Historical society hosts Washoe woman

"I was born on the north side of the river in Woodfords," Dinah Pete informed members of the Alpine County Historical Society at their potluck dinner and meeting at Turtle Rock Park on Feb. 15.

"My mother delivered me herself, and then left me in my grandmother's care while she went to work on the other side of the river," Pete said as members gasped collectively.

That's taking work ethics to the extreme, by working the same day as giving birth.

Pete said she regrets having dropped out of Douglas High School during her senior year and now encourages her 28 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren to complete their education.

In that same spirit of education, she agreed to shed some light on Washoe cultural traditions upon being asked by historical society President Gary Coyan.

"I warned my nephew to be careful about what he might say, because some of these people here tonight know Washoe words," she said.

"My mother used to say, 'Huk-A-Des' or 'don't say that' (because you eat your own words)."

In her informal description of times past, she remembered that Stu Merrill's father, Grant Merrill, "often danced our traditional dances with us."

The elders used to hold dances before gathering pine nuts, but now they just go and gather pine nuts, though Pete says that it is her custom to pray before the harvest still.

Pete brought a film, produced by the University of Nevada, showing the ways of the past as demonstrated by Theresa and JoAnn Smokey.

Washoe people believe that animals have occupations, and the job assigned to birds is planting more piñon pines with their sharp beaks.

The tribe gathered at Double Spring for the harvest and danced from dawn to dusk for four days. They used large, conical burden baskets to collect the cones that were removed from the trees with long, hooked sticks.

They knocked the nuts from the cones by holding the cone in one hand while hitting it with a pine branch with the other.

The first roast was accomplished by adding hot coals to the nuts in the winnowing basket and shaking the basket to keep it from burning.

The original coals were carefully picked out, and fresh, hot charcoal was added for the second roast.

After pounding the nuts with a rock, shells and nuts were separated by tossing them in a winnowing basket and subsequently, the pine nuts were ground finely for pine nut soup by mano and metate, oval rock and stone basin.

After the film was shown, Pete said that now she uses a screen to roast the pine nuts and a meat grinder to reduce the nuts to a powder for the soup. Water is added, and the soup is heated, but since the pine nuts were previously roasted, the soup doesn't need more cooking,

Pete explained that the Washoe also like to eat acorn biscuits with their pine nut soup.

They get acorns from the area near Jackson and leach the bitterness out of them with sand, grinding them to powder and allowing the ice-cold river water to gel the powder.

Also, they used to eat young cattails for greens, and they dried chokecherries, elderberries, currants and gooseberries and then ground them as sweet additions for foods.

Long-haired Wanda Coyan asked Pete how to remove piñon pitch from hair and skin.

"That's why we wear scarves on our heads, and we used to rub sand and grease to get rid of pitch on our skin, but now we use baby oil," she said.

-- Karen Robinson and I are in charge of collecting raffle prizes for the big emergency responders dinner scheduled for June 23 at Turtle Rock Park.

Since I'll be on vacation in March, please phone Karen Robinson, (530) 694-2307, with your donations for raffle prizes.

-- While I'm in Italy, a group of guest writers will be taking turns to give their sketches of life here in Alpine County.

-- Gina Gigli is a Markleeville

resident. Reach her at

gina@villagigli.com