst with Death
To learn from her heroic dead
To listen, and be comforted.
On June 23, 1942, Isaac Jenkinson Frazee died at his home in Laguna Beach. His life in California spanned the years between 1873, when as a 15 year-old boy he arrived by covered wagon, to 1942 when he departed this life, climbing the Spirit Trail through the campfires of the sky to unite with the Great Spirit. During that time he brought beauty into the cultural landscape of Southern California, helped to change California’s perceptions of its Indian and Spanish-American heritage, and gently nudged a materialistic society into thinking about the ultimate purpose of their lives. Upon learning of Isaac’s death, his good friend Len Behymer, Impresario of the Hollywood Bowl, wrote the following words to Bettie:
I thoroughly enjoyed Isaac’s many-sided art through all the years. Some of his creations were wonders to me. They carried a story that I could understand and enjoy. The human side of Isaac was very strong. He loved Nature in all her phases; he loved people, the great ocean, and the beautiful sunsets. Laguna Beach will miss this great man. California art will miss him. His great friends, the Pala Indians, will mourn for him as for few white men.
Perhaps the most poignant written tribute to Isaac Frazee was from his daughter, Helen Frazee-Bower. Helen had played the young adult Wahwona in both the 1915 and 1916 productions of Kitshi-Manido. After graduating from San Diego State College she went on to become a well-known poet, particularly as a writer of sonnets. At a memorial for Isaac Frazee, held 16 years after his death, she read her poem “I Remember Father”:
When I remember Father I recall
Not just his wisdom and his art, but small
Inconsequential things: The Stetson hat
He always wore; I can remember that
He swept a yard as clean as women sweep a floor
Tlll it was smooth and hard. I guess he wore
Out far too many brooms for Mother's taste.
But cleanliness is such a lovely waste
Of raw materials, and Father lived
To make things beautiful. His spirit thrived
On color splashed across a sunset sky,
On little Smokey hills, or mountains high
Against the stars. He loved his shady oaks,
The silver bark of sycamores, and folks–
How much he thrived on folks!–They came and went
The humble and the great; he was content
To love them all. I think perhaps he had
More friends than any man! It made him glad
To share the water in his mountain spring
With everyone who came; and he would bring
A flower back to tuck in Mother's hair
And whisper words that only they could share.
He was a tall man–tall inside and out.
He thought big thoughts, and what he talked about
Went far beyond the margin of his hills.
He taught the sweetness that the silence spills
From moments of reflection; and he knew
Just how to weave it into words for you:
A kind of mixture of philosophy
And common sense and wit and artistry.
I can recall the twinkle in his eyes
When he had made a point–a sort of shy
And gloating look, yet kind and gentle too,
As though down deep inside himself he knew
To win an argument, and lose a friend,
Was scarcely worth the effort in the end.
I can remember how he loved a fire.
He poked the logs to make the flame go higher,
And gathered all the children ‘round to hear
Tall tales he told, and all the funny queer
Old ballads that he sang, and tender tunes
That were his own–the kind a mother croons
Unto a sleepy child. He always took
The youngest in his lap; but he would look
Around at each of us as though he knew
That we, by this, would feel included too.
When Mother came–her evening dishes done–
He always said, "Move over, everyone,
And let your mother in". I hear him yet,
That gentle voice that no one could forget.
That day she went to meet him in the skies,
I think she found him singing lullabies
To every fair-haired cherub in the lot.
And when he turned and saw her, like as not
He smiled and said the words he said each night:
"Let Mother in". Then heaven was all right.
Bibliography
Anderson, Antony. Laguna Lyrics. Laguna Beach, California: South Coast News Publishing Company, 1930.
Anderson, Antony, Review of Kitshi-Manido, Los Angeles Times
Calhoun, Virginia, Kitshi-Manido Pageant, South Coast News, August 15, 1921
Draper, Lyman, Daniel Boone Manuscript, University of Wisconsin
Frazee, Bettie Dickinson. Journeying Through The Years. Laguna Beach, California: “The Printer of Laguna”, 1946.
Frazee, Isaac Jenkinson. Evolove. Laguna Beach, California: "The Printer of Laguna", 1929.
Frazee, Isaac Jenkinson. Nahda: A Story of Spanish-American life. Oceanside, California: The Blade Printing Company, 1898.
Frazee, Lewis Jacob, Family Records and Reminiscences, Louisville, Kentucky: unpublished manuscript, 1889.
Frazee, William Doniphan. San Bernardino County, Its Climate and Resources. San Bernardino, California: San Bernardino Daily and Weekly Argus, 1876.
Hamilton, Frances Frazee. Ancestral Lines of the Doniphan, Frazee, and Hamilton Families. Greenfield, Indiana: W.M. Mitchell Printing Company, 1928.
Isaac Frazee Collection, the Huntington Library
Frazee Family Archive
Craig Alan Walker is a history and computer science teacher in Ojai, California. He graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1969, and received a Masters degree from San Francisco State University in 1977. As the great grandson of Isaac Jenkinson Frazee, he inherited many of Isaac and Bettie Frazee’s original papers, as well as documents relating to the life of Mr. Frazee. Other important papers were located in the Huntington Library, donated many years ago by Mr. Walker’s grandmother, Elizabeth Frazee Worsley. Other contributors of material used in this article are also descendants of Mr. Frazee. Mrs. Rodney Walker, of Ojai, California, and Mrs. Sue Ramsey, of Glendale were both daughters of Sarah Elizabeth; Mrs. Elizabeth Fuller, of Claremont, is a daughter of Betty; and Mrs. Becky Mann, of Campbellsville, Kentucky, is a daughter of Helen; David Frazee, of Escondido, is a great grandson of Isaac Frazee’s brother, Don.