I have been asked a few times about the location of Onamonalonton's "headquarters" in the California redwoods.  I borrowed the title of this blog item from the Fellowship Herald article I published in 2009. In that essay, I put forward a theory that this Pre-Columbian center of civilization was founded at "a place on the Klamath River" (from a Hupa tribe legend) near Mt. Shasta, a location that fits within the California redwoods range. The redwood forest extends all the way up to the northern border of our state. Here’s the link to the 2009 article:

http://urantia-book.org/archive/newsletters/herald/Herald%202009.pdf

“Many of his [Onamonalonton’s] later descendants have come down to modern times among the Blackfoot Indians.” (Urantia Book, 64:6.7) Such an ancestry places Onamonalonton securely within a group of native peoples who speak what linguists call the Algonkin dialect. The term is a broader category than the more familiar term Algonquin which is a tribe name.

I have since done more research on the linguistics along with other related anthropology studies. The evidence we have is not without controversy and disagreement (as in most science) but it places the only incidence of the Algonkin dialect in California among the Yurok, Wiyot, and other tribes (related to the Hupa) who inhabit the Mt. Shasta region. This location is quite a bit north of Yosemite.

There are several reasons besides the Algonkin language and tribal literature (such as Hupa traditions I wrote about) to place Onamonalonton's headquarters in the Mt. Shasta region and I hope to publish these.

I realized after I wrote the Fellowship article in 2009 that my Shasta theory did not agree with apocryphal lore associating Yosemite’s Grizzly Giant Big Tree with Onamonalonton's headquarters. This unpublished material, which was also not authorized for inclusion in The Urantia Book, is circulating at present because of The United Urantia Family Festival recently held in Yosemite. 

Much of the scholarship I did to back up my Mt. Shasta theory was not ready to include in the 2009 article. I hope for a new version of "the Civilization of Onamonalonton" in the near future. 

How do I account for the discrepancy between my research based on linguistic and anthropological evidence with information given by previous Contact Commissioners involved with publishing The Urantia Book? 

I have had to come to the conclusion that an error was made either in transmitting or receiving this information. I believe it was not done intentionally, just that information handed down became garbled in some way. I also speculate that folks living in Chicago were too far away from our geography. Thus they easily fastened on making the connection of Onamonalonton's headquarters with the Grizzly Giant Urantia legend. 

I’ve researched California Indian and other regional histories for many years and I can find no support for the idea that Onamonalonton's headquarters were located in Yosemite. I hope for the opportunity to make the argument in detail in support of the theory that his base was located near the mountain that is sacred to many Indian tribes, Mt. Shasta.