Chaw'se Indian Grinding Rock (Amador County, California)

Only a couple of miles down the road from Black Chasm Cavern, we arrived at our second stop on this weekend adventure. The Chaw’se Indian Grinding Rock State Park was the ancestral home of a local band of the Miwok people. Here a large slab of marbleized limestone is filled with thousands of mortar holes used by the Miwok to grind acorns from the local oak trees into a paste used in breads and other staple foods of the tribe. This particular site is the home to the largest number of mortar holes in any given location, but is far from the only site of its type.

A small museum at the park is dedicated to the preservation of the Miwok Culture and a nearby village reconstruction shows how the Miwok lived. As I understand it, the local Miwoks still use the ceremonial round house for a few of their annual events. Its good see the effort put into saving this rich history of our land.

A short path from the museum leads out to the limestone slab and then around it in its entirety. It is something to behold the holes themselves range anywhere from 2 to 10 inches deep and must have taken many generations to grind to such depths. I can’t help but visualize tribal life at this site with numerous individuals hard at work making a living from the bounty of the surrounding lands. How peaceful and spiritual it must have been.