At Pyramid Lake

One: Survival of the Numa and Pyramid Lake

9 The people and the fish are inextricable. The archaeological evidence of human habitation along the shores of what is now Pyramid Lake dates back at least ten thousand years. Whether these early lake dwellers were the direct ancestors of the people who call themselves Numa (People), and who are called Northern Paiute in the anthropological argot of Euro-Americans, or whether they were one of the many peoples who lived and vanished in the sands of the Great Basin before a band of Numa named the tasty black lake suckers kuyui and themselves Kuyuidokado—kuyui eaters—will probably never be known. What we do know is that the hundred or so Numa families who lived more or less permanently at Kuyui Pah (Pyramid Lake) when the exploring party of Captain John Charles Frémont arrived in January 1844 not only took the name of their favorite fish, but organized their lives around the kuyui’s annual spring spawning runs up the Truckee River. The Kuyuidokado fished with spears, nets, and weirs; children, men, and women participated in the catching, cleaning, preservation, and eating of the fish. Prayers were offered and answered, tired fishermen relaxed in sweat lodges, dancers celebrated the cycles of life of fish and humans. The Kuyuidokado managed the lake like a well-tended garden, carefully observing the habits of fish and water fowl, cultivating patches of tules and cattails for building material and snacks, traveling in the autumn to nearby mountains to hunt rabbits and deer and gather pine nuts. In January the kuyui were dormant in the mud of the lake bottom, so the Indians offered the weary explorers their less favored fish, a kind of “salmontrout ” whose flavor Frémont found “superior, in fact, to that of any fish I have ever known.” Despite his appreciation of the free meals, the newly promoted captain had bigger fish to fry. Favoring history over ecology, or even gastronomy, the “Pathfinder” named the lake for a three-hundred-foot rock formation that reminded him of the Great Pyramid of Cheops and, he hoped, reminded readers of his journal of his Napoleon-like conquest of the West. The Numa, blissfully unaware of pyramids of any kind, called the rock “wono,” an overturned Survival of the Numa and Pyramid Lake o n e � � 10 a t p y r a m i d l a k e conical basket. This rock formation and many others are known geologically as tufa deposits. These deposits are formed of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) emitted by springs at the bottom of the lake. Since the tufas cannot grow above the level of the lake, they provide a record of the depth of prehistoric Lake Lahontan of which Pyramid Lake is a remnant. Before they hardened, the mineral deposits branched and formed nodules, crystals, tubes, and similar shapes, creating reeflike structures. The tufas of Pyramid Lake were, writes geologist Larry Benson, formed between twenty-six and thirteen thousand years ago and are unique in terms of their size and beauty. As they have broken apart over time, they have assumed shapes that stimulate human viewers to see figures and faces, pyramids and baskets. In 1844 the Kuyuidokado’s lake was slightly larger than it is today, perhaps 40 miles long and 10 to 20 miles wide. (Even today you could drop the island of Manhattan—13 miles long and 2.3 miles wide—into Pyramid Lake, and all but the tallest buildings would be covered.) The level of the lake plunged more than 90 feet in the last century, but regained around 30 feet beginning in the 1980s, thanks to several wet years and improved water management on the Truckee River. Lacking an outlet and subject to constant evaporation, the lake’s water is saline, but only about 17 percent as salty as the ocean. The lake’s shores are mostly treeless, the nearby mountains gray-green with shadscale, rabbitbrush, and sagebrush. In spring the hills brighten with yellow blossoms. Vegetation, including willows and cottonwoods, is thicker in the delta at the south end of the lake where the Truckee River enters. Today, invasive plant species such as tamarisk (planted by the US Navy in the 1940s as camouflage for ordinance) dot the lake’s western shore, and alfalfa and its associated weeds—Russian knapweed and yellow starthistle—grow in plots near the river. Puncture vine (Tribulus terrestris) is found along the old Southern Pacific Railroad right-of-way (railroads are always a path for...