Then Mr. Cohn awoke, and he's been awake ever since. He wired his list of Dat-so-la-le's baskets, but he has had no reply, and that was twenty-five years ago. He then made arrangements with Dat-so-la-le and her husband. He provides them house, food, clothing and a certain amount of cash yearly, and he takes all the work Luisa makes. Every basket as soon as begun is noted as carefully as every breeding of a thoroughbred horse or dog. Also the date the basket is finished. It is then numbered and photographed and either offered for sale at a certain price, which is never changed, or is put in the safety-deposit vault of the bank, to await the time when such aboriginal masterpieces will be eagerly sought after by the growingly intelligent and appreciative of our citizens, for their museums or collections, as specimens of work of a people—the first American families—who will then, possibly, have passed away. The photographs, here reproduced, are of some of Dat-so-la-le's finest work.
| The 'Signal Code' Design | Click photos to see full-sized. |
| 'Our Ancestral Hunters' design | Washoe baskets made by Dat-so-la-le, 'Happy Homes' design |
CHAPTER IV
INDIAN LEGENDS OF THE TAHOE REGION
As all students of the Indian are well aware these aboriginal and out-of-door dwellers in the forests, canyons, mountains, valleys, and on lake and seashores are great observers of Nature, and her many and varied phenomena. He who deems the Indian dull, stolid and unimpressionable, simply because in the presence of the White Race he is reserved and taciturn, little knows the observing and reflecting power hidden behind so self-restrained a demeanor. Wherever natural objects, therefore, are of a peculiar, striking, unusual, unique, or superior character, it is reasonable to assume that the Indians, living within sight of them, should possess myths, legends, folk-lore, creation-stories or the like in connection with their creation, preservation, or present-day existence. This is found exemplified in the legends of Havasupais, Hopis, Navajos and Wallapais as to the origin of the Grand Canyon of Arizona, of the Yohamities, Monos, Chuc-Chances, and others, of the distinctive features of the Yosemite Valley, the Hetch-Hetchy, etc.
While the present-day, half-educated, half-civilized Washoes are by no means representatives of the highest elements of natural enlightenment among the Indian race, they do possess legends about Tahoe, the following being the most interesting.
| Jackson, the Washoe indian, telling traditions of his people
about Lake Tahoe and Fallen Leaf Lake Click photo to see full-sized. |
| Susie, the Washoe indian basket maker, and narrator of
indian legends - Click photo to see full-sized. |
All these stories, except the last, were gathered by Mrs. W.W. Price of Fallen Leaf Lodge, from Indians with whom she has been very familiar for several years, named Jackson and his wife Susan. There has been no attempt to dress them up in literary fashion. They are given as near to the Indians' mode of telling as possible. They are wonderfully different from certain stories recently published in current magazines, professing to be Legends of Lake Tahoe. These latter are pure fiction, and to those familiar with Indian thought, reveal their origin in the imaginative brain of white writers who have but faint conceptions of Indian mentality. Mrs. Price is a graduate of Stanford University, and took great pains to preserve the Indians' exact mode of expression. As she herself writes:
Long before the white man saw and wondered over the beauty of Tahoe, theorizing over its origin and concocting curious tales about its "unfathomable" depths, the Indians knew and loved it. And as among all other peoples, legends have grown up to account for every phenomenon of Nature, so among the Washoe Indians stories about Tahoe have been handed down from generation to generation.
I do not vouch for these legends. The modern Indian too often tells what he thinks you want to know,—if only you will cross his hand with silver. But there are touches here and there that make me feel that for the most part they are remnants of very old legends.