Washoe Indians

Long before the capital, this was Washoe country. The Washoe—Wašiw, "the people"—lived for thousands of years across the eastern Sierra and the Great Basin valleys, centered on Lake Tahoe, gathering pine nuts in the Pine Nut Mountains and fishing the rivers. Their language stands apart from the Paiute and Shoshone tongues around them. As farms, mines, and mills took the land and timber through the later 1800s, the Washoe were pushed to the edges of the new towns, and reservation land came only in the twentieth century. The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California endures today.

What the plaque says

Long before the coming of emigrant wagon trains, this site overlooked the lands of the Washo Indians. A valley, a town, and a county still bear their name. A nearby trail marks their ancient route from the lowlands to Lake Tahoe and California. The Washo language is distinct from both Shoshone and Paiute. For many years, the Washo people remained isolated, roaming their native high Sierra and descending into the valleys for winter. Their pine nut ceremony is still held before harvest time, with men and women working together at this enterprise. The departure for the pine nut groves is celebrated by singing and dancing during the Pine nut ceremony called Goomsabyi. Their basketry, now world famous, is one aspect of Washo culture that has been preserved for generations. The beautiful work of their most celebrated artist, Dat-So-La-Lee is exhibited at the Nevada State Museum, Carson City, and the Nevada Historical Society, Reno, along with other equally talented basket weavers exhibits.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 4.7 mi
  The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides
• Glenbrook & Spooner Summit — 4.7 mi
  Lake Tahoe's east shore, where the basin was logged nearly clean to timber the Comstock—the forest that paid for the silver, and the century it has spent growing back
• Stewart Indian School — 5.5 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices
• Carson City — 6.0 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since

More markers nearby

• Spooner Summit — 2.1 mi
• Spooner Area (Logging and Lumbering Period: 1868- 1895) — 3.2 mi
• Camp Nye 1864-1865 — 4.8 mi
• Eagle Valley — 4.9 mi