SHASTA
To account for the name Shasta, a number of theories have been advanced, no one of which seems to be positively established. According to the Bureau of Ethnology, “Shasta may be a corruption of Sus-tí-ka, apparently the name of a well-known Indian living about 1840 near the site of Yreka. The name was applied to a group of small tribes in Northern California, extending into Oregon, who were soon extinguished by the development of mining operations.”
MOUNT SHASTA.
“ ... its summit glistening with snow and visible at a distance of 140 miles down the valley.”
Bancroft, in his Native Races, says, “Shasta was apparently the name of a tribe living about 1840 near Yreka, a tribe made up of several groups. They were a sedentary people, living in small houses, similar to those in use by the Indians on the coast immediately to the west. Their food was made up of acorns, seeds, roots, and fish, particularly salmon. The salmon was caught by net, weir, trap, and spear. Their arts were few. They had dug-out canoes of a rather broad, clumsy type. The bow was their chief weapon, and their carving was limited to rude spoons of wood and bone. Painting was little used, and basketry was limited to basket caps for the women, and small food baskets of simple form. The tribe soon succumbed to the unfavorable environment of the mining camp, and is now almost extinct.... The Shasta Indians were known in their own language as Weohow, a word meaning ‘stone house,’ from the large cave in their country.”
“Shas-ti-ka was probably the tribal name of the Shasta Indians. Wai-re-ka (mountain) was their name for Mt. Shasta.”—(Powers’ Tribes of California.)
Another theory advanced is that Shasta is a corruption of the Russian word tchastal, (white, or pure mountain), and still another that it comes from the French chaste, (pure), but it is likely that its resemblance to these words is purely accidental, and that its origin is Indian.
Whatever may be the derivation of its name, there is no question that Mount Shasta, with its snow-capped summit, has but few rivals for scenic beauty among its mountain sisterhood. It is an extinct volcano, with a double peak, and rises to a height of 14380 feet. There are minor glaciers on the northern slope. Fremont says of it: “The Shastl peak stands at the head of the lower valley, rising from a base of about one thousand feet, out of a forest of heavy timber. It ascends like an immense column upwards of 14000 feet (nearly the height of Mont Blanc), the summit glistening with snow, and visible, from favorable points of view, at a distance of 140 miles down the valley.”
On a United States map of date of 1848, drawn by Charles Preuss from surveys made by Fremont and other persons, the name appears spelled as Tshastl.
Mount Shasta is in Siskiyou County, and is the most conspicuous natural feature in that part of the state.