Maidu

California's northern valleys and mountains are home to three distinct tribes that are collectively identified as the Maidu. Linked by linguistic and cultural similarities, the Northwestern Maidu, or Konkow; the Northeastern Maidu, or Mountain Maidu; and the Nisenan, or Southern Maidu, have lived for centuries in some of California's most diverse and rugged regions. The Maiduan language has been classified as California Penutian; however, although there are at first glance similarities between the dialects spoken by the Maidu, they appear to be almost as diverse as the Maidu people themselves. These dissimilarities were partially the result of the isolation experienced by individual Maidu bands because of the nature of the geographical areas within which they lived.

The migratory route the ancient Maidu took to reach northern California begins with the predictable progression over a land bridge that developed across the Bering Strait more than ten thousand years ago. From there, the ancient peoples traveled into the interior of North America and eventually into South America. There is some divergence in opinion about how the Maidu came to California—whether they traveled south through Oregon and eventually came to California or traveled inland to the Great Basin and then moved westward. The former contention would appear to be most correct, as the diversity of the Penutian language group is more diverse in the west than it is farther to the east. Regardless of their initial route into the state, the Maidu had come to stay.

Prior to European contact, the traditional boundaries of the Maidu stretched from Mount Lassen to Honey Lake in the north, and in the south their lands reached to the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers. Their western boundary was marked by the Sacramento River, and in the east, the tribal boundary was the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. Current archeological study of the territory claimed by the Mountain Maidu suggests that the ancestors of the Maidu had lived in the mountain meadows of the region for as long as thirty-five hundred years. Ancient village sites near the Mooretown Ridge Rancheria and near modern-day Susanville, which lies approximately thirty miles to the northeast of the Mooretown Ridge settlement, have been identified. Conversely, the Mechoopda Maidu, part of the Konkow tribe, state that their traditional home is near modern-day Chico, which lies in the westernmost valley claimed by the Maidu.

The creation stories of the Maidu are as varied as the three tribes that share the modern designation of Maiduan culture. In the north, the Mountain Maidu identified Mount Lassen, an active volcano, as the reported site of the world's creation and where the world's first people, a man and a woman, eventually began to populate the earth. As the early Maidu prospered and multiplied, they began to spread out from roughly the Nevada state line in a southwesterly direction until they reached the Sacramento Valley. Another, perhaps later, story tells the tale of a great flood that overwhelmed the Sacramento Valley where the Konkow and Nisenan lived. The flood destroyed the [Page 430]people who lived in the valley because they were bad, and only one man and one woman were able to escape. From this humble beginning, the Maidu people began to expand their command of the land by following the waterways of the Sacramento Valley. As they left the mountain meadows for the valleys, they discovered a greater diversity of foodstuffs that allowed for greater population concentrations.

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