A very nice look at the valley from an Indian woman whose family had a history with the valley for over 150 years.
An excerpt.
Sierra Heritage Magazine
Auburn, California 2006
Hetch Hetchy: God's work or engineering masterpiece?
By Bob Holton
In Tuolumne County, where scenic wonders and man-made lakes abound, one of the most awesome examples of nature’s art is (or was) the completely inaccessible Hetch Hetchy Valley.
Approximately 12 miles northwest of Yosemite Village as the crow flies, 50 miles by car, this lonely spot is seldom visited by tourists. If you plan a trip there, forget seeing its Yosemite-like valley. Hetch Hetchy has been submerged in nearly 200’ of Bay Area drinking water and fraught with controversy for almost a century.
A brief look at Hetch Hetchy’s past must begin with Julia Parker, a 77-year-old Me-Wuk Indian. The Parker family dates back in Yosemite and the immediate vicinity over a century and a half. She and her husband, Ralph, remember stories of old Hatchatchie passed down by several generations of ancestors. Hatchatchie, later changed to Hetch Hetchy, is Native American for an edible seed-bearing plant that flourished in the valley prior to the coming of the great reservoir and dam.
I caught up with Julia at the Indian Cultural Museum in Yosemite National Park. She was seated on the floor, weaving a basket. As skilled at multi-tasking as she is at basket making, she never stopped weaving, stringing beads and whittling throughout our entire conversation.
“Yes,” she began, “all these valleys were beautiful before non-Indian men arrived.”
Speaking softly in perfect English, she explained how she prefers to use the term “non-Indian” rather than “white man.” Julia is amazingly sharp-witted, has a healthy mop of flaxen hair, a broad grin and dresses spotlessly in bright-colored clothes of her Native American heritage.
“Hetch Hetchy was a very special place to live,” she continued. “People resided there and in the other valleys for 6,000 years. There were many oak trees in Hetch Hetchy and lots of willows for making baskets. There was also plenty of food, animals, acorns, and, of course, the fish.”
“People used the valley. For example, it had lots of soap bulb plants important for making baskets and brushes — brushes for your hair, brushes for your acorns, brushes for sweeping rocks.” She motioned with a gesture of her foot toward a soap bulb basket that lay next to where she sat. “My husband remembers his grandmother telling about the family going to Hetch Hetchy many times before anyone talked about a dam being built. They went down there to camp, but never lived there.”
“They probably were on trading routes and meeting other Indian people. It was a trading route for the Paiutes coming from the east side. Probably the Tuolumne Indians, Me-Wuks, came in from the Sonora way too.”
Picking up a small pocketknife, she began whittling on a piece of reed. There was a long silence before she continued. Finally she said, “Hetch Hetchy has a lot of pounding rocks and writings on the wall. Remember that real dry year we had? The water level dropped and you could see the pounding rocks.”
Then I asked her about the reservoir. Her smile faded as she gazed up from the half-finished basket in her lap and answered, “Well, I’m just like everyone else. I would have liked to see it stay the old way. Why did they have to choose that valley for their water? Weren’t there other drainage areas? Why did they pick a historic Indian site?”
