Searching For Guadalupe Ontiveros

As a result of infamous legal acts of the United States government, many people with Native American ancestry have genealogical records that they can access in their search for family history. The best-known of these, the Dawes Act, is frequently used to determine the degree of Indian heritage an individual possesses and may determine one's ability to be a registered tribal member.

For countless individuals, however, no such records exist. Instead, we have oral tradition within our families pointing the way back to Native ancestors, and because of the disconnectedness of modern life, it can be next to impossible to verify these stories in any meaningful way. Nonetheless, though we have no white man's records of our family history, we have the same responsibility of honoring our bloodlines. Ancient indigenous peoples live on in us, and this is precious. In my heart and spirit, I sense the goodwill and support of my own Native ancestors, and surely, this is as meaningful as words on paper.

Searching For Guadalupe

In my family, it is known that my great-great-grandfather Ellis married a woman of Mexican Indian origin, named Guadalupe Ontiveros. All that we know about her was that her parents were killed by the Yaqui Indians who originally lived in the Mexican state of Sonora in Northern Mexico and who later came to live in Arizona. By counting back the generations, I have estimated that Guadalupe Ontiveros must have been born in some time between the 1860s-1880s. After the deaths of her parents, Guadalupe lived in an orphanage 'somewhere in Northern Mexico'. Eventually, she met and married my great-great grandfather and moved to California. The couple had two sons, one of whom was William Raphael Ellis Sr., my great grandfather. Tragically, when Guadalupe's husband died, poverty forced her to bring the boys to St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum in San Rafael, California.

Discovering the tribal heritage of this branch of my family has proved impossible for me. Understanding where the Yaquis lived has at least verified the story that Guadalupe lived somewhere in Northern Mexico. But did she live in Sonora, or perhaps Chihuahua, or even Arizona or New Mexico? In addition to this geographical information, there is the oral record in my family that William Randolph Ellis Sr.'s descendents 'looked like Indians'. They were tall, dark-complexioned men with thick, dark hair. In fact, my own father was told by a Mexican Indian family that they knew his ancestry the minute they saw him. Fascinating. But beyond these wisps of oral tradition, Guadalupe's story is lost to us, and I am very sorry about this. I would love to know who her people were - because these are also my people.

Origins Of The Surname Ontiveros

Unsurprisingly, the Ontiveros surname arrived in the Americas as a part of the Spanish conquest. Ships' logs date the first arrival of one Alonso de Ontiveros in the 'New World' in 1516. Of interest is another ship's log designating the arrival of Juan de Ontiveros in Peru in 1534 - hot on the heels of the collapse of the Inca Empire in 1533. I have repeatedly found myself wondering about Juan de Ontiveros and an odd sense of curiosity has driven me to do much reading about ancient Peru. There is something about his location in this place and point of history that speaks to me. About a dozen men and women bearing the surname Ontiveros are recorded as coming to Mexico and South America during the 16th century, and there were probably more than existing records show. The Ontiveros website I've linked to breaks down the Ontiveros people who arrived in the 1500s into two groups - those who came to Mexico and remained there (the first group) and those who rounded the horn to Spanish California where they remained (the second group). My guess is that my own family belongs to first group, given that we find Guadalupe living in an orphanage in Northern Mexico. But this brings up several important considerations which I want to touch on last.

Not only did the Spanish conquer, murder and enslave the Indian peoples of Mexico and South America - they also converted and married them. Indians ended up with Spanish surnames, and no doubt this explains why my great grandfathers 'looked like Indians' but bore the surname of a Spanish noble family. Secondly, it is so important to remember that both the pre-conquest and early post-conquest Americas were not at all like they are today, geographically-speaking. California was Indian country, then Spanish country, and the Native tribes inhabiting what is now Mexico and the American Southwest freely crisscrossed the area of land we think of today as the Mexican border. They traded, intermarried and fought with one another. There was no border, and even after the Spanish conquest, much of the Southwest remained part of Mexico until it came under the ownership of the U.S. government.

To me, this indicates that if you have some origin in this part of the world, but you have no government documents, you are looking at a large number of potential tribal ancestors. Am I a Pima, an Opata, a Pueblo, a Navajo, a Hopi? Were my people the lost inhabitants of Chaco Canyon or the lightening-fast mountain men of the Tarahumara? Unfortunately, at present, I have no idea...I am only left with a spiritual sense of belonging that is good but vague at the same time.

For some time now, I have felt deeply drawn to the region known as the American Southwest, and when I began asking family members about the story of Guadalupe, I was rather startled to discover her placed in that area of Northern Mexico that was once part of a large network of tribal interactions that apparently spanned that whole region of the continent. The feelings in my heart match the remnants left to me of the story of Guadalupe and I can let this be enough for me. There is something about that land, the colors and shapes there, the foods and plants that feels queerly familiar to me - as if they are part of something I know. Science doesn't really support this type of gut feeling, but does it matter? I think what matters is respect for the people who came before us, and a kind of knowing that they are all still with us, supporting and helping us in our own journey. I believe this to be true.

Update:

I believe I have found my great grandfather, William Raphael Ellis, listed on a census taken at St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum in San Rafael, CA.

Interestingly, there is also a William Ellis listed, but his parents were from Australia and New York, and he was a year older that Raphael Ellis. My guess is that my granfather was called Raphael at the asylum in order to distinguish him from the older boy, William. Here is the data:

• Name: Raphael Ellis
• Relation: Inmate
• Color: W
• Gender: M
• Born: Sept 1890
• Birthplace: California
• Age: 9
• Father: US
• Mother: Mexico

Also of interest from this same census is a 17 year old boy named George Ellis who is listed as working as a plumber at the school. My family has never known the name of William Raphael's brother, sadly, but could this be an older brother who was put to work at the asylum? The father is listed as coming from Massachussetts and the mother, again, from Mexico.

• Name: George Ellis
• Profession: Plumber
• Gender: W
• Born: Feb 1883
• Birthplace: California
• Age: 17
• Father: Massachusetts
• Mother: Mexico

This is a photo my father found on this website of whaling Captain William B. Ellis. It is well-known in our family that my great-great grandather Ellis (who married Guadalupe, but whose name is not certain to us) was a whaler. It is also believed that he may have come from Massachussets, which would corroborate the idea that George Ellis (in the above census) was the older of his two sons. Interestingly, the ship referenced in connection with this photograph was built in Massachusetts, and sailed out of San Francisco, CA. So, perhaps this is a photo of Guadalupe Ontiveros' husband, shortly before he died and Guadalupe was forced by circumstances to put the two boys in the orphanage. I asked my father about all of this again today and he says that his grandmother told him that when Guadalupe died, her two sons quarreled about funeral proceedings and became estranged. Because of this, we have never known anything about that other branch of the family (possibly George Ellis'?).

My father also told me that his grandmother remembered Guadalupe as a very small, dark woman, who wore black and spent a great deal of time in church and who never learned to speak English very well. It is sad to think of the hardships she faced: losing her parents in a violent manner, living in a orphan asylum, coming all the way to California and marrying a man whose life at sea must have meant he was away a lot, and then losing this husband and being too poor to support her family. This chain of difficulties in life mirrors the stories of so many Indian peoples. My father has never been able to clear up the vagueness surrounding Guadalupe's arrival in California. In one story, she met my great-great Grandfather Ellis in Mexico. In another, some unknown doctor took her out of the orphange in Mexico and brought her by mule to San Francisco. Why this would be, no one knows, but my father says his grandmother remembers Guadalupe talking about coming over the mountains of Mexico into California on a mule when she was a child. Perhaps she then lived for some years with the doctor's family in San Francisco and then met my great-great grandfather Ellis? It is frustrating that the stories don't agree with one another, and the sources for these vague and varying stories are, unfortunately, lost in the mists of time

Update #2: