Maybe the Indians were the first bloggers.

Click on photo to enlarge. Photo by Robin Shelly.

This is a reprint of an article that I sent to The Redwood Times

There is a Round Rock on a road, a few miles north of Laytonville. On that rock is what we used to call “Indian Writing”. I recall that the rock was quite intact and well detailed when I was a kid. I was deeply offended, for my own personal reasons, that people have chipped artifacts and writing off the rock. I can only imagine how the Indian people feel.

All human beings like to communicate… Bear with me here because this gets a little crazy and weird, and maybe a little irreverent, because nobody really knows. But, maybe it was started by Little Running Fox, or someone with a name like that. He scratched on the rock as fancy as he could, like carving his initials plus hers on a tree, but instead to really impress his sweet little girlfriend he carved them on a rock. He pledged his eternal love to Little Spotted Fawn.

Then, when Little White Rabbit saw what had happened, she went and told on Little Running Fox, because she was so jealous! Chief Big Smoke told little Running Fox to knock it off, and to quit scratching up the rocks, and that The Great Spirit in the sky didn’t like his rocks being all scratched up.

Little Running fox went out into the woods with his feelings hurt, and in his embarrassed anger, he swore that he would grow up and become the Indian Chief of all the north coast, and as the first declaration of his mighty Chiefdom, he would pass a rule that all little kids could scratch on the rocks all that they wanted to.

And lo, little Running Fox Grew up to become Chief Standing Wolf. He was to become the most powerful Chief that the north coast had ever known, and true to his word his first declaration to all the children of the land was to go forth and decorate all of the smooth rocks, in any way that they wished to. Soon they learned that in their travels to the sea and back inland, that other little Indian kids had left messages on the rocks for their girlfriends and boyfriends from other tribes.
Having gained this great knowledge of how to communicate on rocks, the adults started leaving the history of where this years great hunting and fishing could be found. Some of the Indian people were not as good at rock carving as others, but the great chief declared that it made no difference how the Rock was carved, as long as we knew what it said. Soon, Eel River Ermine was telling fishing tales of great interest to all that passed. Soon word got to them from the Oregon tribe, about how Oregon Wolverine killed eight bear with eight arrows. EchoFox wrote about tying four stings to a hollow log and made wonderful sounds with them.

Great Chief Standing Wolf married Spotted Fawn and they had many children. They never counted how many children that they had or how old they became. Because how well you lived life was more important.

Chief Standing Wolf died a very old and wise man and he was to become the most loved Indian chief ever, ever.

Few people today know it, but the rock beside the road was the first rock that Standing Wolf carved on. It would be a shame to see such a legend end, from people chipping at Standing Wolfs great words.

Epilogue:
This story is not true! The rock is real, and it is defaced. It was written from my history and compiled out of things from my past. When I was just a child of about eight, I had a little girlfriend that I would meet on the hill behind the house. Being a child of great chivalry, I would meet her at the “Old Pine Tree”, way more than half way. Either that, or I was much more anxious to see her than she was to see me.

If I arrived, and she couldn’t meet me, I would leave a note in the pine bark. If she was there and I wasn’t, she would leave a note in the pine bark. Imagine my distress when one day the tree was destroyed in a fire. Standing wolf was wise to use rocks to write on because they don’t burn. He never imagined that vandalism would ever be allowed. And as you might guess, the vandals are anonymous.