Legend of Wheaner-Whiner Rock

Legend of Nahachish Stone

"Wheaner-Whiner Rock"

photo by A. Frances (Hindorff) Driggs Apr. 1958

Growing up in the Fallbrook-Temecula-Rainbow area in southern California where our forefathers and foremothers had come as Pioneers in the 1880s, we frequented many of the then wilds and not-so-well-known places in the wide-open countryside on day-trips with our grandparents and mother. My Grandfather had grown up in the Rainbow are and knew the area better than anyone. He knew where many ancient Indian sites were and endless numbers of out-of-the-way places of Natural interest to visit, and we often did just that. The above photo is from one of those trips we made out to Rainbow one Spring day. The Nahachish Rock is located just above his childhood home on the Rainbow/Temecula Pass, just off old 395 Hwy.

My Grandpa Hindorff told us stories about a creature called the "Wheaner-Whiner" that would get little children who were disobedient or if they were always whining about things. His blue eyes would light up and twinkle as he told us about the Wheaner-Whiner. Indeed, he told us that the Wheaner-Whiner roamed on the hill located east & behind our house - a place we were forbidden to go and play! He hid in the Manzanita Tree on the top of the hill, and if we disobeyed and went up there, he was more than likely going to get us. We even called it Wheaner-Whiner Hill. But the Wheaner-Whiner actually lived up in the mountains, above Temecula, near Rainbow, mysteriously embodied in the great rock that Grampa called "Wheaner-whiner Rock". Mostly, we knew that Grampa was just teasing us and that he was just telling another of his tall-tales....mostly.

My Mother and her sisters have told me that when they were little girls and went on trips with their parents, their Dad would insist that they had better not whine or complain on the trip or he would take them up to "Wheaner-whiner Rock". I wonder if his father, Per Gustav Hindorff, the Swedish Immigrant, was the original author of that Wheaner-whiner story since it was so near the Hindorff Ranch? Perhaps Gus told his children that story to make them behave, just like Grampa did with his children and grandchildren. It became a family tradition...along with the Boogie man.

Here is the true Story about the legend of the Great Rock.....and the Native peoples who originally inhabited the area.

The People are led to Temecula

Nahachish was a great man and migratory leader of the Temecula Indians way back in the beginning of time. He was the equivalent of an Indian Moses. For a long time he had led, and the people had followed; but no territory they had come through had pleased Nahachish until he viewed Palomar Mountain and the fertile valleys at its base. This was the land for which he had been searching.

The people were tired, so Nahachish allowed them to construct temporary shelters of willow and brush, and tarry for a time testing and recuperating from their long journey. "The first morning Nahachish stepped out of his Kish (shelter of hut), and found the valley and hills covered with a white mist. But as he watched, the sun suddenly broke through the white mist and was reflected from the mist-shrouded hillside. This was a good omen.

Nahachish called the people forth and said, "This place shall be known as Temeku."

As near as the Indian Language can be translated into modern English, Temeku means,
"the place where the sun breaks through and shines on the white mist."

With the coming of the Spanish, the harsh sounding Indian word was changed to the more euphonious Temecula. Through the years, Temeku became one of the most numerous, strongest, and culturally advanced groups of all Southern California. Their numbers in prehistoric times could have reached and perhaps exceeded the thousand mark.

After the people had rested, Nahachish designated certain individuals and families to remain in the valley. With the remainder, he started in a northeasterly direction following the Temecula Creek up and around the northern skirt of Palomar Mountain.

Near the mouth of present-day Nate Canyon, Nahachish found a spring. In its clear water floated bits of recently disturbed organic matter, showing that some strange creature or creatures had recently been there. Here was another ideal village site so Nahachish said, "this place shall be known as Paum Pauba." Roughly translated this means, "the spring of the strangers." Today it is known as the Pear Tree Spring and it is in part of the Pauba Rancho. Nahachish left some more people here.

All around Palomar Mountain, Nahachish selected village sites, named them, and settled them with his followers. The last settlement was Pala. And then, cutting over the mountains, Nahachish returned to Temeku.

In Temeku was a wicked man, envious of Nahachish. One day as Nahachish started to descend the Temecula Pass into the valley, this wicked man and his dog lay in ambush for him. When he saw Nahachish as the top of the Pass, he knelt, and fitting an arrow to his bow, & took careful aim. The arrow sped true and buried itself deep into the abdomen of Nahachish. Sorely hurt and very thirsty from his wound, Nahachish tried to make his way down to the spring which bubbled beside the trail through the Pass, but he could not reach it. Groaning, he lay down.

Missed by his people, a search was started and they eventually found Nahachish near death atop the Temecula Pass. In great pain he demanded his people to cut open his belly, and allow his Spirit to depart. This they did and watched his Spirit speed away like a giant firefly, to Taacwic Rock, near present-day Idyllwild, in the San Jacinto Mts.

Then as the people watched in amazement, Nahachish's body turned into a huge boulder with a massive cavity where his belly had been opened.

For with his passing, The Time of Sand had become the Time of Rocks. Through the ages the giant Nahachish Rock has peered through the gap of the Temecula Pass toward Taacwic Rock high in the San Jacinto Mountains, where rests his Spirit.

Later, down in a nearby canyon, the people found the footprints of the wicked man turned to stone, where he had knelt to released the fatal arrow. Alongside the man's footprints were those of his dog, and so they remain today.

Many years ago some white men painted eyes, nostrils and a mouth in the cavity of the Nahachish Rock. About 1926, someone else painted a little green Gremlin-like creature on one side of the Rock mouth. (see photo below)

-from a story contributed by Margaret (Hindorff) Ray...my mom's sister.

Wheaner-whiner Rock as it looks today ©Apr 2000 photo by MN Ray

Other places of interest in the Rainbow area....

The Cheshire-Cat Tree. Some of the locals had painted the face where the limb had been cut away, and it reminded us of the Cheshire-Cat in the Alice in Wonderland books.

Around there somewhere was a huge boulder with prehistoric rock art. Grampa took us there when I was very small, but I remember the experience quite well. It was nearly hidden by brush and tangled of sagebrush. It was on Indian land where Grampa had permission to go. It was a sacred rock, Grampa told us. It was up a winding dirt road, someplace up behind the Rainbow outpost there on old Hwy 395. We turned off the highway, across from the old Hindorff ranch, and I seem to recall driving around up through the mountains. I wish I had a photo of that rock. I can't even recall the Petroglyphs that were on it, but I seem to recall one that looked like a sun...and another some kind of a spiral design, perhaps like these below, which that I painted.

Some years back, my sister and I saw a program on a local educational channel about this very rock. The scientist in the documentary was claiming that it was the first time a white man had ever looked upon this particular Rock. He claimed that it had lain here half-hidden for thousands of years and no modern man had ever known of its existence. The carved and painted images were from prehistoric Natives. The stone, he said, was discovered by two local children who happened upon it while playing one day. My sister and I laughed, remembering the times we had scampered up on that rock...twenty or more years before this GREAT DISCOVERY...with our grandparents! And we laughed at the folly and the impudence of these scientists to claim such boasts of being the first white men and even the first modern man, to have ever seen it.

How many countless others have "happened" upon that rock in the course of the history of man? We had always wondered how many early Spaniards might have passed by the rock and perhaps later, pioneer children in my Grampa's day that had climbed up on the rock just as we had, pretending it was the bow of a great ship at sea or that we were from another time. And we sat there, Indian like, squatted atop its cool surface and gazed out across the valley far below that was shrouded in mist, and pretended that we were those Indians that had designed the artwork and that WE were the FIRST to find that great Rock!

Some people don't know so much!

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