The First Peoples of the Trail

The trail runs from the Pacific shore to the summit of a volcano. Fourteen thousand feet of vertical change, a hundred and sixty miles as the crow flies, more on foot. But the land this trail crosses has a human history that stretches back long before Jedediah Smith walked through in 1828. This post is about who was here first.

Crescent City — Taa-'al-dvn

Before it was Crescent City, this place was Taa-'al-dvn ("Outward-At-Place") — one of the largest Tolowa villages: 11 redwood-plank houses and 2 sweathouses, located at the south end of what is now Crescent City Harbor. Their name for themselves, Xus or Xvsh, means "person" or "human being." Dee-ni' means "citizen." They are an Athabaskan-speaking people whose homeland stretches from the Sixes River in Oregon down to just north of the Klamath River — roughly 200 miles of coastline, redwood forest, and river canyon.

The Tolowa lived in permanent villages — about eight across what's now California and Oregon. Their most important was Yan'-daa-k'vt, their place of genesis. Salmon runs, shellfish beds, and sea lions supported a culture that thrived here for thousands of years.

The devastation

Jedediah Smith and his trapping party made first contact with the Tolowa in 1828. What followed was catastrophic.

In 1853, during a sacred Nee-dash Earth Renewal Ceremony at Yan'-daa-k'vt, a group of armed men from Crescent City attacked. They murdered hundreds of Tolowa men, women, and children — then burned the village. It was one of the largest massacres of Native people in American history. The village site was renamed Burnt Ranch, a name that remains on maps today.

The Yontoket Massacre and Achulet Massacre followed. Disease, forced relocation to reservations in Oregon and to Hoopa Valley, and state-sanctioned violence took the lives of roughly 95% of the Tolowa Dee-ni' people. From a population that once exceeded 10,000, only about 150 remained by 1910. The 1920 census counted just 121 Tolowa in all of Del Norte County.

The living language

The Tolowa language — Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni' Wee-ya' — is part of the Pacific Coast Athabaskan family. Loren Me'-lash-ne Bommelyn is the sole fluent speaker. His grandmother, born in 1875, survived the murder of her parents and passed the language to her descendants.

Bommelyn developed a Tolowa Dee-ni' alphabet, published pedagogical books, and teaches young Tolowa students. The language is undergoing a revival. As tribal member Charlenne Storr says: "We don't want to be defined by genocide. We're all still here, we're still vibrant, we're moving forward, we're growing."

Today the Tolowa are organized into the federally recognized Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation (headquartered in Smith River), Elk Valley Rancheria, and the unrecognized Tolowa Nation. In January 2025, the Tolowa Cultural Trail opened in Crescent City's Beachfront Park — an open-air museum with interpretive panels, video, sound clips of the language, and a pebble mosaic honoring genocide survivors.

The river tribes

From the Tolowa coast to Shasta's summit, the trail crosses three major river drainages — the Smith, the Klamath, and the Shasta — each with its own people, language, and way of life. These are covered in depth in The River Tribes of the Trail Corridor. A summary:

• Smith River (Xaa-wan'-t'a) — Five Tolowa Dee-ni' villages lined the Smith and its tributaries, from Yan'-daa-k'vt at the river mouth to inland fishing camps. The river remains the last undammed system in California.
• Klamath River (Ishkêesh) — The Karuk have lived along the middle Klamath for millennia, never removed by treaty. Their prescribed burning practices shaped the landscape. Downriver, the Yurok — California's largest tribe — just got their river back after the 2024 dam removals.
• Shasta River (Ik-hure'-wa) & Scott River (Wau-ka-ra'-wa) — The Shasta people's villages in these drainages were destroyed during the gold rush. The Shasta language is now extinct.

Read the full account in The River Tribes of the Trail Corridor.

Mount Shasta — the sacred mountain

The mountain stands alone. At 14,179 feet, Mount Shasta dominates the horizon for a hundred miles in every direction. For the people who have lived in its shadow for millennia, it is not a landmark — it is a relative, a creator, a destination for the dead.

The peoples of the mountain

Multiple tribes hold deep connections to Shasta, each with their own name for it:

• The Shasta people call it Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki — "walk around and around, but never on top." The area above the tree line was reserved for the gods. Shasta people would not travel there except under extraordinary circumstances. The mountain itself was named for the Shasta Creator.

• The Winnemem Wintu call it Wai-mak ("North Belong"). Their creation story holds that humans emerged from a spring at Panther Meadows, high on the mountain's flank. They were the last creation. Spirit beings had already chosen to become animals, plants, and landforms. When humans emerged frail and lost, Salmon gave them their voices — a sacred obligation the Winnemem still honor.

• The Karuk call it Úytaahkoo — "White Mountain."

• The Pit River (Ajumawi) people consider the mountain their father's father. When survivors of forced marches to Round Valley made their way home, they used the mountain to guide them.

The Wintu believe the souls of the dead travel north to Mount Shasta, then rise to the Milky Way for their journey to the next world. Traditional protocols required purification before approaching the mountain, and people were taught never to take anything from it or leave anything on it.

The fight for Panther Meadows

In the 1990s, a developer proposed a $22 million ski resort at Panther Meadows — one of the most sacred sites for the Winnemem Wintu. Tribal healer Florence Jones (1907–2003) led the legal battle to stop it. In 1998, the U.S. Forest Service revoked the permit. The meadows remain undeveloped. Jones' story was featured in the PBS documentary In the Light of Reverence.

The mountain faces ongoing pressure from New Age seekers who — in the view of local tribes — interfere with sacred sites: removing water from springs, leaving crystals, building unauthorized structures. Tribes that navigate extensive permitting to access their own sacred sites watch outsiders face few restrictions.

Putting it on the map

We're building heritage markers for the trail map — indigenous place names, village sites, and cultural waypoints rendered as warm ochre dots alongside the hiking route. The full details — coordinates, visual language, data sensitivity protocols, and code implementation — are in Mapping Indigenous Places.

Walking with awareness

This trail passes through places of profound significance — Tolowa villages at the river mouths, Karuk fishing platforms along the Klamath, Shasta settlements in the mountain valleys, sacred meadows on Shasta's flank. Each drainage has its own language, its own names for rivers and peaks, its own stories.

The Tolowa Dee-ni' are still here, reviving their language. The Karuk are still burning their forests. The Yurok just got their river back after a century of dams. The Winnemem Wintu are still fighting for their sacred mountain. These are living communities doing the work of cultural survival in real time.

Walking through this country with that knowledge changes things. The Smith becomes Xaa-wan'-t'a. The Klamath becomes Ishkêesh. Shasta becomes the destination of the dead. Each mile carries weight beyond the physical.

The trail is not just coordinates. It's a line through history, drawn over older lines that are still very much alive.

Tribal resources and links

These are sovereign nations with active cultural preservation, language revitalization, and land stewardship programs. If you want to learn more, support their work, or get in touch — start here.

• Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation — Federally recognized tribe headquartered in Smith River, CA. The Tolowa Dee-ni' Language Program, led by Loren Bommelyn, is one of the most significant indigenous language revival efforts in North America.
• Elk Valley Rancheria — Federally recognized Tolowa tribe in Crescent City, CA.
• Karuk Tribe — The Karuk are among California's largest tribes, with over 3,500 enrolled members. Their Department of Natural Resources leads prescribed burning and watershed restoration across the middle Klamath. The Karuk People's Center Museum in Happy Camp houses archaeological collections.
• Yurok Tribe — California's largest tribe by enrollment (6,000+ members). The Yurok Fisheries Department led the decades-long campaign to remove the four lower Klamath dams — the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, completed in 2024.
• Hoopa Valley Tribe — Hupa people of the Trinity River, whose reservation borders Yurok territory at the Klamath-Trinity confluence.
• Winnemem Wintu Tribe — Non-federally recognized tribe of the McCloud River watershed. Led by spiritual leader Caleen Sisk-Franco, the Winnemem are fighting for federal recognition and protection of Panther Meadows and the McCloud River. Their Run4Salmon ceremony traces the historic salmon migration route.
• Quartz Valley Indian Reservation — Home to Shasta and Karuk descendants in Scott Valley.
• Pit River Tribe — The Ajumawi (Achumawi) and Atsugewi people, who call Mount Shasta their father's father.

Further reading

• Kroeber, A.L. (1925). Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 78.
• Waterman, T.T. (1920). Yurok Geography. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 16:5.
• Waterman, T.T. (1925). Village Sites in Tolowa and Neighboring Areas in Northwestern California. American Anthropologist 27:528–539.
• Drucker, Philip (1937). The Tolowa and Their Southwest Oregon Kin. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 36:4.
• Bommelyn, Loren (1972). The Tolowa Language. Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation.
• Bommelyn, Loren (1997). Tolowa Dee-ni' Alphabet. Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation.
• Du Bois, Cora (1935). Wintu Ethnography. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 36:1.
• Gould, Richard A. (1966). Archaeology of the Point St. George Site and Tolowa Prehistory. University of California Publications in Anthropology 4.
• Chartkoff, Joseph L. & Kerry K. Chartkoff (1975). Late Prehistoric Settlement Patterns Along the Klamath River. Journal of California Anthropology 2(2).
• Keeling, Richard (1992). Cry for Luck: Sacred Song and Speech Among the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok Indians of Northwestern California. University of California Press.
• Theodoratus, Dorothea J. & Frank LaPena (1994). "Wintu sacred geography of northern California." In Carmichael et al. (eds.), Sacred Sites, Sacred Places. Routledge.
• Garrett, Bradley L. (2010). Drowned Memories: The Submerged Places of the Winnemem Wintu. Archaeologies 6(2):346–371.
• Tushingham, Shannon (2022). Inland Sanctuary: Collaborative Archaeology at Xaa-yuu-chit (Hiouchi Flat) with the Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation. Oregon Historical Quarterly.
• Lewis, David G. (1999). Tolowa Dee-ni Fish Camp and Chronology. University of Oregon.