2 Historical Events That Changed Tahoe Forever
For years Euro-Americans bypassed Lake Tahoe until two major things occurred…
Note: I use the spelling Wašiw (vs Washoe) because language is one way the Wašiw people are reclaiming their history.
300 Years Later, Tahoe Was Still Secret
Lake Tahoe is the traditional lands of the Wašiw People. Roughly 10 generations of self-identified Americans existed before any Wašiw person ever encountered one. This means that by time the Oregon Trail (1840s-1870s), Gold Rush (1849), and Silver Rush (1859) occurred, nearly 300 years (1500s-1800s) of Europeans-turned-Americans had developed deeply rooted opinions about what it means to be American, who has rights to landownership, and who could be a citizen.
In order to write historical fiction about the American West, I’ve needed to understand how America’s foundational values like independence, rags-to-riches opportunity, and free will were developed during 300 years of wars, imperial land swaps, and genocides mostly in the lands occupied by the original Thirteen Colonies. Before the 1800s, America was only the map below:
Meanwhile, the Wašiw People of Lake Tahoe and thousands of other Indigenous Peoples across the West had still never encountered Euro-Americans and continued to live in their usual ways.
After the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and later the Homestead Act (1862), thousands of Americans, both new and established backed by 10 generations of independent spirits, sought land in the West and refused to allow anything stand in their way. Anyone who did, like the hundreds of Indigenous Nations resisting foreign invasion, where met with vehement, often violent attitudes.
Lake Tahoe’s Historical Iceberg
When Euro-Americans first arrived at Lake Tahoe, the traditional lands of the Wašiw Nation, the American Identity was solidly formed. The first recording of seeing a Wašiw person by a Euro-American was in 1827. Then (more famously) John Frémont’s party and later the Stevens-Townsend-Murphy party passed through in 1844.
My novel-in-progress, Undercut, takes place in an 1860s logging camp. For a long time, I struggled getting into the heads of my characters, mostly Euro-American men working physically hard jobs like logging and mining, because I didn’t understand the mentality of being or wanting to become an American at the time. There was a sense of righteousness, rightful-ness, of being “owed” by the promise of free land in the land of opportunity.
Wašiw territory, meanwhile, had been protected for thousands of years from foreign intrusion with the Great Basin reaching east and snow-covered Sierra Nevada towering west. Neighboring Indigenous communities crossed over in various ways, but Euro-Americans had mostly bypassed Lake Tahoe until the mid-1800s when two major things happened:
1) The Mormons Came
The first American settlement built in Wašiw territory was Mormon Station in 1851, located in modern-day Genoa, Nevada.
Originally, the Mormons set up shop selling beef and supplies to overlanders heading into California. Their location was prime with abundant timber, Washoe Lake and two rivers (Truckee River and Carson River) nearby. Their interest was landownership, which they acquired by simple showing up and not leaving. They wanted to remain a separate nation from the United States and achieve their own communal society, free from religious persecution.
The Inception of Mormonism
Mormonism started in 1830 when Joseph Smith saw God’s revelations on golden plates he found buried near his parents’ farm in Illinois and started a new religion. The Book of Mormon is the written transcriptions of God’s word that only Joseph could read off the golden plates.
14 years later (1844), Joseph and his brother Hyrum were murdered in their jail cell by an angry mob of religious intolerants in Illinois. In 1846, Brigham Young led some 20,000 persecuted Mormons to the Great Salt Lake, where the Church of Latter-Day Saints could finally began building their nation in peace… right splat in the middle of the Goshute Peoples' territory.
In less than 20 years, Mormons had been forced to move 5 times, taking their new religion with them. When they finally arrived in the Great Salt Lake, they claimed the newly acquired State of Deseret as home. (Note this “acquired” land—modern day Utah and Nevada—was still part of Mexico at that time according to colonizing powers and unbeknownst to dozens of Indigenous Nations already living there.)
Book Recommendation
The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith by Matthew Bowman is an impressively neutral book, which I highly recommend if you want to better understand how Mormonism, a religion that began less than 200 years ago, is inextricably tied to the American West. (The above link is an affiliate link.)
Mormon-Indigenous Peoples Relations
Because Joseph Smith found the sacred golden plates in North America, the Mormons logically concluded that Indigenous Peoples of North America are descendants of the Lamanites from the remnant House of Israel.
This connection to God inspired Mormons to seek amiable relationships with Indigenous Peoples as they pushed deeper into the American West, believing that native inhabitants had simply forgotten their sacred connection to Israel. Mormon men and women were instructed to help return these lost souls to their forgotten religion by including them in trade, commerce, religious encounters, and community-building efforts.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government disliked the political power and religious momentum Brigham Young was gaining and frequently used military tactics to subdue this new thriving nation. Neither Mormons nor Indigenous Nations appreciated the U.S. government’s overreach (nor Mexico for that matter), so it was not uncommon for these groups to team up and fight their common enemy: the U.S Army.
Mormons in Wašiw Territory
With Salt Lake City established as kingdom headquarters, a party of Mormons exploring the western expanse of the Great Basin (crossing territories of the Shoshone, Bannock, Goshute, Numu [Northern Paiute] and Ute Nations) stopped short of the Sierra Nevada and built Mormon Station in 1851 in modern-day Genoa, Nevada.
2) The Comstock Lode, 1859
The second major thing that changed Tahoe’s history and the Wašiw way of life forever was the Comstock Lode. When two brothers Allan and Hosea Grosh from Pennsylvania unearthed silver and gold in 1857 near present-day Virginia City but died before realizing their wealth, a nearby prospector named Henry Comstock happily took over their claim.
By 1859, the Comstock Lode Silver Rush had ushered hundreds of prospectors back over the Sierra Nevada, flooding in from Sacramento, Placerville (then called Hangtown, eep!), and other picked-through gold towns. By the 1870s, nearly 25,000 people lived in Virginia City (current population floats around 800 residents).
Suddenly for the Wašiw people, a few Mormons running a trading post and raising cattle turned into thousands of squatters, gamblers, miners, and loggers who thought they could get rich quick. These foreigners operated under the presumption that they had rights to “unclaimed” land and quickly began building towns and fences, digging mines, overfishing, overgrazing, and clear-cutting the region’s forests.
Fictionalizing Lake Tahoe’s History
For a long time, I avoided writing about Mormons (or any religion) because I was trying to stay in my lane. It’s the same reason I avoided writing about the Wašiw people (general fear of appropriation, misrepresentation, and the idea that one novel cannot possibly achieve all storylines and do each community justice). But I’ve read so many historical novels that stay neatly in their lanes and end up only representing a fraction of the story.
I keep asking myself: Do I keep a narrow scope so I can finish this project? Or do I attempt to cover the full, complicated history of Lake Tahoe?
Anyone who knows me already knows: It’s not a proper Meghan story if it’s long and complicated!
So deeper I go… In the last year, I’ve added a new minor character to acknowledge the Mormon influence over the greater Tahoe region. I’m developing a Wašiw narrative to parallel the logging side of my novel (with the extremely generous help of members from the Wašiw Nation). And I intend to include some history about Chinese loggers in the region as well.
What started as a novel about trees, represented by one man running from his brother’s murder and finding refuge in a logging camp, has turned into multiple paralleling narratives that hopefully convey a more full, rich history of Lake Tahoe.
Happily, I’m feeling better about the choices I’m making as a writer. Finishing this novel may take longer than I thought, but I feel proud of the work I’m doing.
I truly cannot wait to share it with you!
I admire your diligence! Look forward to reading Undercut when the time is right, no matter how long it takes.
I love Mormon stories! Good add.