Historic Hood River
Down the Rabbit Hole to Deadman’s Lake
Notes
Researching these posts always leads me down rabbit holes, but I certainly never expected this beautiful Anne Lang portrait would lead me to a gruesome story.
Anne Lang certainly shows her talent as a portrait photographer in this image. The girl in this view looks like the unidentified girl in this earlier portrait. Perhaps she was a relative or neighbor?
This portrait led me to this recently published Oregon Historical Society cabinet card of Anne Lang. I was hoping it could resolve the debate we had ten years ago over the identities of the women in this image. To my eyes the woman seated on the left matches the cabinet card best, though that doesn’t match the IDs on the negative sleeve. What do you think? I’ll add some comments to that image to keep the record clear.
This led me to do some more background research about Anne Lang. This article (“Will Rob No More Graves”) is where the story takes a sharp turn to gruesome. It tell of Anne Lang losing Indian artifacts to a swindler– said swindler also being a grave robber who met an untimely death. It’s a fascinating read that makes it clear even in that era, when museums were filling their storage closets with items stolen from Native American graves, at least some people held this behavior in contempt.
It was only natural to wonder about the location of the “Deadman’s Lake” mentioned in the article, which led me to this article from a man who found the very same newspaper account and followed the trail (literally) all the way to Deadman’s Lake.
And of course the account of theft of burial objects led me to review this explanation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). That summary led me back to this article I saw a couple of months ago about major institutions dragging their feet on compliance with the terms of NAGPRA. Having come full circle, I can click “save” and move on to another image!
Jeffrey Bryant
Interesting timing, as I just saw an item in the Hood River Glacier, 1924-11-20, page 10 about local folks searching for Indian relics on the Deschutes river.
https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071110/1924-11-20/ed-1/seq-10/
L. E.
Boy, you really did go down a rabbit hole!
I have been into Deadman’s Lake when I was a kid. That was before the mountain blew. Rode horses so I didn’t have to make the climb, but it definitely is steep. I didn’t know why it was called Deadman’s Lake.
What a great blog by Vernon Wade. Thanks for finding it.
He mentions Little Memaloose Island. I just read the other day that it was located down in the Stevenson area.