They say it is Pi-ute--possibly it is Digger.

I am satisfied it was named by the Diggers--those degraded savages who roast their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones with tar, and 'gaum' it thick all over their heads and foreheads and ears, and go caterwauling about the hills and call it _mourning_.

_These_ are the gentry that named the Lake.
"People say that Tahoe means 'Silver Lake'-- 'Limpid Water'-- 'Falling Leaf.' Bosh! It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger tribe--and of the Pi-utes as well.
It isn't worth while, in these practical times, for people to talk about Indian poetry--there never was any in them--except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians.

But _they_ are an extinct tribe that never existed.

I know the Noble Red Man.