TAHOEOf course Indian names are more fitting than any others for our beautiful
lakes and rivers, which knew their race ages ago, perhaps, in the morning
of creation, but let us have none so repulsive to the ear as "Tahoe"
for the beautiful relic of fairy-land forgotten and left asleep in the
snowy Sierras when the little elves fled from their ancient haunts and
quitted the earth. They say it means "Fallen Leaf"--well suppose
it meant fallen devil or fallen angel, would that render its hideous,
discordant syllables more en durable? Not if I know myself. I yearn for
the scalp of the soft-shell crab--be he injun or white man--who conceived
of that spoony, slobbering, summer-complaint of a name. Why, if I had
a grudge against a half-price nigger, I wouldn't be mean enough to call
him by such an epithet as that; then, how am I to hear it applied to the
enchanted mirror that the viewless spirits of the air make their toilets
by, and hold my peace? "Tahoe"--it sounds as weak as soup for
a sick infant. |
Map
of Nevada in 1860s from the |
Bigler is the legitimate name of the Lake, and it will be retained until some
name less flat, insipid and spooney than "Tahoe" is invented for it.
I am sorry, myself, that it was not called in the first place by some cognomen
that could be persuaded to rhyme with something, because, you see, every sentimental
cuss who goes up there and becomes pregnant with a poem invariably miscarries
because of the unfortunate difficulty I have just mentioned. I speak of the
matter lightly, but it is not a frivolous one, for all that. A very beautiful
thing was once written by a distinguished English poet about our royal river
at home, but the loveliness was all mashed out of it by the stress of weather
to which he was obliged to succumb in order to gouge a rhyme out of its name.
He had called it "Mississip!"!
- News report to Virginia City Territorial Enterprise
written February 12, 1864
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