What a great program. I don’t know if it still exists but it was very big when we lived in San Jose in the 1970’s. This was a program run by the YMCA. It involved children in grades 1 thru 3. There was a program for boys…Indian Guides and girls…Indian Princesses. Because Bobby was the oldest, he was the first to get involved. You were divided into tribes of around 8 to 10 dads. The program was for Dads and sons or Dads and daughters. My first tribe was the Apache Tribe. My Indian name was Big Smoke and Bobby was Little Smoke. We had shirts made up for each of us. We would meet at one of the dad’s homes about every two weeks. Each meeting we would all wear our shirts and feather head bands and we would do a craft, have a snack, many times we would have outings where we would go bowling, or miniature golfing or whatever. It was fantastic and no son could participate unless his dad was there with him. Each year we would participate in these grand campouts. They were held on the weekend one in the fall and one in the spring. We would go to the Y Camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We stayed in cabins and had our meals at this huge dining hall and the kids would serve the meals. They would have archery, and other activities and then on Saturday night there was a huge campfire. It was amazing. We really looked forward to those camp outs. Never missed one. Bob eventually left the program after his third-grade year. Then it was time for Marti. Her tribe was the Umunhum tribe named after the mountain near the Almaden Valley. I was again Big Smoke and she was Little Fire. A couple of years later Nanci joined the Umunhum Tribe and was Little Flame. We did all of the things that Bob had done previously including the many camp outs. It was totally awesome. We actually have saved the shirts that Kathy made for all of us. There were opportunities to earn badges and Kathy sewed the patches on our shirts.
I have one major regret and that is that by the time Jeff could participate we moved to Grass Valley and they didn’t have an Indian Guide Program in Grass Valley. That was a shame and he had seen all of his siblings participate for years and now there was no program. That was a bummer. I will always remember all of the good times we had in both Indian Guides and Indian Princesses. If the program still exists, I would highly recommend it to you. When I was a kid there was Cub scouts and Girl scouts and Boy Scouts. I did the Cub and Boy Scout thing and my sister Mary did the Girl scout thing. It never involved our dad it was always our mother as Den Mother. I think a program like Indian Guides or Indian Princesses would have been good. I just don’t see my dad participating in something like that. Maybe a program like that wouldn’t have happened in the 50’s and 60’s.
I do think that the campouts with Indian Guides and Indian Princesses led us to family camping which led to campfires and campfire songs and many smores and scary stories and all of the stuff that comes with tent camping. Northern California was a great place to do the tent camping. We enjoyed that for many years.
