Say hello to Frog Woman Rock

A landmark rock formation towering over the Russian River and Highway 101 in southern Mendocino County is about to get a new — and more politically correct — name.

The California State Historical Resource Commission today is expected to re-designate what for more than 50 years has been known as Squaw Rock.

Henceforth, it officially will be known as Frog Woman Rock, reflecting a Pomo Indian legend of a man-eating creature, part frog and part woman, who lived in a cave in the face of the rock.

Squaw Rock is being jettisoned as the name of California Landmark No. 549 because of its questionable roots in local Indian lore and also to eliminate the word squaw, originally an East Coast Indian word that has taken on a derogatory connotation, said tribal representatives and state historians.

"The term &‘squaw' has become offensive to many modern Native Americans because of usage that demeans Native women, ranging from condescending images to racial epithets," according to the commission report.

Local tribes have lobbied to have the name changed since at least 1996. Leaders of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, which spearheaded the change, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Mendocino County Board of Supervisors member John Pinches is among those unimpressed by the impending historical commission act.

"It's been Squaw Rock forever," he said. "People are still going to be calling it Squaw Rock."

The moniker is believed to stem from a Lovers Leap tale cited in the 1880 "History of Mendocino County," said William Burg, a state historian.

As that story goes, a young chief named Cachow from a Cloverdale tribe promised to marry Sotuka, daughter of the chief of the Sanel tribe in Hopland. But he instead married another woman. In anger and despair, Sotuka, holding a great stone, threw herself from the cliff, killing herself along with Cachow and his new wife, who were camping at the base of the cliff.

At least two other stories have been cited to explain the name. One is that the stone face bore the likeness of an Indian man killed by his brother out of jealousy over a beautiful woman. Another tells of a band of women camping at the base of the rock after leaving their men in protest over threatened intertribal warfare.

State officials said further research by the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians and historians has determined that the Lover's Leap account was never adequately verified as legitimate local Pomo lore and that an altogether different story is a better fit.

In central Pomo dialect, the name for the rock is Maatha kawao qhabe, which translates as frog woman rock, according to a study by linguist Victoria Patterson in 1985. And in local Pomo legend, the giant rock north of Cloverdale was home to Frog Woman, a mythological figure often portrayed as the clever and powerful wife of Coyote, who makes many appearances in Pomo lore as a trickster. She also makes appearances as the wife of Obsidian Man.

Frog Woman had a beautiful human face and the body of a frog. She could jump 100 feet and snatch a man who she would devour after he gave her pleasure, according to the historians' report.

The name change is on the commission's consent calendar, indicating that no opposition is expected.

By whatever name, the rock is situated on a 300-acre ranch owned by Robert and Jeanne Bradford.

Jeanne Bradford said Thursday that she signed a document indicating she would not object to a name change. But she also said she would have preferred the Pomo name, followed by its English translation. Her husband, 88, was less than enthusiastic, she said.

"He thought it was a ridiculous idea but he didn't do anything about it," she said.