Description

Learn all about the history of Tulare Lake in California.

Transcript

Learn about Tulare Lake, California Host: For thousands of years after the mammoths had come and gone. Native Californians were the stewards of the land. Anthropologists believed that California was home to the largest concentration of Indians on the North American land mass. How many lived here? No one can say for certain. Frank LaPena: You know when the people have tried to estimate the population they came on 333,000 but in the mean time additional information and research has put that on a higher level and there was a projection even at this early time of 750,000. Host: Perhaps the largest groups of Indians strived around the fast lake unknown to most Californians today. But the Yokut peoples knew it well it was their life spring. They called it—later it would be called Tulare Lake. Gerald Haslam: There were so much to eat there that for the native culture and have to live in that area there was great abundance. Host: In the wettest years, Tulare Lake could be a 100 miles long, 50 miles wide and 40 feet deep in places. Five rivers ones fed this basin making it the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi. Gerald Haslam: The Tuli’s that is wonderful rushes that are 15 to 20 feet tall at some places. Constituted a bond as much as a mile wide in depth all the way around the lake and the rushes from Tuli’s became boats they became all sort of things for the people who are there. Host: Some of the higher ground that from Tuli Islands later became towns. The town of—sits on one that used to be called—islands. But by the 1930s the rivers have been dammed and diverted for irrigation and the basin was transformed into California’s cotton bowl as it still is. Today are scant reminisce of Tulare Lake, hidden patches of Marshal Ant that are kept intact for duck hunters. Alkali salts sits on the bare earth like dry snow. Waterfowl make their own weapons in the irrigation ditches. Raymond Jeff: My peopled lived all around the lake. We had them in the North, South, East and West. We have different bands of the Yokut Nation what lived off and off the lake. Host: Three centuries ago Tulare Lake may have been the hub of Indian civilization in California. Raymond Jeff: It was the life that did have everything we needed. It had the ducks, we even had bears down here and we have the—which we harvest, the antelope which we harvest. Host: These days the Tachi-Yokut derived their sustenance from other sources. But the tribal elders haven't forgotten what Tulare Lake meant to their people and even now when they return to the site they honor it with ceremonies pass down through generations. Clarence Atwell is chief and medicine man of the remaining Tachi-Yokut people. Clarence Atwell: This is our mother the earth and that provide us with the water, food, minerals and all this other things that we need. And also when you take something you give it back. All this praise is really considered one of our scared sights. Gerald Haslam: The famous Yokut’s prayer “Here you see me all one with the world” really be speaks this because they knew they are fully dependent upon the world that is the soil, the rivers of that place we are too. Host: This spiritual connection to the land has been a dominant theme in Frank LaPena’s art for the past 40 years. Frank LaPena: We have been here long enough that we know how to respect and love and live with the land. It allows you now to have a best of interest in preserving and maintaining but it also allows you to tap back into time without end because you are created here. Host: There is little lap in Tulare Lake to remind us of its former grandeur but throughout California there are clues to the lives led by the first Californians. Native elder say their people have always been here but what does always mean. Some of the oldest clues are in the foothill town on Roseville at the Maidu Interpretive Center. This rocks stand in the mysterious vigil across time. They are parotideus, stone carvings created by people who occupied this place thousand of years ago.