a mammoth lake, that, filling
All the Sacramento Valley,
Found its outlet to the ocean
Through the Russian River Canyon.
Round the lake the blazing mountains
Spouted lava and hot ashes;
Casting on the troubled waters
Lurid gleams and purple shadows.

By the lake Coyote wandered--
Sat and howled, for he was lonely,
Lonely for a Man to tame him
Into Dog as a companion.
Then Coyote mixed dry tules
With wet clay and made a figure.
Sun God came and shone upon it;
Spirit came and blew upon it,
And a Man was thus created.
Sun God made the Moon to guard him,
And she stood before his tepee,
Watching while the Sun was sleeping;
But she loved the Sun and followed
Him into the starry heavens,
Always with her face turned to him.
Still she watched the lonely tepee,
And her heart was touched with pity
For the lonely man within it,
So she made a lovely woman,
Gave her constancy, and sent her
On a moonbeam to his tepee,
As his helpmate and companion.
Man then multiplied, and flourished,
Building villages and lording
Over all the other creatures.

On the sunny eastern margin
Of the Bay of San Francisco,
Grew the village of the Tamals;
Fisher folk they were, and gentle,
Seeking not for wars of conquest;
Fishing in the purple waters
From their boats of bark or rawhide;
Wading in the limpid shallows
Seeking oysters, clams and mussels.
In the course of generations
Piles of shells of many banquets,
With the ashes of their campfires,
Formed a mound upon the bay shore.
Shell Mound Park, the people call it,
And they gather in the shadows
Of the ancient oaks for pleasure,
Roasting clams as in the old days
When the Tamals lived upon it.
Gone are now the limpid shallows;
Gone the oysters and the mussels,
And no more are grassy meadows
Dappled with the spreading oak trees;
For great factories, grim and sordid,
Sprawl in squalid blocks around it,
And the smoke of forge and furnace
Rise from stacks into the heavens.

Paleface men with concave glasses,
Learned in lore of printed pages,
Dig into the mounds and gather
Spear and arrow heads and axes,
Broken weapons and utensils
Made of flint, or bone, or seashe