It was in February of that year that John Charles Fremont first spotted the water and called it "mountain lake" on his map of the area. Another member of the same expedition, Charles Preuss, created his own map and called the water "Lake Bonpland" in honor of a French botanist. Much later, as the reader will see, it was "Lake Bigler."

Fremont and Preuss are the two men considered to be the first white men to have seen the lake, and they each gave it a different name. It is time now for the real story of the naming of Lake Tahoe, famous the world over, to be told.

Background
Readers of LOST LEGEND #1 know that forces of nature formed the huge, barren, lake basin long ago. Readers also know the lake was filled with crystal clear water through the efforts of Chief Hum Qua and his people using as a channel what is today called Emerald Bay. Once the big lake was filled, Hum crossed it in his canoe and reached his beloved, Noe, on the low saddle in the Carson Range now identified as Spooner Summit (on Highway 50).

Hum and Noe were soon married beside the big lake and this inaugural, mountain event was the starting point for the gradual merging of two peoples--Noe Hoe's from east of the Carson Range and Hum Qua's from west of the Sierra Nevada Range. The combination led to generations of peace among these first Sierra Nevada mountain people, and many of the descendants of Hum and Noe made important contributions to the opening of the west during the last two hundred years. But these contributions are part of a later legend.

Twins
In the summer of the year after Hum and Noe were married, Noe had fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. The new parents and their many attendants were beside the big lake at the time of the births. After much deliberation and consultation with Qua elders, Hum and Noe decided what to call the children. The girl was named Ta Qua, after Chief Hum's grandmother. The little boy was named Hoe Qua, after Noe's people. (She had been Noe Hoe.)

In the summer months that followed, there was a continuing ripple of joy among both the Qua and the Hoe peoples. They traveled back and forth, east and west, on foot and across the big lake in canoes. They were welcomed wherever any of them went. In time, the Hoe-Quas would populate all the land known today as Northern California and Northern Nevada.

Around a campfire one night that summer, the elders of the two peoples talked about the giant, clear lake, or the "big water" as it was also known. Different members had different terms or names for the shimmering body with a thousand moods. Some called it "Tahve," which meant snow. Some called it "Ta hon," which meant sea or lake. One small group called the lake "Da ow a gu," which implied the edge of the lake. And another member reported hearing the term, "Tula Tulia," used. Everyone agreed with Chief Hum that it was all a bit confusing and quite unworthy of such a special place.

Eagle Returns
That moonlit night eagle returned to Hum in a dream. It descended from a dark sky in a gentle glide and perched on Hum's shoulder as he walked softly on a white sand beach. The beach, awash in moonlight, ran out to a point-possibly today's Sugar Pine Point. Hum sat down on a large boulder and stared at the moon dust twinkling atop the lake. He listened hard. The eagle did not speak to Hum in this dream, but Hum could hear faint sounds that seem to come from all directions at once; they gradually increase in intensity: "Ta..... Ta..... Ta.....hoe; Ta...hoe; Ta..hoe; Tahoe." The words had lyrical quality about them. Then the eagle was gone.


After sunrise the next morning, Hum gathered the elders together and told them of his dream. They pondered the meaning, discussed possibilities, and finally concluded that the content of the dream was a positive omen. The coincidence of the naming of the twins--Ta and Hoe, the need for a proper name for the big water, and the eagle's visit added up to a sign the council couldn't ignore. At sundown that day they gathered on the white sand and conducted a solemn ceremony in which they decreed that, henceforth, the lake of the sky would be called "Tahoe," Lake Tahoe.

Many Years Pass
From that sundown forward, the Quas (as the merged peoples were eventually all called) reverently referred to the big lake as Lake Tahoe. From one generation to the next they orally passed along the story of how the lake was formed, filled, and named; it was a central tenet of what they believed as a people. All of their knowledge, including the important role of eagle, was transferred in story form as the Quas did not write or create picture records of their experiences.

In the intervening years between the original naming of Lake Tahoe and recent times, the Quas spread out geographically; they lived in villages from the mountains to the shining sea in the west that had funny-tasting water. Some even visited and stayed in other parts of the world. Space does not permit the cataloging of all the important events in which the Quas participated, so only a few directly related to the naming of Lake Tahoe will be chronicled here, right up to the day in 1945 when Lake Tahoe was officially (and finally) adopted by the State of California as the name of the special place high in the Sierra.

Here are two events the reader may recognize. What is unknown about these events is the precise part that Lake Tahoe and/or the Quas played in the events. Due to incomplete records in many cases, the exact nature of the interchange is, in places, speculative. But the mountain spirit pervades them all.

• Francis Drake was an English privateer, navigator, naval explorer, and, to many, a pirate. In 1577, Drake was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I to check out the Pacific coast of North America. He sailed his ship, the Golden Hind, around the bottom of South America and northward and is reputed to have eventually made landfall in today's Marin County, north of the Golden Gate Bridge. He called the land New Albion (New England) claimed it all for the Queen. Some of the people who met him on the coast were Quas, and his diaries imply that he was told about the big lake in the sky. A half dozen of the Quas sailed on around the world with Drake as he became the second person (after Magellan) to circumnavigate the globe. He was knighted Sir Francis Drake for his feat. Then, at least two Quas were with Drake when he co-led the English navy and destroyed the Spanish Armada in 1588.

After Drake's conquests, a "Sea of the West" began showing up on European maps of North America. This may have been the result of the Quas spreading the word on Tahoe. Note on the map below, published in 1780, that shows Drake's New Albion sitting on the Californian peninsula and the huge "Mer de L Quest" (Sea of the West).


• California became a state in 1850. Around that time a rescue party went into the Sierra from Hangtown (Placerville on today's highway 50) to assist stranded emigrants. One member of the party was John Bigler. He later became governor and through an ambiguous series of steps his name became attached to Lake Tahoe. See the map below, published in 1860.


Next, due to efforts by Qua descendants and others, a battle over the name of the lake began. The battle included the state of Nevada (where the beautiful Noe Hoe had been born). By 1863 a famous map (below) was published that included both names-"Tehoe or Bigler" (with Tahoe misspelled).


In February 1870, the California Legislature passed an act to legalize the name "Lake Bigler," but that did not quell the disagreement. The debate continued off and on until, in 1945, the Legislature made the name "Lake Tahoe" the official name. One part of the legislation did not pass, however. The city name "Sacramento" was not changed to "Sacquamento," as some would have had it.

Author's Note: Many thanks to Barbara Lekisch for the interesting and informative work in her 1988 book: "Tahoe Place Names" and to the Bancroft Library.

Copyright © 2009 Steven C. Brandt