Revisiting the Eagle Rock


"I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar...."
Freeman reminds me of R. Kelly, the American singer-songwriter who popularized the hit single "I believe I can Fly".  Initially, was thinking of Joey Ayala singing about monkey-eating eagles in the Philippines. 
"Nais kong lumipad tulad ng Agila..."
I visited the Eagle Rock for the first time in 2012 with the Tiger Trail Hikers. It was Richard, the retired Chemistry teacher at Scripps Ranch High School, who asked me to get in touch with Lee Rae and get directions on how to get to Warner Springs. 
Motherfucking nature would not have been solely responsible for the huge boulder formation that looks like an eagle with its wings spread and ready to soar. Liza thought her granite countertops looked like the eagle's right wing where we were perched at. I couldn't find any article about when or how the rock formation became the Eagle Rock. Hema  thought human hands must have helped in the formation of the Eagle Rock.
The speculation that human hands help the formation of Eagle Rock is reinforced by looking into the history of Warner Springs, a mountain valley town which used to be known as Kupa to the Pala Band of Native Americans. According to the history and culture of the Pala Band of Mission Indians (www.palatribe.com), Kupans  were one the three major Californa tribes that included the Kahuillas  and the Luiseno ( spelled with the accented n). 
The intermarriage between the three tribes also resulted to the fusion of rituals based on the Chinigchinich religion, a religion of moral and spiritual rigor based on self-discipline, a concept of ethical life and ecstatic visions of the nature of the world.  The rituals included an eagle ceremony to honor the dead.
Warner Springs was named after Juan Jose Warner, a European cattleman with a deceivingly Hispanic name. Warner claimed all 47,000 acres of the  verdant mountain valley displacing the Native Americans from the village of Kupa.
In 1903 after a series of events that included a failed uprising led by Juan Antonio Garra, villagers were forced out of the valleys into what is now the Pala Indian Reservation. Along  with native plants that once provided cures to ailments and the creeks that still irrigate the verdant oasis, the Eagle Rock that once marked rituals and ceremonies is now a silent witness to what the displaced tribes of Kupa still call their "Trail of Tears".








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