Tolowa Creation

In fourth grade our class was introduced to the history of California. I wasn’t as interested in the state’s history as much as I was the local history of the northern most part of the state.

Fortunately I grew up when there were still enough tribal elders around and willing to share their people’s history. Most of these men and women are gone now, as we all will one day be, but I have managed to recollect their memories.

Luckily I have lived into the computer age, the age of the internet and have been able redress my errors by researching my facts and discovering more history than I knew was available.

According to the Tolowa the land had been settled when the world was created. Just south of the mouth of the Smith River, Yontucket marks the creation point — similar to the way that the Bible celebrates the Garden of Eden as the start of life of earth.

Tolowa elders disagree with theories that their people walked over — or descended from those who walked over, land that once stretched across the Bering Strait between Asia and North America. They believe the creator made people, after the sun, water, earth, animals and the Redwood trees, which marked the center of the earth.

The Tolowa would come to occupy lands from Wilson Creek to Six Rivers and north into the region that would become the Applegate area of Oregon, near Grants Pass. They also would be called Chetco and Tututni.