"Where medicine people gathered for millennia to heal the sick and cast affliction into sacred waters"
Tolay Lake
Sonoma County, California, United States
For at least four thousand years, medicine people traveled from across what is now the western United States—and as far as Mexico—to gather at Tolay Lake. Here they healed the sick, exchanged ritual knowledge, and cast charmstones bearing disease into waters believed to neutralize affliction. When the lake was drained in 1870, thousands of these stones emerged from the mud. Today, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria co-steward this ancestral landscape with Sonoma County.
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Quick Facts
Location
Sonoma County, California, United States
Site Type
Coordinates
38.2092, -122.5139
Last Updated
Jan 6, 2026
Learn More
Tolay Lake served as a major inter-tribal healing center for at least four thousand years before colonial disruption. In 1870, the lake was drained by a German immigrant, exposing thousands of charmstones and ending ceremonial practice. After over a century of private ownership, the land became a regional park in 2018 and is now co-managed by Sonoma County and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.
Origin Story
Tribal tradition holds that Tolay Lake was a great place of healing and renewal where Indian doctors came from near and far to confer with one another and to heal the sick. The Alaguali, a Coast Miwok tribe, maintained permanent villages around the lake and hosted visitors in special houses built for fasting and ceremony. The healing method involved charmstones—carved stone objects used to extract disease from patients. Once imbued with sickness, the stones were thrown into the lake, where the water neutralized their dangerous contents.
This practice continued for at least four thousand years, drawing medicine people from throughout what is now the western United States and as far as Mexico. The lake functioned as one of three major healing centers in Northern California, a pilgrimage destination for those suffering ailments that could not be cured elsewhere.
The draining of the lake in 1870 was catastrophic. According to Greg Sarris, when the water was lost, 'these sicknesses were released into the world.' The tribe understands this not as metaphor but as spiritual reality. The charmstones remain dangerous—containers of disease never intended to be exposed to air. When offered the return of some stones, the tribe declined: 'Our belief is, leave them where they are.'
Key Figures
Greg Sarris
William Bihler
Matthew Johnson
Spiritual Lineage
The Coast Miwok inhabited the lands around Tolay Lake for at least four thousand years before European contact. The Alaguali tribe maintained villages at the lake and developed its function as an inter-tribal healing center. Spanish missionaries arrived in the late eighteenth century; American settlers followed in the mid-nineteenth. The lake was purchased in 1859 and drained in 1870. The charmstones passed through various collections; many remain at the Smithsonian. The Graton Rancheria's membership traces ancestry to only fourteen known survivors of Spanish and American colonization, from a pre-contact population of twenty to thirty thousand. The tribe received federal recognition in 2000. Sonoma County acquired the Tolay Lake land starting in 2005. The park opened to daily public access in October 2018. The twenty-year co-management agreement was signed in October 2022—the first such partnership in California between a local government and a federally recognized tribe.
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