LAKE COUNTY HISTORY by GENE PALENO Archives

October 11, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 1: IN THE BEGINNING

Images Courtesy Lake County Museum and Lake County History Society By Gene Paleno When I decided to write Lake County History, a book that became a 450 page, three-pounder and more than a hundred stories, I had no idea what I was in for. Before I was finished I had more than my share of surprises. […]

October 18, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 2: THE COMING OF MAN

The last Ice Age, several thousand years ago, dropped the ocean and allowed the Bering Straights to become a land a thousand miles wide. From Asia they came; the First Americans. These men followed the herds across this desolate terrain to North America. They were a handsome race, varying from five and a half to […]

October 23, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 3: DISCOVERING CLEAR LAKE

‘Where the straits unite the three, Call that place Ko-no-tay-ee; Where the nets with fishes swell, Let that place be called Ka-bell.’ But the white men, prone to take, Called the waters all…Clear lake; They should be as they were then, Now and ever Ka-ba-tin. (Pomo poem) Ki-Ya, and Li-Bu, his friend, had traveled for […]

October 30, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 4: THE FIRST AMERICANS

The Native American tribes in Lake County are one of the oldest of all the Indians on the North American Continent. Fourteen thousand years ago glaciers covered much of the Northern hemisphere. The Pacific Ocean had receded hundreds of feet. The drop in the waters exposed, not only the Bering Straits, but an area as […]

November 6, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 5: LEGENDS AND WONDERS

They knew many things. They could tell the year’s beginning and ending by watching the sun rise exactly in line with two objects, even miles apart. The spilt milk of stars that stretched across the firmament, the Milky Way, were the tracks of the bears as they walked across the sky. An eclipse, which took […]

November 13, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 6: THE SALT JOURNEY–PREPARATIONS

By 1800, no longer could they trade for salt. The numbers of the tribes, with which they might trade. had grown less. Their ranks were thinner from disease and genocide. They were forced to find their salt on the seacoast. Koo-Noo, and his friend, Kai-Tai, made ready. This was the day for their four-day-journey to […]

November 20, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 7: THREE DAYS

Preparing for their journey to the sea for salt, the two men gathered weapons and tools. Kai-Tai, a good hunter, collected straight sticks from wild current bushes. He scraped the wood to the right thickness and lay them in the sun to dry. When they were dry, he gathered them into two piles; one of […]

November 27, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 8: THE WARRIORS REACH THE SEA

Preparing for their journey to the sea for salt, the two Pomos gathered weapons and tools. Kai-Tai, a good hunter, collected straight sticks from wild current bushes. He scraped the wood to the right thickness and lay them in the sun to dry. When they were dry, he gathered them into two piles; one of […]

December 5, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 9: MAKING FIRE

The two Pomos were well on their way to the sea for salt when Kai-Tai saw the deer. He raised his hand for silence and lifted his bow to fire. From habit of long use, he reached into the beaver skin quiver at his side for an arrow. Fitting the shaft on the string, he […]

December 12, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 10: THE MOUNTAINS DANCE

Several thousand years ago, a tribe of native Americans worked at constructing a lodge at their home near the shores of Blue Lake, a part of what would be, one day, Lake County… With a grunt of gratification, Bear Killer drove the last wall pole of the lodge into the ground. The framework was finished. […]

December 19, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 11: THE HOLLOW MOUNTAIN

‘When the Red Men first here came They asked the Spirit for a name: Came the answer Kabatin. Where the mountains touch the sky, Let the name be Konocti.’ Pomo Legend The First Americans struggled to keep their footing as the land beneath Lake County shifted. They felt the powerful tremors and the sudden movement […]

December 26, 2018 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 12: A MYSTERY

For any action, there is a reaction. Newton’s First Law of Motion is responsible for the unbreakable umbilical cord that keeps the Mountain and the Lake forever bonded in eternal intimacy. So it was with the mountain and the earthquakes that followed. Each time the earth rose and bucked, the land that was the Clear […]

January 2, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 13: THE UNDERGROUND RIVER

Something is going on inside Konocti. A third story comes from a feature article published in the magazine of the California Academy of Science by the writer, Juliane Poirier Locke: ‘…Inside Mt. Konocti’s cooled magma chambers the world’s largest cavern and tallest volcanic shaft may await discovery…’ ‘In the 1990’s curious scientists dived and descended […]

January 9, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 14: AN ANSWER TO THE PUZZLE

Maybe the answer to Konocti’s puzzle is an underground river. At Buckingham Bluffs, the ‘River from Nowhere,’ inside Konocti, may run alongside an Earth Slip, a slip that exists below the bluffs. Perhaps the volcano is air-conditioned. Some of the vents, or chimneys, where hot lava escaped at a time in the past, may be […]

January 15, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 15: BLOWUP COMING?

Will we have another Blowup? In 1980, Lehrman, an expert on on-site volcanic studies, made an unusual and frightening statement. “Lake County is due for another eruption through one of the Hot Spots underneath the ground. The cycles come every two or three thousand years. The next one is overdue.” Lehrman’s statement has been confirmed […]

January 30, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 17: MEXICO TAKES CHARGE

In 1821 Mexico declared their independence from Spain. Almost immediately they claimed dominion over California, but news of the Mexican domination traveled slowly. Nobody in California heard about Mexico’s Independence for nearly a year. When the news finally arrived, the Spanish occupants of California changed their fealty to Mexico like a cannon shot. Pablo Sola, […]

January 24, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 16: THE CALIFORNIOS

After thousands of years of general peace and stability for the Native Americans of California and Lake County, there was a sudden, violent change; the Europeans came. A third of a million Indians were reduced, in little more than a single lifetime, to twenty thousand. Fourteen out of fifteen Native Americans in Northern California vanished […]

February 7, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 18: SON OF THE DEVIL

In 1833 a change was in the wind. The Missions continued to be independent of the new Mexican Government. The church had acquired enormous power over the natives and the Missions still owned most of the land in California. There had to be change. The trigger event of the change was caused by a bad […]

February 14, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 19: PRELUDE TO MASSACRE

In April of 1840, some of Vallejo’s Indian guards sent press-gangs to the Pomo tribes to force the Indians into military service. The arrangement was not exactly what the Indians had meant when peace had been declared earlier. They had agreed not to fight the Mexicans. They did not mean they were willing to fight […]

February 21, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 20: A PLACE OF DEATH

Mariano Vallejo sent troops to the tribes to force the Indians to harvest his crops around his rancho south of Clear Lake. After a journey of five days, the expedition came to Clear Lake and, to help him know something of the tribes, Salvador brought an Indian guide, Chief Camacho. Camacho knew the area. They […]

February 28, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 21: THE TEMESCAL MASSACRE

Unsuccessful in recruiting Indians from the other tribes along Clear Lake’s shore, Mariano Vallejo returned to Rattlesnake Island. This time, using his interpreter, Chief Camacho, he tried again to persuade the Chief to come to the shore. The Chief was willing to talk, but his people refused. Camacho was ordered to try again. This time […]

March 7, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 22: THE INDIAN WARS

After the Temescal Massacre, the Sonoma executions, and the ruthless round-up of Indians for labor as slaves, it is a wonder the tribes waited as long as they did to fight the White man. Partly, it was because the White men cleverly played one tribe against another and, partly, because the tribes, knowing the Mexicans […]

March 14, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 23: CHIEF SOLANO

Salvador Vallejo, Mariano’s younger brother, became General Mariano Vallejo’s right-hand man. In the fall of 1835, Mariano decided to go to war again against the Yolo County Native Americans. Salvador, Second-in-Command to his brother, headed up a battle force made up of twenty-two white American mercenaries and several dozen friendly Native auxiliaries. The natives, under […]

March 21, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 24: THE BEAR FLAG REVOLT

War with Mexico was coming. By 1836, the conflict exploded when the United States Government annexed Texas. Mexico prepared. In California, the Mexican government, with its new-found independence from Spain and watching the Americans getting ready for war, was suspicious of strangers. Sonoma was recognized as the unofficial capitol of the state and the center […]

March 24, 2019 | By Gene Paleno

LAKE COUNTY HISTORY CHAPTER 25: WAR WITH MEXICO

As early as the late 1830’s, for most Americans the idea of a war with Mexico was appealing. A war promised that settlers in California and Texas would be rid of Mexican domination once and for all. Most of all, for those in Washington, this was the chance to expand US territory on the North […]