The indigenous people who live in the hills of San Diego County hold to an old philosophy: Fire takes what it wants, floods take what is left and nothing lives long except the mountains.
"We've been living with fire forever," said Juana Majel-Dixon, a Pauma Indian. "The rain will come soon and there will be more suffering, but we'll get through it. Indian people always do."
While America's eyes were fixed on images of endangered resort towns and wealthy suburbs, it has been largely ignored that Indian territory was hit inordinately hard by the runaway wildfires.
With the last of the flames all but extinguished, the statistics of San Diego's major fires, the Paradise and the Cedar, are staggering: nearly 137,590 hectares burned, 16 dead, more than 2,337 homes destroyed.
While the Indian population is small, there are 18 reservations throughout the county with an estimated 6,200 people, located in what was once inaccessible, inarable scrub. The reservations are now the outer edges of the suburban sprawl, and fire officials estimate that 10 percent of the total land burned was Indian country, with three reservations completely torched and a handful of others severely damaged. The community hardest hit was the San Pasqual reservation, about 50km north of San Diego.
The entire 567 hectares are scorched, with more than a third of the homes, mostly uninsured trailers and prefabricated units, burned to the ground. Two local people died trying to escape the inferno, and two others died on the Barona reservation to the south.
"Fire doesn't know city limits or reservation boundaries," said Allen E. Lawson, the San Pasqual tribal chairman. "It doesn't discriminate on the basis of skin color or wealth."
Indeed, much of territory has been reduced to little more than cigarette tailings, bedsprings and auto carcasses. Hectares of manzanita resemble stick men, the water canal is parched and the leaves on the oak trees are as hard as playing cards.
A casino, the sole engine of economic life here, escaped major damage. Just a wall and four slot machines were destroyed, and signs thanking firefighters for their efforts dot the reservation.
A few miles to the north, the Rincon reservation was 75 percent burned, with more than 20 homes lost. On the Barona reservation, home of one of the state's most successful casinos, two people died and 47 homes were lost, but the casino was spared. In all, 14 reservations were affected.
Rumors run rampant here. While fire officials believe a lost hunter started the Cedar fire to the south, there is no explanation of the origins of the Paradise fire, which started behind the Rincon Casino and destroyed more than 22,661 hectares and 117 homes.
A report is circulating among Indians that it may have been a white person who started the blaze, someone who harbored bad feelings against Indian people after the election that led to the recall of Governor Gray Davis.
During the campaign, Indian tribes donated millions of dollars to Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante and a lesser amount to Davis. Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger criticized Indians as the type of special interests that had hamstrung state government.
"No one wants to say this was set to take out Indian country," said Michele Nelson, a council member of the Rincon Indian Nation. "But you've got to wonder with all the bad feelings around here about the recall. We got calls during the fire saying, `That's what you Indians deserve.'"
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