And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: From: Earle Cummings <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Web site to be aware of Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The Putah-Cache Bioregion Project: http://bioregion.ucdavis.edu/where/default.html An Artifact http://bioregion.ucdavis.edu/where/doslpast.html According to Marlene Greenway's research, US Bureau of Land Management archaeologist, humans have been occupying the Putah and Cache basins for nearly ten thousand years. Here, evidence of former inhabitants escapes all but the most persistent investigators. Occasionally, it surfaces by chance. In April, 1991, three friends and I were riding bicycles up the narrow, winding tarmac from Williams toward Lodoga, in the west side foothills. By this time I had come to realize that there had been an abundant native population in this place, and that not all indigenous people had died in the epidemics of 1833 and 1834. At the time I was typical of many other white Americans, vaguely aware that primal peoples had once lived on "my land", but ignorant of who they were, where they were, and most of all, how they lived here. I did not recognize the small stone object I picked up by the side of the road while resting against my bicycle. It was made of hard black and white flecked stone - something like granite. It appeared to be man-made, but so uniform in diameter, that, although tapered, it might have been a sample for testing the rock's strength, or a core dug out of a blasting hole, or a balustrade from an ornate stone garden fence. I put the stone in my pocket, and upon arriving home, stowed the object away in a "junk" drawer. Three years later, I saw with astonishment a detailed illustration of the exact object I had found: a four-thousand year old, "early horizon" steatite charmstone. The function of such stones is still debated, but charmstones were found in native graves dating up until a thousand years ago. This one precisely matched the illustration and material of the earliest horizon of archaeological exploration. It was thought that such charmstones were suspended over spots in the stream, to "charm" the fish into being caught. Introduction to Local Native Americans Who | What | Where | Publications Rob Thayer, Professor of Landscape Architecture, has been researching the local indigenous peoples for some years. Two results are a map of historical Native American territories and "Dancin' On Sacred Land," a collection of personal encounters with local tribes past and present. <<end excerpt Go to small map (350 pixels wide, 45K + 5K legend) Go to large map (500 pixels wide, 65K + 6K legend) Go to Dancin' On Sacred Land: Past Go to Dancin' On Sacred Land: Present Life is but a dance Upon the sacred land All our love returns As water, trees, and sand. -Dale Will "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run." Mark Twain Earle W. Cummings, Wetlands Coordination California Department of Water Resources 3251 S Street, Sacramento CA 95816 Voice (916)227-7519 Fax (916)227-7554
