Heed me, Land of the West!
I am your mother!
…thy enemies are mine
My warriors I set upon them
Their menace made void.
(Excerpts from The Mandate of Califia ©2000 TheArthur Wright)

‘Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island named California, very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise, and it was peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they lived in the fashion of Amazons.’—Garcia Ordonez Montalvo (1510)

I am a good-sized man at six foot three.  Right now I am about 240 pounds, some 25 pounds overweight, and whatever running speed I did have is gone the way of most flesh.  At my dashing best I was a track star in high school, played college basketball and played football with other athletes who went on to become professionals at whatever they did, some were well-known.  I wasn’t too bad in my best sport, which was basketball, but not good enough to play in the major colleges or the professional ranks.  Even so I didn’t do too badly and while a bit disappointed I soon realized that much to live for lay in front of me.  I had long realized that life had treated me pretty well and personally had little to complain about.  That said.  I would not have been a match for the Amazons of Califia.  I wouldn’t have been big enough, or fast enough.  As I have said, I was a ‘Young Turk’, a ‘stud’.  I have bench pressed over three hundred pounds and I say unashamedly I would not have been strong enough to play many games with those early Californians.  The lady and her minions are fictional.  They never existed, never roamed the rugged mountainous ‘island that lay to the east of the Indies, close by the side of the Terrestrial Paradise’.  Earth has never seen their like.  But they romp through my mind as they stand silently in great ranks awaiting the bidding of their queen, or at war with those who had absolutely no idea what they were getting into, feeding and training their warbirds, doing warrior things, woman things, whatever made the Island of California the fabled place it was.  If they never stalked the near side of the ‘Terrestrial Paradise’ they have certainly wreaked fantastic havoc with me as they strode through fictional history.

She ruled her fierce warriors with love and a sense of sisterhood forged through countless generations and eons that reached far back into the foggy mists of time and without even the least concern on her part she also impacted the minds of men who thought her to be a real and living person.  A chimera, she prowled in the fiery imaging thoughts of Cortez as he conducted his reign of terror in Central America much as she had also sparked the lusty minds of many young Spaniards of his day and time.

People are fascinated to hear that one of the states bears the name of a black woman.  My art and other business have taken me across the nation speaking in various gatherings and while a fair number of people were vaguely aware of her almost to a person they did not know how she fit into history, neither of the state of California nor of women who chose their own way of living, even of dying; or those who were born to it. 

‘Black she was, her hair covered by her helmet which was circled by a huge blast of beautiful feathers leaving only her face visible between side flaps of beaten gold.  Her eyes narrowed in distrust, not in hatred for that was a word not in her vocabulary and it was not what drove her and her sisters to be among the greatest of warriors.  A hawk about to kill could not have eyed its prey more fiercely, tuned to every twitch, anything that suggested it might attempt to flee.  Threat leaped from her like heat from a blast furnace and she hissed at the man lying on the ground, his throat inches from the razor tip of her spear that gleamed from the gold it was made of.

‘My Queen’s will alone could spare you, vile creature, but her absence has condemned you.  Nothing of this earth will stay my separator and you will surely enter the void.’

She snapped her head around and gave a blood chilling sound that screeched from her mouth.  The prone man who arched his back away from the gleaming spear rolled his eyes searching out the source of the strong animal smell that was not quite like an animal and he felt stealthy movement from where he could not see.  In terror he turned his head to locate menace just beyond sight, the spear tip slicing his throat, not killing him.

‘He is yours. My beauty, he is yours..’ purred the voice beneath the feathered gold and her eyes gleamed knowing that the way of the warrior, the sanctity of the dark sisters prevailed and she backed away.  She had not long to wait.  The swift rustle of wings, the scream of the man not wanting to release what life was left.  Useless.  Even as he felt himself plucked into the air as though weightless he felt the sharp tearing of his flesh and he screamed, oh Lord did he scream.  Another scream suddenly ending, a raining of blood spattered the ground and the warrior, not bothering to watch, withdrew into the darkening forest. Similar beasts snorted and growled in agitation in the blackness but she was unafraid because they were one and they had been one since first knowledge.

I have little doubt that I would have been griffin fodder.  Not intentional, but I do have a penchant for running close to deadlines and sometimes delay can cause a problem.  Griffins on this island were fed on men from their birth as chick-cubs.  Can I use that word?  Well, thank you, I will!  Legend says that men were welcomed on the island for a twenty four hour period of time to do a man’s work but they too had a deadline and to abuse it led to certain death and the griffins dined.  They were cultivated to a taste for man flesh (though few other creatures think we taste good), treated well and ably by their handlers and because of this obeyed them as beloveds.  Creatures of that magnitude of power would be unchecked otherwise and they have long been associated with guarding treasures, who knows how accumulated, and may have given rise to the dragon thoughts of St. George and added to the lust of Cortez in his determined search for the riches of Califia.

What is a griffin?  Part lion, part eagle, that much is agreed upon and spelled in at least three different ways-- gryphon, griffin and griffon.  Take your pick.  Griffins are portrayed with a lion's body, an eagle's head, long pointed ears, and an eagle's claws, to indicate that one must combine intelligence and strength. Only the proportions change, according to the land of origin, and the perpetrators of the species.  They have been called "The Hounds of Zeus".  ‘They have pulled the chariots of Pharaoh, Apollo, Nemesis, and Alexander the Great. They have been emblazoned on the shields of knights and on the coats of arms and royalty. A griffin is watchful and loyal, graceful and swift, rapacious and vengeful, monstrous and divine. While the griffin is a mortal enemy of horses, its magic talons have detected poison and its feathers have cured blindness’.

‘Other griffins have been found in Egyptian tombs and on Mesopotamian cylinder seals, which were used as signatures at the dawn of written language. In later Greek art the aspect of griffins change. No longer protectors, they are now fierce beasts. Molded in bronze, they "feature a hooked beak, pointed ears and tongue. In Greek vase paintings, the griffin are often depicted attacking other animals or men, but the beast was also associated with the god Apollo and the goddesses Athena and Nemesis." Despite its large presence in art griffins didn't usually show up in written literature. The griffins most people think of were the ones featured in ancient stories, guarding hoards of gold high in the mountains and defending it against all who desired it. Herodotus mentions this story as being in an epic poem The Arimaspeia by Aristae of Proconnesus. Pliny and Aeolian talk about gold-guarding griffins, too. During Medieval times the griffin was either evil or good, depending on who you asked. Griffins in heraldry were almost always snarling and ready to strike out with their talons. In art of the time they are shown devouring sinners and ripping animals apart. In contrast to this, Church people saw the griffin as "a symbol of the earthly and divine natures of Christ". (Excerpted from a variety of sources)

From Hans Biedermann's Dictionary of Symbolism:

A griffin is a fabulous animal, symbolically significant for its domination of both the earth and the sky - because of its lion's body and eagle's head and wings. It has typological antecedents in ancient Asia, especially in the Assyrian k'rub, which is also the source of the Hebrew cherub. The frequent representations of griffin-like creatures in Persian art made them symbolize ancient Persia for the Jews. In Greece the griffin was a symbol of vigilant strength; Apollo rode one, and griffins guarded the gold of the Hyperboreans of the far north. The griffin was also an embodiment of Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, and turned her wheel of fortune. In legend the creature was a symbol of superbia (arrogant pride), because Alexander the Great was said to have tried to fly on the backs of griffins to the edge of the sky. At first also portrayed as a satanic figure entrapping human souls, the creature later became (from Dante onward) a symbol of the dual nature (divine and human) of Jesus Christ, precisely because of its mastery of earth and sky. The solar associations of both the lion and the eagle favored this positive reading. The griffin thus also became the adversary of serpents and basilisks, both of which were seen as embodiments of satanic demons.  Even Christ's Ascension came to be associated with the griffin. The creature appeared as frequently in the applied arts (tapestries, the work of goldsmiths) as in heraldry. In the latter domain, Boeckler (1688) offered the following interpretation: "Griffins are protrayed with a lion's body, an eagle's head, long ears, and an eagle's claws, to indicate that one must combine intelligence and strength."

Basically, don’t mess with the ‘Bad Boys’.

In our times Califia gave her name to the state of California three centuries ago.  A Black Queen with a beautiful name gave nominal birth to the sixth largest economic engine in the world.  My own introduction to Califia started around 1992 after a conversation with a friend, Bob Briant, who politely informed me that this state was named after a black woman, an idea which flies in the face of our post-slavery experience but perfectly in tune with history before slavery and its practices forced western confluences to try to make it a palatable thing.  He had purchased a book written by writer and publisher John W. Templeton that was to become a series of resource books (Our Roots Run Deep) chronicling the role black people played in the making of California, a history he was made aware of while in LA on assignment by his San Jose newspaper.  To his astonishment not only the name but the entire state was rife with black involvement.  Read the publications.

The story of Califia is not a long one as written by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo, published in 1510.  From all accounts he was not one of the premiere writers of his day, indeed he was a publisher of writings by others but he had taken on himself to embellish a series of adventure tales (Amadis de Gaula) authored by a Senor Vasco de Lobeira that heralded the defense of Constantinople against the Califia-aided Turks and while this bit of fiction was meant to do no more than entertain it was obviously extremely successful to that end and it stirred the youth of his time.  Even Hernando Cortez seemed to be influenced by it and after embarking on a conquistadorial campaign of destruction it appears that Califia had been lurking toward the rear of his patriotic desires, and like so many of us must have figured why not combine the two, multi-tasking pre-Silicon Valley days.

As earlier stated, Califia’s time in the annals of history, even though fictional, lasted a total of not more than forty pages in the ‘Sergas de Esplandian—The Adventures of Esplandian’ which was part of an ongoing adventure series chronicling the exploits of King Amadis and his offspring Esplandian being the one we are concerned with here.  Her story can be found in an anthology of powerful women in fiction and myth that was collected by Samuel Moskowitz (When Women Rule 1972) and translated where needed by others.  Moskowitz like many others have been mystified why this queen, ‘black as sable…’ had been portrayed as white and blond, maybe even complete with blue eyes, in some of the official and not so official renderings in and around the state.  The exact opposite was painfully and obviously the case.  Maybe we can help straighten it out.  In the early part of the century some of the well known artists of the day were commissioned to commemorate Califia and in the Room of the Dons in the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco are murals that show the results of their efforts.  The depictions show black women holding discourse with Spanish soldier.  The state seal bears a rendering.  White, wearing a Greek helmet.  Minerva?  My own rendering rests at the beginning of this article with one such print on its way to Switzerland even as we speak.  Yes, Cortez was chasing a myth.  Perhaps in the end he realized that but it is obvious that the land he discovered, the peninsula of the Baja, was huge indeed and contained little of the wealth rumored lying atop the ground for the pickings, and none of the women who would have worn him out and he would have been no match for.  Perhaps his greatest contribution to the history of this part of the world was that the name remained because wiping out the indigenous people who had occupied the peninsula for a hundred decades was appreciated by no one save, possibly, his queen.

Not much is known about the creator of Califia and her myth.  From all accounts he was not considered a very talented writer and, as stated before, his prowess rested on a series of adventure novellas on the ‘Amadis of Gaul’, which chronicled crusading adventures.  If I have anything to say about it he will have star status because of his creation of the black queen.  Many legends had long circulated about Amazonian figures down through history that dated close to the dawn of history.  Women warriors were not a new concept nor were black women warriors.  Nor has this concept, steeped in ancient mythic lore, run it course and it continues even today, as recent news clippings have revealed.  In Liberia women who have been spiritually and soulfully torn apart by rape and misuse and abused beyond any measure have gathered weapons of war and a legend is now in the making.  The ‘Black Diamond’ and her band of warriors, all women, are making clear to the war makers that she will have her revenge.  Political concerns probably are not so much on her radar as the cessation of female wreckage.  Her own words state clearly that she will in no way discuss her own personal tale of horror because it makes her cry when she dwells on it.  One can only believe her as she says it because though she and her warriors do not appear to be decisive in the struggle for Liberian dominion they are gaining respect as avengers for wronged women.  Califia redux?

Eventually the question must arise as to the origin of Califia.  Ordonez writes that she comes from a very long line of royal blood that suggests the dark mother images so prevalent in most civilizations.  He states she was the most able of the entire lineage and was beloved of her sisters.  DNA, archeology, most of history, demands, commands, screeches, that the origin of mankind, perhaps even life itself, began on Africa as the only continent that seemed suitable to give rise to the great experiment of life, at least here on earth, for other writings suggests that life may have begun in other places, not necessarily of this earth.  Other dramatic scenarios place her on a mission for her king in the African nation of Nigeria.  Why did she not return after its completion, or did she complete it?, and this paradisiacal island her reward.  Histories mysteries.  Fictions can do much with little and sometimes even make things more palatable, perhaps be even more truth-revealing than a factual accounting of an event.  That she remained on the island and able to travel the globe when she so chose indicates she could have returned.  This is a theory I would not give much credence to because she displays loyalty, and a deep and abiding sense of humanity in her too short tale, and for all of African lore that I am aware of completion of duty ranks at the top.  The dark mother theory seems more likely to me.  She could have been delivered in the Chariots of the Gods descending on a fiery, smoky column of flame, but give me the dark mother.  I will be satisfied with that.  After all this is finally, after all is said and done, a fiction and a legend.  Let her remain shrouded in myth, to emerge now and then, and just as mysteriously recede back to the misty beginnings of time.  Never fear, she still watches…  Hail, Califia, you rule, girl…!