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Palm Springs Village Facts and Legends: Witch of Tahquitz

In 1919, the Palm Springs bailiff was a young man named Riley. The city was still a sleepy little village before the age of celebrity came to its doorstep. The citizens were hard-working earthly people who had learned to live in a rugged climate in the midst of a mostly docile Indian tribe. But there was a shadow looming over the city and the children disappeared under its cloud. Mainly, the shadow remained over the Tahquitz canyon, hanging there as a warning not to enter. The legend says that when the shadow is in the canyon, everything is safe, because the witch hides in her embrace. But on cloudy days or at night when the shadow is everywhere, you have to be careful, because the witch is outside!

In Riley’s tale, she is asked to lead a gang into the canyon after the disappearance of an Indian girl who is the daughter of a servant of one of the city’s elite members; an early auto mechanic named Zaddie Bunker.

Zaddie gathers a dozen city leaders at Lykken’s General Store, now a historic site, where each person shares a story about their personal feelings or confrontations with the Witch. Journalist Randall Henderson tells the most gripping story of how nearly 30 years earlier a boy had been kidnapped and forced to eat his friend before he could escape. It seems that a generation earlier a gang had formed to capture the Witch, which they thought they had, and send her to the famous Yuma Federal Prison in the middle of the desert wasteland. Unfortunately, the stagecoach he was on never made it and his entire cavalry dragon escort mysteriously.

So Riley’s gang takes off to catch the witch with half a dozen white settlers, an elderly Indian healer (Pedro Chino), and a young Indian named Jesus. Along the way, Peter tells the boy of even earlier events of the tribe and his interaction with the Witch. Her name is Mena and she was not always bad. Hundreds of years ago, Spanish explorers had raised it in search of gold. She had asked the gods for a chance to escape and for a husband to protect her. The Mountain god answered, destroying the Spanish launches that sought as far north as a primordial Salton Sea in a shower of lightning. He swam to shore and walked slowly towards the high peak of the mountain, he could see the distance and when he saw the canyon and the Tahquitz healer who lived there, he knew he had found his home.

For a long time she and her man helped La Cahuilla. But over time, the medicine turned bitter, and his most famous spell of sucking evil out of people began to attract the whole souls of his patients and, in doing so, prolonged their lives. Eventually, Mena tricked and killed Tahquitz, who continues to lie as an eternal Cahuilla spirit.

The gang eventually reaches her camp and kills her, though not without harming their own group. One member, Big John, stays behind to watch the Witch’s embers burn, because this is the only true way to know that she is dead. But before she turns to ashes, the coyotes and other animals chase him away.

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