The Wiyot of Eel River

I was at the Redwood Shores library the other day. They had a small display on the Ohlone Tribe. It made me think again of the Wiyot. They live in my dreams. Their name is pronounced Wee-yhot and it means Eel River. That was their home.

In the mid-eighties, for about a year-and-half, we lived near the Eel River in Humboldt County, an area about 200 miles north of San Francisco. It’s stunning and peaceful with dense redwood forests, wild rivers, and creeks that run dry in the summer and overflow in the winter. If you live in a rural area or grew up in one, you might take such things for granted. Having lived in cities all my life, it was magical to me. In the midst of that feral earth, in the stillness of leafy green days and velvet blue nights, it was easy for me to imagine the first peoples as they might have lived there in other times.

I fancied I could see them tending fires, boiling and drying acorns and then grinding them for flour, bathing in the river, raising their children, and hunting, gathering, and enjoying sacred ceremonies and tribal celebrations. I knew the same ancient sky-scrapping sequoias that watched over us had watched over them.

Our place was just short of four acres and rich with sequoia, madrone, oak, and some forty fruit trees. Blue jays flew in to feed in the morning and the quail marched down to visit at nightfall. Hawks and hummingbirds put on air shows. Rosemary thrived unattended. There was a beautiful lush 100-year-old rosebush. There were wild roses too. They gave us rose hips for cough syrup. Witches Broom lined our creek side with bright yellow. There were cascades of Japanese quince, which provided ample housing for the hummingbirds. Queen Ann’s lace* danced in the wind like ladies dressed for a ball. When they went to seed I collected the seeds for use in cooking. They have a taste somewhere between a carrot and caraway seed. The great bursts of blackberry bushes were a visual and edible delight.

I gathered fresh fruit almost every morning and every morning I thought of the people who preceded me more than a century ago and who picked berries there just like me. I did some research and found out that our property was once inhabited by the Wiyot peoples whose numbers were almost decimated in a genocide.

“Eureka newspapers of the time exulted at the night massacres conducted by the “good citizens of the area”. Good haul of Diggers and Tribe Exterminated! were 2 headlines from the Humboldt Times. Those who thought differently about it were shut up by force. Newspaper publisher and short story writer Bret Harte called it “cowardly butchery of sleeping women and children” — then had to flee ahead of a lynch mob that smashed his printing presses.” MORE [Wiyot Tribal Council Page]

* WARNING: If you are tempted to gather the seeds from Queen Ann’s lace, think twice. I didn’t know it at the time but it is hard to distinguish them from hemlock, which is poisonous. 

© 2012, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Photo credit ~ Eel River by Jan Kronsell and released into the worldwide public domain.

JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. For the past five years I’ve blogged at The Poet by Day,the journey in poem, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight.  Through the gift of poetry (mine and that of others), I enter sacred space.