memorial day
let us not forget to remember those ancestors that we never knew
Indian Children
by Annette Wynne
Where we walk to school each day
Indian children used to play-
all about our native land,
where the shops and houses stand.
And the trees were very tall,
and there were no streets at all,
not a church and not a steeple-
only woods and Indian people.
Only wigwams on the ground,
and at night bears prowling round-
what a different place today
where we live and work and play!
seems especially poignant since this shot was taken near cave rock, a highly spiritual sacred ground for the washoe indian tribe.....just looking at it you can feel how special it is......how it must have been extra sacred before the cars drove through it and without all of the traffic noise.....it is a natural point of wind and distinct weather change just on the other side of the natural cave in the rock
more information about cave rock:
This is on Highway 50 in Nevada, a major highway connecting sacramento, california, placerville, california, lake tahoe, california and carson city, nevada with lots of traffic, both truck and tourist.
Cave Rock sits on the southeastern shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada, and is a spiritual and cultural center for the Washoe, who call it Da ow ga, or “the lake.” The simple name indicates how fundamental this site is to Washoe culture: it is a place of such spiritual power that only trained Washoe medicine men are permitted to go there and women are not allowed to look at it. The 360-foot high, 800-foot wide dome is the gathering place of me’tsunge or water babies, small beings that possess medicinal knowledge and power that they bestow on medicine men.
The Washoe’s traditional subsistence cycle took them to Lake Tahoe in the summer for hunting, fishing, and collecting medicinal plants, roots, and berries, into the Pine Nut Mountains to gather pine nuts, a staple food source, in the fall, and to the valleys of the Eastern Sierras in the winter and spring. The Lake Tahoe Basin—10,000 sq miles of land surrounding the lake—was originally Washoe territory, but a massive land grab pushed them out in the late 19th-century.
White Americans first came en masse to Washoe country in 1859 when silver was discovered in Virginia City. The loss of habitat and territory was astonishingly fast: by 1863, the Washoe had been completely driven off their land, and forests had been clear-cut to feed the construction boom. The Washoe moved east and northeast of Lake Tahoe into areas around Reno, Carson Valley, and Gardnerville. They maintained ties to their land through journeys to the Basin for seeds, medicinal roots, and reeds for basket-making. Some found jobs in the developing Lake Tahoe area as domestics, laborers and game guides for vacationers, employment that allowed them to return to their land, albeit through a far different lifestyle.
Washoe claims to their traditional land have been repeatedly trivialized by the federal government, starting with a ruling in 1866 by the Superintendent for Indian Affairs that there was no good location nor need for a reservation for the Washoe because their population was rapidly diminishing. The destruction of Cave Rock, in particular, began with blasts of dynamite used to create two highway tunnels running through its center in 1931 and 1957.
The remnant of an ancient volcano, Cave Rock is home to the spirits of the Washoe people, whose ancestral land encompassed the Lake Tahoe Basin. They no longer have domain over their sacred place; instead it is managed by the Forest Service, which permits recreational use in violation of Washoe beliefs. In August 2007, however, a federal appellate court upheld the Forest Service’s recent ban on climbing Cave Rock, a significant victory for sacred site protection. Washoe Tribal Chairman A. Brian Wallace describes Cave Rock as “one of the linchpins in the cosmology of the tribe” and declares, “For us, rock climbing trivializes the site for the sake of sport.”
above info pasted from:
www.sacredland.org/historical_sites_pages/caverock.html
You exit this tunnel when headed east and are immediately in the shade of the mountains to your right, it is always icy there, and even in summer seems less than perfect road to drive......from the west shore of the lake you can always pick out cave rock as it is so massive and set apart from the treed shoreline.
cave rock as seem from the south shore of lake tahoe
www.flickr.com/photos/49754167@N00/3654487519/
memorial day
let us not forget to remember those ancestors that we never knew
Indian Children
by Annette Wynne
Where we walk to school each day
Indian children used to play-
all about our native land,
where the shops and houses stand.
And the trees were very tall,
and there were no streets at all,
not a church and not a steeple-
only woods and Indian people.
Only wigwams on the ground,
and at night bears prowling round-
what a different place today
where we live and work and play!
seems especially poignant since this shot was taken near cave rock, a highly spiritual sacred ground for the washoe indian tribe.....just looking at it you can feel how special it is......how it must have been extra sacred before the cars drove through it and without all of the traffic noise.....it is a natural point of wind and distinct weather change just on the other side of the natural cave in the rock
more information about cave rock:
This is on Highway 50 in Nevada, a major highway connecting sacramento, california, placerville, california, lake tahoe, california and carson city, nevada with lots of traffic, both truck and tourist.
Cave Rock sits on the southeastern shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada, and is a spiritual and cultural center for the Washoe, who call it Da ow ga, or “the lake.” The simple name indicates how fundamental this site is to Washoe culture: it is a place of such spiritual power that only trained Washoe medicine men are permitted to go there and women are not allowed to look at it. The 360-foot high, 800-foot wide dome is the gathering place of me’tsunge or water babies, small beings that possess medicinal knowledge and power that they bestow on medicine men.
The Washoe’s traditional subsistence cycle took them to Lake Tahoe in the summer for hunting, fishing, and collecting medicinal plants, roots, and berries, into the Pine Nut Mountains to gather pine nuts, a staple food source, in the fall, and to the valleys of the Eastern Sierras in the winter and spring. The Lake Tahoe Basin—10,000 sq miles of land surrounding the lake—was originally Washoe territory, but a massive land grab pushed them out in the late 19th-century.
White Americans first came en masse to Washoe country in 1859 when silver was discovered in Virginia City. The loss of habitat and territory was astonishingly fast: by 1863, the Washoe had been completely driven off their land, and forests had been clear-cut to feed the construction boom. The Washoe moved east and northeast of Lake Tahoe into areas around Reno, Carson Valley, and Gardnerville. They maintained ties to their land through journeys to the Basin for seeds, medicinal roots, and reeds for basket-making. Some found jobs in the developing Lake Tahoe area as domestics, laborers and game guides for vacationers, employment that allowed them to return to their land, albeit through a far different lifestyle.
Washoe claims to their traditional land have been repeatedly trivialized by the federal government, starting with a ruling in 1866 by the Superintendent for Indian Affairs that there was no good location nor need for a reservation for the Washoe because their population was rapidly diminishing. The destruction of Cave Rock, in particular, began with blasts of dynamite used to create two highway tunnels running through its center in 1931 and 1957.
The remnant of an ancient volcano, Cave Rock is home to the spirits of the Washoe people, whose ancestral land encompassed the Lake Tahoe Basin. They no longer have domain over their sacred place; instead it is managed by the Forest Service, which permits recreational use in violation of Washoe beliefs. In August 2007, however, a federal appellate court upheld the Forest Service’s recent ban on climbing Cave Rock, a significant victory for sacred site protection. Washoe Tribal Chairman A. Brian Wallace describes Cave Rock as “one of the linchpins in the cosmology of the tribe” and declares, “For us, rock climbing trivializes the site for the sake of sport.”
above info pasted from:
www.sacredland.org/historical_sites_pages/caverock.html
You exit this tunnel when headed east and are immediately in the shade of the mountains to your right, it is always icy there, and even in summer seems less than perfect road to drive......from the west shore of the lake you can always pick out cave rock as it is so massive and set apart from the treed shoreline.
cave rock as seem from the south shore of lake tahoe
www.flickr.com/photos/49754167@N00/3654487519/