The vicissitudes of the naming of Lake Tahoe is of sufficient interest
to occupy a whole chapter, to which the reader is referred.




CHAPTER III

THE INDIANS OF LAKE TAHOE


Since Lake Tahoe was the natural habitat of one of the most
deliciously edible fishes found in the world, the Indians of the
region were bound, very early in their history here, to settle upon
its shores. These were the Paiutis and the Washoes. The former,
however, ranging further east in Nevada, were always regarded as
interlopers by the latter if they came too near to the Lake, and there
are legends current of several great struggles in which many lives
were lost, where the Washoes battled with the Paiutis to keep them
from this favored locality.

Prior to the coming of the emigrant bands in the early 'forties of the
last century, the only white men the Indians ever saw were occasional
trappers who wandered into the new and strange land. Then, the
beautiful Indian name, soft and limpid as an Indian maiden's eyes, was
_Wasiu_--not the harsh, Anglicized, _Washoe_. Their range
seemed to be from Washoe and Carson valleys on the east in winter, up
to Tahoe and over the Sierras for fishing and hunting in the summer.
They never ventured far westward, as the Monos and other mountain