Who lived at Musick for 1,000s of yrs?

[Joel Pomerantz]

At the annual meeting during the Father’s Day campout, I gave a spontaneous presentation about how the people who lived for thousands of years at Musick Creek fit in the bigger picture. It was well received, so I thought maybe the entire email list would be interested.

Some of the people in our western Sierra community and our Musick Creek community are Mono. They are from a long line of indigenous people who lived in and with the land until the past couple hundred years of violence and disease were brought by European “settlers.” The word is pronounced with two long ‘o’ sounds: moh-noh. It is the very same word that applies to the large, famous lake in the eastern Sierra area. The one that had a decent-sized earthquake last week that could be felt at Musick Creek!

This identical name is no mere coincidence. And as a geographer, I get excited by the landscape aspects of this connection. Between the two locations, there is a unique passage allowing travel where east-west routes are usually blocked by permanent snowfields elsewhere in the Sierra.

The Mono people who lived at Musick Creek, and now are concentrated in the areas at North Fork and Auberry, are directly connected to the Mono Lake cultures. The languages, traditions and lineages go directly to the Ute and Paiute (as in Utah) group, rather than being closely connected with other western Sierra cultures. This is remarkable because it’s the only significant example of an indigenous culture that prehistorically spanned across the tall Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Musick Creek flows into the San Joaquin River along one of the remotest stretches of the San Joaquin, at Jose Basin. The San Joaquin valley is split. The southern three-quarters of California’s vast “Central Valley” is known as the San Joaquin Valley, but the other portion—the uplands and mountainous portion of the San Joaquin—are where the Mono lived and traveled.

The upper river cuts thorough the Sierra’s high peaks in a way that forms a snow-free passage almost every summer across from east to west. Because of this unique guaranteed access between and among the 14,000-foot peaks, population expansion and trade routes made use of it.

The Yakuts and other western Sierra cultures generally got their obsidian tool raw materials from Northern California. Bottle Rock Road near Cobb Mountain, for example, is named for its glass outcrops, i.e. obsidian. The Mono’s obsidian was from the glass mountain just south of Mono Lake.

I cut my finger on that mountain once. Literally. I was standing at the base and touched a boulder that had tumbled off the steep, glassy, unvegetated slope. Ow.

Rough blanks were made by basic shaping techniques so that only the necessary rock had to be carried. Sharp edge and point-making was saved for the end of the journey because points break off so easily in transit. Obsidian pattern varies enough to easily distinguish between sources, so we know they came from Mono Lake (google 37.8966713,-119.0411582).

When blanks reached Musick Creek as imports, the final shaping, called napping, was done, traditionally by men, in the tributary valley just west of our switchback road to Azalea Camp.

Another important import (of many) from Mono Lake westward was a food source that travels particularly well: fly larvae. Brine flies from Mono Lake are still collected by Mono people, dried and processed into a granular yellow food that is highly nutritious, light and doesn’t readily spoil, thus is easy to take on the trail. It’s this food that gave the Mono people their nickname, which holds as their official name to this day.

Mono comes from Monache which means “fly-eater.” To the eastern Sierra people, such as the Yokut and Sierra Miwok, eating brine fly larvae was odd enough that the people were named for their diet. Thus the people who came through the high passes, with their unusual food, language and culture, were indicated as “other” by the names Mono and Monache.

Evidence of Mono encampments, trading sites and travel have been found throughout the upper San Joaquin.

THANKS for reading and for your continued interest.

If you wish to send another gift to support our work, please use one of the methods below! (in the PS)

Joel
415-505-8255 (or reply to this email to reach me)

P.S. about funds:

We now have negative $3600. That is to say, we are $6000 behind in the May 15 payment due on loan and have $2400 banked. We did already pay a full year’s insurance and property taxes. We’ll have to come up with $3600 plus whatever we want to spend on roads, etc. Then more to pay off the remaining $95.6k in loans taken for property purchase.

Here are various ways to donate.

Zelle ➪ use 415-505-8255
Venmo (specify 'for Musick') ➪ use @JoelPomerantz
Check to Musick Creek Confluence, PO Box 170191, SF, CA 94117
PayPal or credit card (specify 'for Musick') ➪ use doa...@icloud.com
GoFundMe ➪ http://crowdrise.com/musick-creek

The lower down they are on the list, the more percentage is taken out for the transfer fees. The top two are zero and the third is too, but requires a stamp! PayPal also can be free if done as a friend transfer. To put PayPal on a credit card without having a PayPal account, look carefully for the option to skip past the account creation.

If you want to set up a monthly donation, you can use the GoFundMe link or any transfer system from your bank account’s website. Let me know if you need our bank’s routing number and our account number to set that up (some do).

[Joel Pomerantz]

CORRECTION! The second time I used “eastern,” I meant western. This paragraph:

Mono comes from Monache which means “fly-eater.” To most western Sierra people, such as the Yokut and Sierra Miwok, eating brine fly larvae was odd enough that the people were named for their diet. Thus the people who came through the high passes, with their unusual food, language and culture, were indicated as “other” by the names Mono and Monache.

SORRY!
Joel

> At the annual meeting during the Father’s Day campout, I gave a spontaneous presentation about how the people who lived for thousands of years at Musick Creek fit in the bigger picture. It was well received, so I thought maybe the entire email list would be interested.
>
> Some of the people in our western Sierra community and our Musick Creek community are Mono. They are from a long line of indigenous people who lived in and with the land until the past couple hundred years of violence and disease were brought by European “settlers.” The word is pronounced with two long ‘o’ sounds: moh-noh. It is the very same word that applies to the large, famous lake in the eastern Sierra area. The one that had a decent-sized earthquake last week that could be felt at Musick Creek!
>
> This identical name is no mere coincidence. And as a geographer, I get excited by the landscape aspects of this connection. Between the two locations, there is a unique passage allowing travel where east-west routes are usually blocked by permanent snowfields elsewhere in the Sierra.
>
> The Mono people who lived at Musick Creek, and now are concentrated in the areas at North Fork and Auberry, are directly connected to the Mono Lake cultures. The languages, traditions and lineages go directly to the Ute and Paiute (as in Utah) group, rather than being closely connected with other western Sierra cultures. This is remarkable because it’s the only significant example of an indigenous culture that prehistorically spanned across the tall Sierra Nevada mountain range.
>
> Musick Creek flows into the San Joaquin River along one of the remotest stretches of the San Joaquin, at Jose Basin. The San Joaquin valley is split. The southern three-quarters of California’s vast “Central Valley” is known as the San Joaquin Valley, but the other portion—the uplands and mountainous portion of the San Joaquin—are where the Mono lived and traveled.
>
> The upper river cuts thorough the Sierra’s high peaks in a way that forms a snow-free passage almost every summer across from east to west. Because of this unique guaranteed access between and among the 14,000-foot peaks, population expansion and trade routes made use of it.
>
> The Yakuts and other western Sierra cultures generally got their obsidian tool raw materials from Northern California. Bottle Rock Road near Cobb Mountain, for example, is named for its glass outcrops, i.e. obsidian. The Mono’s obsidian was from the glass mountain just south of Mono Lake.
>
> I cut my finger on that mountain once. Literally. I was standing at the base and touched a boulder that had tumbled off the steep, glassy, unvegetated slope. Ow.
>
> Rough blanks were made by basic shaping techniques so that only the necessary rock had to be carried. Sharp edge and point-making was saved for the end of the journey because points break off so easily in transit. Obsidian pattern varies enough to easily distinguish between sources, so we know they came from Mono Lake (google 37.8966713,-119.0411582).
>
> When blanks reached Musick Creek as imports, the final shaping, called napping, was done, traditionally by men, in the tributary valley just west of our switchback road to Azalea Camp.
>
> Another important import (of many) from Mono Lake westward was a food source that travels particularly well: fly larvae. Brine flies from Mono Lake are still collected by Mono people, dried and processed into a granular yellow food that is highly nutritious, light and doesn’t readily spoil, thus is easy to take on the trail. It’s this food that gave the Mono people their nickname, which holds as their official name to this day.
>

> Mono comes from Monache which means “fly-eater.” To most western Sierra people, such as the Yokut and Sierra Miwok, eating brine fly larvae was odd enough that the people were named for their diet. Thus the people who came through the high passes, with their unusual food, language and culture, were indicated as “other” by the names Mono and Monache.