The AchomAWI

I first found this book in an obscure little bookstore in downtonw Klamath Falls, Oregon, while on a day off working as a conductor of the railroad terminal there. It must have been nearly twelve years ago. "Netting the Sun - a Personal Geograph of the Oregon Desert" was the title, by Melvin Adams. It had a cool cover that looked like it was maybe designed on a home computer, with a picture of some petroglyphs and the volcanic plateaus of the high desert that I had already come to know so well. I took a look in it and purchased it, getting the feeling that it was something akin to "A Sand County Almanac" but for Southeastern Oregon.

I can say that it is probably one of my five favorite books. I have no idea why it remains as obscure as it is. It is probably because, I suppose, the region that it covers is somewhat obscure. Not many people know the landscape of Northeastern California and Southeastern Oregon - a landscape of high dry desert, blisteringly cold in winter, and magnificent as hell in spring and summer. A landscape dominated by old volcanoes but where only 12 million years ago Dawn Redwoods used to grow (and can still be found in near-entirey, encased in volcanic tuff).

Below is one of my favorite excerpts from the book. It is about the Pit River Tribe of Natives that inhabited a landscape where I spent so much time learning botany years ago while scamming time off the railroad. Back then I was just trying to take in as much as I could about this new world I felt I had just discovered.

The last paragraph of this piece strikes me the hardest. It is still tought for me to not tear up when reading it.

The Achomawi

In the desert night,

in the fullness of memory,

the coyote

chants to the moon,

it is the closing hour,

nothing is lost.

I first saw them in a picture made about 1910 somewhere near Goose

Lake. There are twelve of them on horses. The one in the middle, prob-

ably the leader, has a hand raised to the sky, palm outward, in a gesture

of greeting. Several of the men wear head dresses of feathers while ante-

lope horns adorn another, probably a shaman. The women wear blankets

around their shoulders, scarves over their heads, and beads. One of the

women, ahead of the rest, also stands out because of her white horse

Perhaps she is the wife of the leader or the leader herself. It is a picture

of remnants of a proud culture which lived in a beautiful place for thou-

sands of years before Christ, before the printing press, before the wheel,

before even the bow and arrow.

They had probably lived on the land for ten thousand years. There

were never more than three thousand of them altogether in the tribe, which

was scattered in small bands over a large area of what is now northeast-

ern California and southeastern Oregon. They were the Achomawi or Pit

River tribe, but some of them frequented the shores of Goose Lake.

They believed that the world was made by a silver fox thinking about a clump of sod, and fox sang while he held the clump of sod. He and coyotethrew the cump of sod down from the clouds and by singing and dancing stretched it out and made mountains, valleys, trees, and rocks.

The Achomawi thought that everything was alive, even rocks, and that the

shaman could travel to other worlds through circles pecked on the rocks.

The Achomawi also knew about dinihowi" - luck in gambling, love,

and hunting. They went to the mountains to find luck. They would be-

come tired and scared, cry, go hungry for days. While in this state they

would attract the pity of an animal and be taught its song. The animal could be a wolf, a blue jay, or even a fly.

They would be taught its song

and when they needed help they would return to the sacred spot and sing the song,

and the animal spirit would return.

Some natives would obtain

damaagome"- more mean and quarrelsome than the peaceful

adinihowi"-and would possess the medicine to be a shaman.

Those who became shamans faced a more dangerous life and none

were anxious for this. They were required to suck their patients in the re-

g7ons of disease to remove the poisoning sometimes placed by other sha-

mans. They were also in danger of losing their souls. Departing souls of

the dead, not wanting to travel alone, would induce others to follow, and

the shaman was called upon to bring back souls enticed to such travel.

Since no one wanted to give a departed soul a reason to return, the names

of the dead were taboo, and the dead were cremated and everything be-

longing to them burned.

The lives of the Achomawi were suffused with stories and spirits. The

old stories were told during winter nights as small bands huddled in the

partially subterranean, tule-covered lodges for warmth. To them there was

no apparent difference or division between religious feeling and earth, or

between nature and spirit, or between story and place. Over forty sacred

places were located and named, and art was pecked onto the rocks at some

of these places by shamans. Entire mountains such as Sugar Hill on the

southeast shore of Goose Lake were deemed sacred.

The Hewisedawi group of Achomawi lived on the north fork of the

Pit River and on Goose Lake. They dug pits along the river to catch deer,

hence their European name. They caught Goose Lake

redband trout and the Goose Lake sucker: large landlocked species with no outlet to the sea.

Numerous streams including the Pit River were used to harvest salmon,

bass, trout, and mussels, Rock corrals were built in the streams to spear

and net the fish, They hunted deer, antelope, and mountain sheep in the

Warner Mountains, the faulted rims to the east of Goose Lake. They made

bows of yew and juniper, gathered abundant wild plums, camas bulbs,

and seeds from many plants. Sage hen, rabbits, beaver, bears, deer, squir-

rel, otter, wolves, and mountain lions were plentiful; in the spring and fall

Goose Lake teemed with thousands of geese and ducks. Plant fibers were

used to make baskets and nets. When rain was needed, holes were pecked

in sacred rocks by the rain shaman.

When the Hewisedawi were unaware the more aggressive Modocs to the north and west would raid and take them for slaves to be traded as far north as the Dalles on the Columbia

River.

By 1936, due to disease, poverty, and cultural disintegration, about

five hundred Achomawi were left. None live on Goose Lake or near the

sacred Sugar Hill. The flocks of geese and ducks are a mere remnant of

their former number. The Goose Lake sucker, redband trout, and tui chub

are rare and in danger in the lake's waters, yet the Goose Lake Valley and

the Warner Mountains retain a raw, primitive beauty.

The Achomawi called the European invaders "*inillaaduwi" (tramps).

They said about them, ""They do not believe anything is alive. They are

dead themselves. On crystal fall days when the wild plums are sweet, and

the winds in the canyons of the Warner Mountains carry a hint of the cold

weather to come, and you can see a hundred miles across the desert, and

the aspen leaves are changing color in the high air, it is possible to believe

in redemption for ourselves and for the land. It is necessary to invest in

the land some measure of spirit and to sanctify it as did the Achomawi.