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Clarence King was a remarkable man who was, perhaps, sometimes
confused. Either that, or his thought processes differed somewhat from those of his contemporaries and he was actually a man who was far ahead of his time. He was a great scientist and explorer and his name is prominent upon every California map; a man much appreciated and admired by the scientific community of his time. Yet in his life he also walked another path much different from the one he let the public see. For much of his existence he lived a Secret Life, and when he passed away on Christmas Eve at the dawn of a new century, he did so with neither an explanation nor an apology for his masquerade. King was a light skinned man of European descent. He had blond hair and blue eyes. Yet despite these obvious physical characteristics he decided to spend a large portion of his life passing as a Negro, and he did so quite successfully. He made up a fake name and used it to forge a secret life; with that alter ego he told a former slave that he, too, was a Negro in order to help convince her to marry him; he fabricated a marriage ceremony which was not quite totally legal, and then fabricated an imaginary profession of working for the railroad. Then he disappeared from his wife and children for long absences under the guise of following that non-existent profession. In California, and particularly in the Sierra Nevada, Clarence King is now remembered as an eminent geologist whose name is attached to one of the state’s highest mountains in Kings Canyon National Park. Born in the year 1842, Clarence King lived through an unsteady childhood after his father passed away when he was just six years old. In 1860 he entered Yale and began his study of chemistry, physics, and geology. By 1862 he’d settled on geology as his primary area of interest and soon obtained his degree. In 1863 he made his first trip to California and joined Josiah Whitney and William Brewer as an unpaid yet enthusiastic member of the California Geological Survey. The following year, as a part of that expedition, he was the first known person to ascend all the way to the very top of a high Eastern Sierra peak which he christened Mount Tyndall, in honor of one of his personal heroes - John Tyndall, an early explorer of the Alps. From its peak King glimpsed an even higher mountain which was known as Mount Whitney, and he resolved to eventually climb it as well. In 1867 he became a member of the prestigious Fortieth Parallel Survey, and a few years later wrote his famous book, ‘Mountaineering In the Sierra Nevada’. In 1871 King finally decided to keep that promise he had made to himself about climbing Mount Whitney, and in June he set out from Owens Valley to do so. He chronicled every step of his ascent in vivid detail and wrote eloquently about finally standing on the top of Mount Whitney and looking across at Mount Tyndall. And for the next two years King basked in the self-imposed glory of considering himself to be the first white man to climb Mount Whitney. But he had gotten it all wrong; the professional geologist who was so rapidly becoming famous had made a mistake. He’d been confused. Two years later it was proven that King had climbed the wrong mountain. It turned out that he had actually climbed Mount Tyndall – the very mountain he had named – and was looking across at Mount Whitney. So he returned, chagrined, to climb the correct mountain. He had been confused in his initial attempt, just as he’d also been somewhat errant in naming himself as the first ‘white man’ on Mount Whitney. He became famous all over the country when he exposed the great Colorado Diamond Hoax of 1872, and saved millions of dollars for investors who were about to be fleeced through rumors of diamond deposits in Colorado. His career, as they say, was back on track. This led to his being appointed as the first director of the newly created United States Geological Survey in 1879. But less than two years later he resigned from that prestigious position and largely resigned from public life as well. He tried being a businessman but found it difficult to make money in the private sector as a geologist or as a consultant to mining companies and soon spiraled into heavy debt. It was at this point that the life of a famous, prestigious man took a strange turn; a confused turn; a turn into The Weird. In the mid-1880’s King met and fell in love with Ada Copeland, a former slave from Georgia who was now working as a nursemaid in New York, and despite an age difference of almost twenty years, they were married in 1888. King had assiduously avoided the wealthy yet largely vacuous young ladies who made up New York’s annual crop of bubble-headed debutantes – even though he was both a regular and a popular figure at the city’s social events - so it was not really surprising nor in itself strange that he would seek someone with whom he could connect on a deeper level. The Weird Part commenced as soon as King first met Ada, for he introduced himself not as Clarence King the geologist but instead made up the alter ego of a former slave named James Todd; a counterfeit persona which he would keep for the rest of his life and use interchangeably with his real name and persona. Ada did not suspect that any subterfuge was being perpetrated on her. After all, although it was common for Blacks of mixed heritage to try to pass themselves as Whites if their skin tone was sufficiently light, it was unheard of – even unbelievable – for a White person to deliberately attempt to pass himself as Black. So it wouldn’t even have occurred to Ada or to her family to question James Todd’s word on the matter. But Clarence King had always displayed a natural talent for storytelling and basked in his reputation as a witty raconteur at the scientific gatherings where he was often asked to speak. So for him to use that ability to expand his personal life in an unexpected direction was perhaps just a natural extension of the creative personality which had always been within him. Todd told Ada that he worked as a Pullman porter for the railroad and that he was often away from New York because of that work; away for weeks or months at a time. This arrangement allowed King to leave home and pursue his work as a geologist without having to worry about how much time he spent away or about preparing excuses when he returned. Still, despite his obvious non-Negro appearance and his sack-full of ready excuses Ada apparently believed him, and even with those long absences King fathered five children with Ada, four of whom lived to adulthood. For the next thirteen years King lived a double life and, if success can be defined as not getting caught, then he did so successfully. Yet the stress of living a double life took its toll. Perhaps it was the confusion of keeping the details of each of his lives separate and presenting the right stories to the right people, and one of King’s prolonged absences from home actually disguised a long session of therapy in a psychiatric institution, trying to work out those problems; trying to resolve that confusion. King tried working as a geological consultant for mining companies but had little luck at generating sufficient income from those efforts. His income was coming primarily from his writing, and his books continued to do well because of his fame and respected professional status both in the United States and abroad. Still, his debts continued to mount. But despite that King decided that his family needed a better home than the one he’d heretofore provided for them in Brooklyn, so he set about purchasing a larger home in the better neighborhood of Flushing and moved his wife and four children there in 1897. There is no record of the explanation he may have given to his wife as to how a Pullman porter could afford this; and Ada apparently did not question their good fortune as a Black couple being able to move into an upper middle class neighborhood. But they lived there for only a short time. Race riots in New York at the turn of the century were making the city a dangerous place for Blacks, and James Todd wrote to his wife while he was off working that she should sell their house and move to Toronto, which she did. By 1901 James Todd’s, or Clarence King’s, health was in rapid decline. He was suffering from tuberculosis and was also struck with a heart attack. Still away from home on one of his long trips he apparently glimpsed the inevitability of his approaching death, so he wrote a letter to Ada from his sickbed in Arizona in which he confessed that his real name was not James Todd but in reality Clarence King. Yet Clarence King moved in completely different circles than Black families in New York so Ada, even though she now knew his real name, still had no comprehension of who Clarence King was or of what he meant to the world of geology. Clarence King passed away on December 24th, 1901, the day before Christmas and the day after Ada’s forty-first birthday; a birthday which he did not celebrate with his wife because he’d been too ill with tuberculosis to travel from his sickroom two thousand miles away. When Ada received the news of her husband’s death on Christmas Eve, she still had no idea whatsoever of who Clarence King was. That knowledge came when she read the obituaries. King had a wide circle of friends; he was an esteemed member of several professional organizations; and in his professional status he had moved easily in New York society. It’s impossible to imagine the shock Ada must have felt when she read of this stranger who had secretly been James Todd the Pullman porter; her husband. There were more surprises in store for Ada as the succeeding months progressed. It turned out that their marriage ceremony – the ceremony arranged by King - had actually been a sham. No license had been applied for, so the marriage had no legal standing other than that of Common Law status. That meant that Ada had no easy or immediate claim to her husband’s estate. She had to file suit, and the court proceedings dragged on for thirty-two years. During those years Ada was largely in an impoverished state and a friend of King’s, John Hay, purchased a house for her to live in. Ada stayed there in that home until she passed away - sixty-three years after her husband had died. Finally, in 1933, the court ruled that there was nothing left in King’s estate to inherit so the court proceedings came to an end with Ada receiving nothing. It had been a bureaucratic nightmare in which only the lawyers had profited. Somewhat eerily that intentional confusion of identity within the King/Todd family continued on for many years after King’s death, only now with other members of the family. King’s two daughters both decided to try to pass themselves as being of White ancestry, for the obvious reason of being able to expand their lives into areas not easily accessible to Blacks and therefore to live their lives more freely. This could prove difficult – even dangerous – as most states had Race Laws on the books which were guided by the “Single Drop of Blood” principle; a rule which stated that even if a person had white parents and looked white themselves, if they had one grandparent or even one great-grandparent who was partly Negro, then they themselves were also officially categorized as being Negro and could not legally intermarry with Whites. These race laws being in place at the time, when each of King’s two daughters became engaged to white men they had to provide proof that they were indeed of white lineage. This they successfully managed to do by each signing an affidavit to that effect for each other. Ada’s and Clarence’s two sons, on the other hand, both chose to identify with their Black heritage and served in Negro battalions during World War One. The fact that King’s two sons each chose a different path from his two daughters meant that the four of them could only socialize in private from that point on, lest the daughters’ true heritage be revealed to their husbands and friends. Yet even with that limited contact within the family, from that time on it was a hard subterfuge to maintain. Ada Todd died in 1964 at the age of 104. Not only was she one of the oldest persons in the United States at that time, she was also one of only a handful of people who, in the 1960’s, could lay claim to having once been a legal slave in the United States of America. James and Ada may have been at their happiest during their brief tenure in Flushing. In 1900 Ada decided to give a party at her new home and all of their friends were invited - all of the friends they had, as a couple, were Black. It was a momentous social event in Black society for such a large Negro gathering to be held in such an upscale White neighborhood, so the party was covered by reporters from the local Negro press. One might think that Clarence King would have been afraid that such widespread publicity might serve to shatter his secret life and expose his masquerade to the world. But no –Ada had somewhat eerily decided that this was to be a masquerade party, and Clarence King survived it quite nicely as James Todd, his mask – both literally as well as figuratively - still in place. Clarence King was, perhaps, a very confused man. Either that, or he was a man who was far ahead of his time. Yet his wife and children loved him; his scientific compatriots admired him and showered him with honors. In California, Mount Clarence King was named after him. At 12, 905 feet in height it is one of the tallest peaks in North America and is one of the most beautiful features of Kings Canyon National Park. California also honored him with a Clarence King Lake. There is a King’s Peak in Utah named in his memory as well, and also a King Peak in Antarctica. But besides these monuments in stone, Clarence King is also remembered over a century later as a man who sought the truth, yet lived a lie. Was he confused as to his place in society, just as he was confused in climbing the wrong mountain? Or was he living his life on a slightly different plane of existence than that of his compatriots and perhaps having trouble finding the shadowy path between the two? Or, maybe both. It is said that walking the road less traveled is what makes life worth living. Perhaps Clarence King found life worth living because he climbed a different mountain, and the view from that perspective made his life something special.
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Spending a winter in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is not always the
idyllic snowy slice of life pictured on a postcard or a Christmas greeting. True, the mountains are lovely when covered by a fresh blanket of snow, and the trees are at their most beautiful when they are freshly flocked. The air is crisp and clean and the cold mountain wind turns the sky a deep blue. Lovely, absolutely lovely; and that’s why so many people come to the mountains in the winter to have some fun. But in these modern times most of those people come only to play, and they stay for usually just a few days - to play in the snow; to ski in the fresh powder; to sit by the fire in the lodge sipping Peppermint Schnapps or get hammered on Irish Coffees. It’s fun because they don’t really have to live in the mountains for the winter. But for those who actually live at high elevation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains all year long it can be just a little more difficult, even in the years of light winters. And in the heavy winters it can severely try the fortitude of the strongest of souls – waiting for the roads to get plowed; laying on your back in the slush and putting on tire chains with frozen fingers; sliding down a steep road and spinning through an icy patch you didn’t quite see in time; trying to find your way home through a wall of drifting white flakes that can be hypnotizing. It can make you a little frustrated. Snow - it can make you a little crazy. And yet, difficult as it can be, it’s really nothing compared to what people experienced in Sierra Nevada winters a century and a half ago. Just ask the Donner Party. Oh, wait – you can’t. They’re too busy eating each other. So, how did people pass the days, the weeks, the months during the winters in the Sierras in the eighteen hundreds? Well, there weren’t nearly as many people in California back then, and skiing wasn’t yet a destination sport which brought people up here – although, interestingly, one small mining town in the northern Sierras is credited with being the birthplace of that particular sport back in the 1860’s. So, without tourism, the individuals who stayed in the mountains all winter back then were mostly those who worked here, and the most common professions were those of mining, logging, hunting, and trapping. If you were a logger, then your employers would keep you busy cutting trees and dragging them to the mills until the snow got deep enough to keep the donkey engines from running or until the flumes froze over. Then they would move their operations to lower elevations if they had any timber rights down there. Otherwise you were out of work until the snow melted in May or June and would most likely spend the winter in one of the valley towns, rubbing elbows with farmers and hearing of the latest plans for a new church or museum and generally going slowly crazy. If you were a hunter then you’d probably keep on working in the mountains all winter long. The big game of deer and bear would be just a plentiful. And if you were a trapper you’d also keep at it all winter, because a winter trap line could yield just as many fur pelts as during the summer. Except, in the winter, you’d end up wearing more of those furs to keep warm. But, compared to the Rockies, there were relatively few trappers here. And if you were a miner? The miners were the ones who had come to the Sierras to get rich, so they comprised the majority of those who stuck it out all winter long. Most of the large streams and all of the major rivers flowed all winter long without freezing, so panning for gold could take place just as easily on Christmas Day as it could on the Fourth of July. If you were a gold digger instead of a gold panner, then as long as you already had your hole in the ground - your mine shaft - then you could continue to pick away at the veins of ore in dry comfort all winter as long as you kept the opening to the mine shoveled free of snow. And since miners had come here to get rich they weren’t about to abandon – even temporarily – any spot which showed some promise, because it was a certainty that someone else would move in on their claim before their footsteps had even faded away. So the logistics of mining allowed – even demanded - that it be practiced all of the winter, except for those times when heavy snow was actually falling heavily and accumulating quickly. So, what about those times when the snow was falling heavily, and accumulating quickly, and building walls of heavy white snowdrifts around them faster than they could shovel? What did the miners do then? Miners were different in this respect; different from hunters, or trappers, or loggers. Miners tended to form large communities; they constructed buildings; they built towns. And these towns consisted of not only shelters from the snow - homes in which they could stay away from the ravages of winter in relative comfort, but also of numerous places of entertainment so that there was a handy distraction from the Sierra Winter which usually lasted at least half of the year; places like saloons, and gambling halls, and houses of ill repute. (Actually, ‘ill repute’ is a more modern term. Back in those days such houses were of the best repute possible.) So, with a pouch of freshly panned gold to spend and all of these varieties of entertainment close at hand to spend it on, life didn’t have to be either boring or confining. There was no need to eat your neighbor. But that didn’t mean that everyone got along. Quite the contrary. Winter still managed to get to people; to drive them a little crazy. In fact, a perusal of local newspapers from the time reveals more than a few interesting tales, and the mining town of Rabbit Creek might perhaps offer a typical cross section of Winter Life in a Sierra Nevada mountain mining town. The town of Rabbit Creek in the northern Sierras had some particularly harsh winters in the 1850’s. The roads would become impassable beneath the heavy layer of snow, and prices for food would climb sharply as supplies dwindled. In the winter of 1853 flour and coffee both climbed to fifty cents per pound, sugar was close behind at forty-five cents per pound, and butter reached the status of a luxury food at one dollar per pound – that would be about forty dollars per pound in today’s dollars. Pork got as high as sixty-five cents per pound and beef reached fifty cents, although beef soon became so scarce that it wasn’t to be found at any price. So perhaps the cost of eating as well as the deep isolation brought by the snow were at least partially to blame for several unusual deaths during those snowbound times. In 1853, just as the cold was settling in for the winter, a man named Jenkins was killed in Rabbit Creek under confusing circumstances, hit and crushed by a falling tree. The papers seemed uncertain as to whether he intended to have the tree fall on him because he had grown maudlin or if he was merely slow in getting out of the way, and they did not pass judgement. At about the same time another unresolved death occurred when a man shot and killed himself. It may have been suicide, but newspaper reports tended toward instead blaming him with stupidity and carelessness. And then in October of 1853 a murder – there was no doubt about this one – took place. A Mr. Henry Smith was boarding at the house of Mr. Harlow. As the snow had not gotten too deep yet Harlow asked his tenant to accompany him on a firewood cutting expedition, and the two men set out, axes in hand. A few hours later Thomas Tregaskis walked by their woodpile and noticed parts of Smith protruding from underneath a pile of brush. Harlow was seated on a log nearby with an axe in his hand and asked Tregaskis to stop and visit for a while, but Tregaskis was a bit wary and pretended that he had to hurry on. He took one look at the axe in Harlow’s hand and quickly took off for town to report a murder. When an eager group of townsmen soon reappeared on the scene they found Smith’s body with multiple head wounds – just like those made by an axe. Harlow had disappeared. He was later arrested in San Francisco, taken back up to the mountains, tried, and hung. Newspaper accounts hinted at an affair between Smith and Mrs. Harlow. Women were, after all, a scarce commodity in the mining towns, and perhaps the onset of snow had made all three of them a bit edgy; a little crazy. In early October of 1856, also in Rabbit Creek and just at the onset of winter, a Mr. C. Stockman was shot and killed by a man named Betts. It seemed that Mr. Betts was being entertained by a female employee of the Pontoosue House of Rabbit Creek when Stockman pounded on the door of their room, demanding his turn. When there was no answer Stockman broke the door down and angrily yelled at the couple in bed. Betts drew his gun – we don’t know from where exactly he drew it, but it can be safely assumed that he wasn’t wearing it – and shot Stockman, killing him. Betts then finished doing what he had paid for, got dressed, and left town. When he was tried for murder several months later he was acquitted. The jury sympathized with Betts’ anger at having the amorous mood of the moment interrupted by Stockman and it was found to be a justifiable homicide. Stockman should have shown more patience. Later that same winter in Rabbit Creek a traveling soda-water salesman by the name of John Rousch committed suicide by drinking a bottle or laudanum. A California paper wrote “… finding himself despondent and a prey to dissipation and gambling and not having the moral strength to conquer those demons he concluded to launch his frail life into the untried waters of death.” Of course he was despondent – he was a soda-water salesman in a mining town, for god’s sake; trying to peddle bubbling water in a town where whiskey was the drink of choice and where water was used only for washing – and even then only rarely. He should have known that he wouldn’t have been able to even give soda water away, much less sell it. Yet the newspaper account does make one long for the days when a newspaper reporter had the linguistic talent to be both poetic and judgmental at the same time. Also in 1857 – a statistically rough winter for the people of that town – a notorious murder/suicide took place. On the 26th of April a man named Harry Yates decided that he would propose to the woman of his dreams, Miss Caroline Young. His overtures throughout the winter had not elicited quite the excitement he had hoped, and with the promise of Spring in the air Mr. Yates apparently felt that now was the time to plan for that Big June Wedding. So off he went to her home – she was living with her sister and sister’s husband – and was quietly ushered into the sitting room where he proceeded to ask for her hand in marriage in a tone of sincere affection yet naïve hopefulness. But if Miss Young had failed to make her lack of interest plain in the previous months she certainly did not fail to do so now. In fact, she was so articulate in her dismissal of Yates that he drew a pistol and shot her, killing her where she stood. Then, apparently realizing that the much longed for June wedding was now probably out of the question and that he would soon be captured and hung, he put the pistol to his own throat and shot himself, then laid down beside the body of his beloved to die. When death didn’t come quickly enough and he apparently heard approaching footsteps, he drew a second pistol from his pocket and shot himself in the head. This time he got it right. Those were the days when a suitor could comfortably bring a pistol or two to the proposal, just in case things went awry. In 1857 the people of Rabbit Creek got tired of the town’s name and voted to change it to La Porte. Perhaps they felt that giving the community a more pretentious French-sounding name would make the town a more desirable community than one named after a wet bunny. Or perhaps they felt it might change the local karma and stem the flow of corpses to Boot Hill. It did neither, and the miners eventually drifted away from the town as soon as the veins of ore ran out and there was nothing left to mine. There are 26 people in La Porte now, down from the thousands who spent the winter there in the mid-eighteen hundreds when there was still gold. But there hasn’t been a murder there for many, many years. One might think that living through Sierra winters in modern times would be much easier because of paved roads, electricity, and telephone service. But the paved roads are often lying beneath a sheet of ice while the electricity and telephone connections often flicker and die beneath the weight of the snow, leaving us in conditions approaching those of the 1850's. So, next time the winter snow starts driving you crazy and you find yourself wishing for a saloon or other House of Entertainment nearby, just remind yourself that if one were close at hand, some other lonely mountain person might see your irresistible well-groomed good-looking self and fall head over heels for you and make you an offer you couldn’t refuse. With a gun, perhaps, to prevent rejection. And next time you pop a frozen Hungry Man meal into the oven for dinner because the roads are too icy for you to drive to town to get fresh food, look on the bright side – at least you’re not eyeing your neighbor as a potential meal and looking through the cookbooks for just the right recipe for Leg of Sam. But remember – when washing that meal down, whatever it might be, whiskey is still the beverage of choice; not soda water. There’s no reason for anyone to go that crazy. There is a husk of an old, burned-out Sequoia tree standing next to a
mountain meadow, and within the corpse of that former giant, carved into the charred wood, is a name and a date which may forever change our views of the history of this part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s strange, but historians are quite often resistant to change. One would not think that to be very logical in a profession devoted to the discovery of the past, yet once a picture of that past has been developed it is often quite difficult to put forward an alternate scenario for consideration. It’s as if they think that they have successfully finished putting together a puzzle which offers a complete snapshot of a particular time and place and from that point on It Is Official; they don’t wish to acknowledge even the possibility that some of the pieces to that puzzle have yet to be found. If you accept the current doctrine of California history then you would readily adhere to the belief that explorers did not reach this part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains – Sequoia and Kings Canyon - until the early to mid-eighteen hundreds; and before then it was at most infrequent and sporadic intrusions which were brief in duration and unimportant from an historical perspective. Viewing history through that lens you would also adhere to the accepted doctrine that these mountains remained largely untrodden by even the occasional footfall of explorers (white explorers of European descent, that is - after all, Native Americans really didn’t count, did they?), and remained unexplored until the Gold Rush brought so many untold thousands of hopeful gold panners and diggers into California that it was then no longer possible to either keep count of them or keep track of where they went. Then, and only then according to this doctrine, did this part of the Sierra Nevada, this part we now know as Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks; only then did it get explored, and exploited, and settled. Only then did the historians pick up their pens to record the wonders of the Sequoia trees and the deeds of the men who came here to gain wealth by harvesting a crop they had never planted. And, if you adhere to this somewhat narrow minded historical doctrine, then you are certain that nothing at all of importance happened here before then, except, of course, that of a well-adjusted culture of Native Americans living here for centuries in relative tranquility. And yet … And yet Britain was sending over shipload after shipload of immigrants to the New World, almost all of whom settled within a stone’s throw of the Atlantic Coast and built communities which would later revolt against their Mother Country (in the lower latitudes, that is. In Canada they remained loyal to the Crown). The French were also sending boatloads of immigrants, most of whom landed and settled to the west and South of the British; their settlements forming the embryo of conflict between the two European powers. The Spanish were busy ravaging Mexico in their searches for glittering gold, the fabled Fountain of Youth, and that elusive Northwest Passage, and they had no patience with either the British, the French, or the new Americanos who thought themselves to be an independent breed of men. The Spanish steadily expanded their territories into what is now Arizona, New Mexico, and the southern half of California. The Russians, late into the Great Game of Empire, stopped Spanish expansion to the north by settling into northern California and on up into Oregon and then Alaska. Eventually all of these colonies worked out their futures in different ways: the thirteen British colonies revolted and gained independence; Napoleon sold most of the French colonies to the newly minted country calling itself the United States; the Bear Flag Revolution brought a lively halt to the presence of Spain and Russia in California; the brash new U.S. went to war with Mexico and gained the territories in the southwest; and Seward purchased Alaska from Russia for the outrageous price of two cents per acre. So the United States expanded. Yet still, if one were to steadfastly believe what is written in the history books, while all of this expansion was taking place still no one trod this part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains until the gold seekers came, and after them the lumber men. But why should we believe that? True, it was a long trek of three thousand miles across plains, desert, and mountains for those British and French colonists if they wanted to get to California. Yet it’s a certainty that some of them must have made that trek. After all, that’s what they came to the New World for – to discover a new world. And the Russians; well, they were eager to establish a presence here, and not just in settlements like Fort Ross. They were interested in furs and trade, so they sent people into the mountains to hunt and trap. And the Spanish? The Spanish felt that California was rightly their colony. Indeed, they had a better claim than the Russians or anyone else, save for the indigenous peoples. But no one cared about indigenous people because they weren’t really considered to be civilized people deserving of respect. And yet, despite the accepted fact that several European countries were settling tens of thousands of immigrants in this land, and despite the fact that although most of them settled comfortably into towns, farms, and ranches; there was still the fact that untold numbers shouldered a pack on their backs and took off into the wilderness to explore; or perhaps to just to get away from it all. So why do historians insist that no one came to this part of the Sierras until it was comfortable for contemporary scribes to get around to recording their visits? Why do they believe that this part of the mountains remained sacrosanct? And why do they think we would even believe something that unbelievable? And believe it in spite of the evidence? The evidence … In the summer of the year 2014 a National Park Ranger did something that no ranger had apparently thought of doing throughout the past hundred years. While walking along the Big Stump Trail In Kings Canyon National Park, Ranger Farrah Keifer paused before the imposing edifice of Old Adam; a long dead snag of a Sequoia tree which stands alongside that trail. Old Adam has been dead for hundreds of years; no one is even certain as to the origin of its name. The remains of the tree which still stand are scarred by fire; the snag itself is perhaps forty or so feet in height; the part which remains, although dead for centuries, tantalizingly hints at its having been one of the largest Sequoia trees ever to exist. Old Adam is hollow now, having been struck by lightning ages ago and burned into a scraggly shell, but Ranger Keifer thought that it just might be worthwhile to wedge herself through a narrow opening in the tree and she found herself inside a dark confined space; inside the corpse of this once impressive monster. Once inside she shined her light around and found herself standing within the hollow skeleton of a tree which may well have been over three thousand years old. The charred wood surrounding her formed a narrow cone rising above; a cone blackened by the fires of centuries ago. Atop that cone shone daylight; and within that cone she found history carved; the names of early travelers who came to this area along with the dates on which they passed; including that of the very earliest traveler. It was carved into the burned inner lining of the tree; a piece of history preserved for centuries; history which still remains unacknowledged by the official historians, perhaps because it’s not already written in a musty book to which they can comfortably point. Yet this is the manner in which much of our history has come down to us – carved into natural objects such as cave rocks, pyramid walls, or the Rosetta stone. All of these give glimpses of pieces of history which were previously unknown. So now it is with a tree called Old Adam and a traveler named Sparrow. Long before you and I came to Kings Canyon it seems that other people have paused and stepped inside the snag which is now known as Old Adam, and some of them have taken the time to engrave a memento of their passing; a marker stating that they were there inside that tree; visiting what we now know as a special place within a National Park; travelers passing through and pausing to mark their presence as they crossed this part of the mountains long before we and the park even existed. They were saying “I was here” to anyone who might later find their carving. One of those individuals who passed this way went by the name of Sparrow, and he carved his name inside of Old Adam. “Sparrow - 1758”. That’s what Ranger Keifer found, along with the names and dates of other, later, travelers. And it’s the oldest written record indicating the presence of a person of European descent here in this part of the Sierra Nevada. Today people who pass by should probably instead take a picture of themselves next to the tree to show respect for its fragile condition; a ‘selfie’, as it is currently known; a photo they can then instantly send to friends and family all over the world with the mere touch of a button. But in the year 1758 the only form of selfie available was to pull one’s knife out of its scabbard and spend several long minutes carving one’s name into a tree before moving on. The name, one hoped, would be there forever; or at least for longer than you expected to live. So when Sparrow came to this part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the year 1758 he sent us a selfie; he carved his name inside of Old Adam in a place which was protected from the weather – his version of sending it on to us two and a half centuries later. He added the year of his visit as a reference point. Then he moved on. We have absolutely no idea whatsoever who he was, where he was going, or from where he came. So, who was Sparrow? Sparrow could have been one of the British or French settlers, most of whom were busy building towns and plowing farms while their respective governments back in the Old World were busy arranging confrontations with each other and even convincing Native American tribes to fight on one side or the other. So who would have blamed, or even wondered, that some of those settlers wandered off to find a better life in the wilderness to the west? And we know that the British were sending ships along the California coast as early as 1577 when Sir Francis Drake sailed by looking for the Northwest Passage. He paused around San Francisco to leave a brass marker, and it is known that sailors often rebelled against such long voyages and got themselves into trouble. When that happened they were usually either executed or abandoned on the coast; set ashore to live the remainder of their life alone in a wild land. The Spanish government was busy sending expeditions up the California coast to establish a string of missions designed to entrench Spanish presence in California while enslaving Native Americans for farm labor and converting them to Christianity to save their souls. It’s not hard to imagine some of those soldiers or settlers being fed up with the whole thing and just packing up and moving off to the mountains to find a better life. But in fact, an intriguing hint of the possible consequences of that policy of abandoning unruly sailors on shore showed up in the 1772 journal of the Spanish explorer, Padre Juan Crespi. Padre Crespi was a Spanish missionary who came to California in 1749. He was a member of the exploration parties of both Francisco Palou and Junipero Serra. In 1769 he joined Gaspar de Portola’s expedition and went north through San Diego and up to Monterey. Crespi’s task on that expedition was that of official record keeper, and he took meticulous notes not only on their journey but also of their interactions with the native peoples whom they encountered. He strove at all times for accuracy and objectivity, and the details he recorded have proven a valuable source of information for over two centuries. One of the most intriguing of those details he noted was when he wrote in 1772 of a native tribe “who with their beards and light coloring looked like Spaniards”. Native Californians had very dark skin coloring and did not grow facial hair. So we must wonder - from where did these light skinned and bearded natives come? And where else in California might they have been found? Who was Sparrow? The name sounds European or American. The chances are that he was of British descent, and that he was either a very energetic explorer who walked West across three thousand miles of wilderness or, more likely, one who got abandoned in California by his shipmates for inappropriate conduct. Either way, he made his way into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, climbed up to the Grant Grove area, and briefly took refuge inside of an old, burned out tree, and while he was there he took the time to mark his passage for future generations to note. We don’t know from which vessel he may have come because the ships who made passage to the New World in those years did not always leave us records of the names of all of their passengers and crew. But Sparrow may well have been on one of them, and he may have come here to these mountains before moving on. And he left his mark, along with others who followed, that he was here in Grant Grove long before there even was a Grant Grove; before there was a Kings Canyon National Park; long before there was even a United States. There is a chain which links us all, both through time as well as geography; a chain which ties us to people in the past who have survived beyond death because of something they did, or something they started; something which we now remember as being of significance. Or, as in the case of this story, something which we didn’t remember; something of which we weren’t even aware until a name carved into an old tree came to be noticed after lying hidden for two and a half centuries, and then it reminded us of this shadowy link with our past standing patient and unnoticed hidden the mountains; a memento from a Journeying Man who paused in this Garden of Eden to leave a message with Adam. Or perhaps it was a Journeying Woman – Wouldn’t that give all those feeble old recorders of official history a massive brain fart? |
AuthorWith a degree in Anthropology and an avid interest in history, Tim Christensen has lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for many years. He has no cell phone or television, but manages, when not chopping firewood or shoveling snow, to keep himself entertained with a library of several thousand books. Archives
July 2017
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Sequoia Parks Conservancy, the official 501(c)(3) nonprofit partner of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (National Park Service) and Lake Kaweah (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), uses tax-deductible contributions to support these parks.
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