The Ghosts of Lake Tahoe

by Patrick Betson

  Fort Boise, Idaho Territory

  August 31st 1878

  Postscripts

  1) Although not at the two battles of Pyramid Lake, Bob Haslam was wounded twice by the Paiutes. One flint arrow went through his jaw and knocked out three of his teeth.

  2) Born in London in 1840, Haslam died in Chicago in 1912. For a while Haslam joined Bill Cody with Sitting Bull in the travelling Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.

  3) It is believed Bill Cody (Buffalo Bill) rode for the Pony Express east of the Rockies at the age of fourteen. Despite its place in western folklore, the Pony Express lasted only eighteen months, from April 1860 to October 1861.

  4) The month of Captain Truckee’s death in 1860 is in dispute. Quite a few accounts suggest that he died in October. However, Sarah Winnemucca claimed that he died in April. Truckee was buried with his captain’s commission, written by Fremont, pinned to his chest.

  5) Chief Truckee believed that the white settlers were lost brothers and it was the duty of his tribe to reach out to the new settlers in brotherhood. Several local places bear the name of Truckee, including the only river that runs out of Lake Tahoe.

  6) Chief Numaga, who led the Paiutes at Pyramid Lake, was like Chief Truckee. He wanted to keep the peace, but he could not appease those warriors who wanted to fight.

  7) Virginia City is the county seat of Storey County named after the captain killed at the second battle. His grave can be seen in Virginia City’s Boot Hill Cemetery. For many years Carson City sat within Ormsby County, named after the major killed at the first battle.

  8) Nothing is more controversial than the meaning of the word Tahoe. Most will tell you it is a Washoe Indian word, but as to its meaning, you will hear a variety of explanations. The most believable is that it comes from the Washoe word for water’s edge “Da Ow A Ga.” The Indians would have understood the first two syllables. Had a lost white man shrugged his shoulders and said “Where is Da Ow?” or even had he said “Where is Ta Ho?” They would have pointed him toward the lake.

  2) Old Ben and the Flag over Sonoma

  (The End of an Era)

  Bears are still numerous in the Lake Tahoe Basin. You will see black, brown, cinnamon, and motley-colored bears throughout the area. These are all species of the black bear. A good size male may top three hundred and fifty pounds. They are usually timid and will in most cases run away when they see or smell a human. However, I have known them to be quite indifferent to humans, too. I have on occasion passed within just a few feet of some. Still, these are wild animals, and if you are out camping in the area, they will be emboldened by the chance of a free meal. So be respectful and make sure you leave no food about. Bears are often found near trash cans and inside unsecured dumpsters. On the rare chance one gets aggressive, you should back away slowly or make yourself appear bigger than you are by raising your hands above your head.

  Grizzlies will not be intimidated by your raising your hands. A Grizzly male can weigh more than a thousand pounds and can run faster than any human. Anything that challenges a grizzly will come off second best. Even men who have shot and seriously wounded a grizzly have not lived to tell the tale! A male grizzly standing on his hind legs can easily be twice as tall as a human. So, it is perhaps good news, at least for visitors to Lake Tahoe, that there are no grizzly bears left in the Sierra. They were here, but they were all hunted out of existence by the 1920s.

  Still, the memory of the grizzly in California is everywhere you go, because of what happened on a June morning in 1846. The United States had been at war with Mexico over the ownership of Texas for more than a month, but the Americans in California may not have known that in June. So it was with some initiative that thirty-three armed rough riders rode into the sleepy town of Sonoma just after dawn on June 14, 1846, under the leadership of William Ide. They pounded on the large door of the Mexican governor’s villa on Sonoma Plaza. If they were expecting a fight, they were sadly disappointed. They caught the governor in bed. Mariano Vallejo hurriedly got dressed in military uniform and welcomed his captors. He was sympathetic to their demands, charmed the would-be antagonists, and gave them his best wine from the cellar. The leaders of the bloodless coup were not only victorious but possibly drunk before the night was out!

  There was, however, a sense of anti-climax. What had they achieved? Despite being in control of the barracks and having removed the Mexican flag from the plaza, there was no physical evidence that anything of any consequence had taken place. This was supposed to be a new day. What was needed was a new emblem, a new flag. A flag bearing a crude likeness of a grizzly was drawn on a piece of brown muslin. In front of the bear was a red star, beneath the bear were the words “California Republic,” and at the base of the flag was a broad red stripe. From that moment on, the action taken in Sonoma on that June day would be known as the Bear Flag Revolt! The new flag was hoisted above the plaza on June 15.

  Major John Charles Fremont, who was on his second exploration west in 1846, had just reached California in early June. Although taking no part in the revolt it is believed that the action at Sonoma had Fremont’s blessing. Expanding the war in Texas to California was a natural step, and by July the United States had naval ships in the Pacific. On July 5 the Stars and Stripes was flying above the Mexican Customs House in Monterey. Roughly at the same time, the USS Portsmouth under the command of Captain Montgomery, sailed to Yerba Buena (San Francisco) and raised the Stars and Stripes in the plaza there, which later became known as Portsmouth Square.

  The only problem that bothered both Fremont and Montgomery was the flag at Sonoma. Those troubling words, “California Republic,” caused concern to all those that embraced the idea of Manifest Destiny (the belief that all land between the Atlantic and the Pacific was ordained by God to be part of a greater union.) An independent California was not to be tolerated. Captain Montgomery sent a small attachment of men from the USS Portsmouth, including his own son, with the sole purpose of replacing the rebel flag with the Stars and Stripes. So it was that, on July 9, the rebels at Sonoma watched passively as their Bear Flag was taken down and replaced by Old Glory. California was now an integral part of the greater war against Mexico. Besides Fremont, Commodore Robert Stockton and General Stephen Kearney would soon be leading the American cause in the west.

  For a while Mariano Vallejo was imprisoned at Sutter’s Fort near present-day Sacramento. John Sutter treated the ex-governor as a Californios (a native of California) rather than as a Mexican prisoner. Fremont was annoyed that Sutter, an American, should treat the prisoner with such civil hospitality. Still, Vallejo also considered himself a Californios and supported the takeover of California, preferring the Americans to the Russians, British, French, Spanish, and Mexicans.

  Four years after the Bear Flag Revolt, California became a state. At the state’s five-year anniversary, in 1855, the original flag that had flown over Sonoma nine years earlier was paraded through the streets of San Francisco. Proud to be part of the Union and no longer posing a threat of independence, everyone viewed the Bear Flag affectionately.

  Some fifty years later, the Bear Flag was adopted as the California State Flag. The flag was little altered except that the bear was redrawn to show the familiar gait of the grizzly with its hunched shoulder. By 1911 the flag was flying over all government buildings throughout the state. Even though the bear was redrawn the flag still bears the defiant words “California Republic.”

  Postscripts

  1) Some locals report seeing black bears of upwards of six hundred pounds and I believe one Alaskan grizzly weighed close to sixteen hundred pounds.

  2) The original Bear Flag was lost in the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. It was the Mexican governor Vallejo who remarked that the original drawing on the flag looked more like a pig than a bear.

  3) It was Charles Nahl’s drawing of the grizzly that was adopted as the bear you see on today’s state flag. The original bear on the Sonoma flag was drawn by William L. Todd a relative
of Mary Todd (who married Abraham Lincoln.)

  4) Vallejo went onto serve in the state legislature. The city of Vallejo, at the northern end of the San Francisco Bay, is named after him.

  5) Caught in a power struggle between Kearney and Stockton, Fremont was appointed California Military Governor by Stockton. The appointment was dismissed by Kearney, and Fremont was unjustly court-martialed by the army for insubordination. President Polk later rescinded all the charges. Fremont went on to become the first Republican Candidate to run for president in 1856, but lost to James Buchanan.

  6) Fremont was the first documented white explorer to view Lake Tahoe on Valentine’s Day, 1844.

  3) Mark Twain, the Duel between

  North and South and the prize of Virginia City.

  (The Immortal Faces Death)

  Except for the first three months of the Civil War, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) spent most of the war years in the west, the majority of that time he spent in Virginia City. At the start of the war he spent a brief two weeks in the Missouri Militia, but he and his men gave way when they heard that Union troops were searching for them.

  Like many, Twain was not always convinced what side he was on in the Civil War. In his early years he had never thought of slavery as wrong; it was just something he had grown up with. In later years, he would change his tune and consider it a blot on the nation’s character. He came out west in June or July of 1861, with his brother Orion. Orion Clemens was ten years older, and there was no mistaking what side the older brother had chosen. He had even campaigned for Lincoln’s presidency. It was not unexpected that Orion would be chosen for a political office, and so it was that Orion was offered the post of Secretary of State for the new Nevada Territory.

  The Territory of Nevada was created out of what was the western half of Utah Territory, on March 2, 1861. Up until then, Utah Territory had been governed by Brigham Young, the Mormon leader. It may be possible that Washington and the silver miners did not want the wealth of Virginia City falling into Mormon hands, so Washington D.C., hurriedly created the new Nevada Territory. The Mormon population of the local area was already in decline, due to Brigham Young calling all Mormons back from the outlying settlements, in 1857 to defend Salt Lake City against possible attack by federal troops. A lasting peace between Washington and the Mormons would not come until the building of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1868.

  Mark Twain recounts his journey out west and his adventures in the Tahoe area in his book Roughing It. He came under the premise that he was going to help his older brother and would call himself the Secretary’s secretary, but it was an unpaid job and Sam could not make a living in Carson City. Carson City became the administrative center for the new territory and, in 1864, would become the state capital. Young Sam, attracted by the possibility of making a fortune in mining, soon found himself looking for a claim. Eventually, he would end up in Virginia City and would write an article or two for the local newspapers. His brother Orion had once owned the Hannibal Western Union, and Sam may have written an occasional article for his brother’s paper.

  After a brief love affair with mining, young Sam was happier writing and he accepted a job as reporter for The Territorial Enterprise at twenty-five dollars a week. It was a princely sum of money for a man previously unpaid. It was as a reporter that Sam believed he had finally found his true vocation. Having earned his pilot’s license on the paddle steamers of the Mississippi, he adopted the pen-name Mark Twain. As a measurement, mark twain meant: “two fathoms deep” or “safe water for a paddle steamer to negotiate the river.” The idea that the news was safe in Mark Twain’s hands proved to be a misnomer.

  The truth may have only been distorted by Twain’s pen, but the health of Lake Tahoe was certainly not safe in his hands. During his time in Virginia City, Mark came to the lake a few times and he was beguiled by her. Giving expression to chosen words, he declared “that three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor and give him an appetite like an alligator.” He felt so exhilarated by the beauty, the air, and the clarity of the lake that he and his friend Johnny decided to build a cabin and make claim to some lake shore frontage. They got as far as cutting one log, before deciding to make a less substantial affair and build it out of branches. After some effort they decided that it didn’t necessarily have to be square. So they began a tepee made out of smaller branches and foliage. Having worked for an hour or two, Mark built a camp fire to make some coffee and went to fetch some lake water.

  He returned to see the manzanita on fire and their tepee collapsed into a blackened heap. He and his friend were transfixed, watching the fire spread from bush to bush, from bush to tree, from tree to tree. Blown by the breeze, it went up the slope to the ridge, along the ridge, up another slope and to another ridge. It went up and over several ridges, igniting everything as it went. It then spread to the neighboring canyon, a bright orange glow weaving its way steadily up the mountain. Eventually it disappeared over the mountain and out of sight. Exhausted by this marvelous spectacle, the two went to sleep on the beach four hours later.

  Bill Stewart, one of the two original state senators for Nevada, described Mark Twain as a scoundrel who would surely deserve a hanging someday. Stewart came to Virginia City at the time of the Indian Troubles in 1860. He became a much needed litigation lawyer for mining rights on the Com-stock. When silver veins ran horizontally for many feet underground, there were many disputes between adjacent mining companies over rights to mine the vein. Many disputes came to fist fights and strong-arm tactics. Stewart had many successes and became the lawyer of choice for many of the mining disputes. Stewart was fiercely pro-Union and highly delighted when Nevada became a new territory.

  A few short weeks after the birth of Nevada, the nation was at war with itself; the wealth of Virginia City had the possibility to turn the tide for either side. Certainly Washington did not want the wealth falling into the hands of the Confederacy, but Virginia City had its fair share of southern sympathizers. Opposing Stewart on one rights case was the infamous Judge David S. Terry, who had once been the Californian Chief Justice.

  “Texan Terry” had been an advocate for the extension of slavery in California. He had to escape from San Francisco in 1859 after he killed the popular Free Soil state senator David Broderick in a duel. It was Terry’s choice of weapons and he had selected a pair of hair-triggered pistols. Broderick, ignorant of the pistol’s sensitive action, discharged his weapon prematurely without ever aiming it. The many onlookers thought Terry would do the honorable thing and harmlessly fire his weapon into the air, but sadly he chose to put a bullet through the senator’s left lung.

  Stewart and the Union had a few other opponents on the Comstock. A local chapter of the mysterious but pro-southern Knights of the Golden Circle was formed in Virginia City by a Doctor Selden McMeans, and it claimed a membership of more than two hundred by the spring of 1861. McMeans boasted that he intended to attack Fort Churchill with a hundred men and capture it for the Confederacy. It proved to be an idle threat and McMeans was soon to find out that Fort Churchill’s commanding officer was not one to be taken lightly.

  There was also Virginia City’s prosecuting attorney, Patrick Henry Clayton, a sworn secessionist. Still, Stewart had many supporters too, not least of which were the men of the Virginia City fire station, who, like Bill Stewart, were all from New York.

  After the southern victory at Bull Run, members of the Golden Circle hoisted the confederate flag above Newman’s saloon on Virginia City’s A Street. On hearing the news of Bull Run, the firefighters spilled onto the streets and started fighting with any southern sympathizers they found. Fort Churchill, on the Carson River a few miles south-east of Virginia City, had been built a year earlier as a direct result of the Paiute Indian War. The commanding officer, Captain Joseph Stewart (no relation to Bill Stewart) was at Alcatraz at the time of the first battle of Pyramid Lake. It had been his idea to turn the island of Al
catraz into a military prison. He now wanted to turn Fort Churchill into a prison for southern sympathizers. On hearing of the confederate flag raised in Virginia City, Captain Stewart led an attachment of soldiers to take it down. It was already down by the time he arrived.

  The southern sympathizers were badly outnumbered on the Comstock. Judge Terry was never well liked, although it was said Bill Stewart had a grudging respect for him. Terry abandoned the struggle to win the silver wealth for the South and went back to Texas to form his own regiment. The likes of McMeans and Clayton were overshadowed. Bill Stewart became a civic leader, and through his influence Carson City, not Virginia City, became the State Capitol. A lot of the wealth of the Comstock went to help the North, and a grateful Abraham Lincoln rewarded the territory by proposing that Nevada become a state.

  On October 31st 1864, before the end of the Civil War and three and a half short years after it became a territory, Nevada became the thirty-sixth state to join the Union. Even the onetime Missouri Militia man started to wax lyrical about the Union. So much so that Mark Twain became the driving force behind the writing of General Grant’s memoirs and personally sponsored their publication in 1885. General Grant died thirteen days after he had dictated the last page to Mark Twain.

  Postscripts

  1) Mark Twain went travelling to the Holy Land and had the idea to write a book (his first book) of his experiences. It was called “Innocents Abroad”, and was published in 1869. He wrote most of the book while as a guest at Bill Stewart’s residence in Washington, D.C