Nature as sacred landscape

The Indian conception of Crater Lake was a matter of much comment by travelers and settlers of the region. The Portland Oregonian reported in 1886 that,

There is probably no point of interest in America that so completely overcomes the ordinary Indian with fear as Crater lake. From time immemorial no power has been strong enough to induce them to approach within sight of it. For a paltry sum they will engage to guide you thither, but before reaching the mountain top will leave you to proceed alone. To the savage mind it is clothed with a deep veil of mystery and is the abode of all manner of demons and unshapely monsters.⁹

Similarly, George Kirkman, writing in Harper’s Weekly in 1896, described the small island in the lake known as the Phantom Ship as “a fantastic object of unspeakable dread to the Klamath Indians.”¹⁰ These accounts, however exaggerated and in part factually incorrect, do convey a sense of Crater Lake and its environs as an area set apart, in some fashion fundamentally different in quality from the wider region, the southern Oregon Cascades.

For the Klamath, spirit power could be found in many sources.¹¹ The spiritual significance of gi-was, or Crater Lake, reflected a more general Klamath understanding of the natural world, involving not only reverence but the possibility of significant interaction with particular mountains, lakes, and streams, as an individual sought comfort, assistance, or power.¹² As one Klamath woman commented in the late 1940s:

…those old Indians had a lot of sense. They kind of felt at home around here and they would get a lift from just talking to the mountains and lakes. It was like praying and it made them feel at peace.¹³

In a sense features in a sacred landscape are persons: one can enter into relationships with them. A Klamath woman about 80 years old, paralyzed and bedridden, said:

Every day I pray to the mountain. I lie here in my bed and I am sick and old and every morning I say to those mountains, I say, “Bless me, help me.” I pray just like my mother taught me to do…. My mother taught me to pray to rocks and mountains and to give some food to them before we eat. It’s just like in the Bible. I dream of those mountains at night. They kind of help you when you ask it.¹⁴

The elements of a sacred landscape derive their power in part from a net of symbolic associations accruing from myth. Crater Lake figures prominently in the myth of Le*w and Sqel. Le*w is “the monster who dwells in Crater Lake …. rather octopoidal and of a dirty white color.”¹⁵ The myth relates his battle with Sqel (who also appears as Old Marten or Old Mink), a culture transformer in Klamath tradition, “teaching subsistence techniques, and generally preparing the world for the myth age humans.”¹⁶

The myth opens with Sqel/Mink/Old Marten and his friend Weasel. They are tricked by the beautiful but wicked daughter of Le*w, who ingratiates herself with Mink (or in an alternate version, Weasel), and tears out his heart. She then takes the heart to Le*w’s people at Crater Lake, who play ball with it. Weasel runs for help to Gmokamc, the Klamath creator figure, who advises Weasel, and then proceeds with the help of various allies to recover Mink’s heart. Mink revives, but Le*w now carries him off to Crater Lake, and is about to cut him to pieces and feed him to his children, the crawfish. However, Mink outwits Le*w and slays him, cutting up his body and (pretending the pieces belong to Mink’s own corpse) feeding them to the crawfish. Finally Mink throws Le*w’s head into Crater Lake, naming it correctly. In Theodore Stern’s translation of a version narrated by Herbert Nelson:

Then he [Mink] threw into the water all this, heart, windpipe-and-lungs, and liver. “Here’s Mink’s heart, windpipe-and-lungs, and liver!” Now the Crawfish came and ate all that. “Then here’s Lao’s [Le*w’s] head!” Bawak!sound of head splashing into the water. The Crawfish recognizing their father scattered in all directions. Then that head of Lao’s lodged there. This is Wizard Island.¹⁷

While Anglo-American travelers’ claims that Indians did not visit Crater Lake are false, the area was certainly regarded as the abode of powerful spirits. Traditionally, gaining a vision of such beings was a major goal of the spirit quest.¹⁸ The seeker would often swim at night, underwater, to encounter the spirits lurking in the depths of the lake.¹⁹Leslie Spier commented regarding the father of one of his informants, “having lost a child, he went swimming in Crater lake; before evening he had become a shaman.”²⁰The quest for such spirits required courage and resolution:

He must not be frightened even if he sees something moving under the water. He prays before diving, ‘I want to be a shaman. Give me power. Catch me. I need the power.’²¹

One Klamath woman recounted seeing a spirit being on the lake:

When I was young, I went up to Crater Lake with a woman I knew. She tied my eyes and led my horse…. Then she said, “Untie your eyes,” and I nearly fell off the horse. I saw a man standing on the water far away, just like in the Bible. He scared me so, I don’t know who that was, but I like to think of that man now.²²

Individuals undertook strenuous and dangerous climbs along the caldera wall. Some would run, starting at the western rim and running down the wall of the crater to the lake. One who could reach the lake without falling was thought to have superior spirit powers. Sometimes such quests were undertaken by groups. Rocks were often piled as feats of endurance and evidence of spiritual effort. Four of the five prehistoric sites thus far identified at the park are in fact piled rock sites. Here as elsewhere, such sites are usually built on peaks or ridges, with fine views. Leslie Spier reported one such named site built on a point of rock projecting from the western wall of the lake. Today Crater Lake remains important as a site for power quests and other spiritual pursuits, particularly for members of the Klamath Tribe.