Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: The Yokayo Rancheria [Pomo] Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 4 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-09-03 23:28:10 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:54:05 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:54:05

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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The Yokayo Rancheria By Cuartes Kascu \ NE HUNDRED AND TWENTY acres of the soil of California have been the site of a pure communal society since 1881, its members living in harmony with the laws of both state and nation. As will be shown, its organization has been validated by the Supreme Court vi California and the title to its lands protected in perpetuity for the children of the original incorporators and their descendants. This communal site is located on the Russian River, about five miles southeast of Ukiah, the county seat of Mendocino County, and approxi:nately roo miles north of San Francisco. The official name of the society is the Yokayo tribe of Indians; the common name of its property, the Yokayo rancheria, -\ccording to well-informed sources, the Pomo Indians (members of the 'ckan family), the group to which this tribe, the Y: okaia-pomo, belongs, unce occupied practically the whole of the Russian River watershed, the word itself, Yokaia—“south (end of the) valley”—appearing to have origmated in the fusion of two villages, Shokadjal, upstream in Ukiah Valley, vad Tatem, farther downstream.? Variations in the spelling as recorded in ‘egal papers are of interest. In the Mexican grant from Pio Pico to Cayetano Juarez, approved on June 3, 1846,? the valley was called “Yokaya”; and in ‘ne patent from the United States to Juarez, the designation is similar, the “vract of land named Yokaya.” The property was sold to S. C. Hastings at a heriff’s sale on March 25, 1859. In the certificate of sale the sheriff introCuced a variant, describing it as “the ranch de Yokayo.’”* Another spelling vccurs in a deed from Cayetano Juarez to John Currey, where the & has Lecomea ce, “Yocayo.”* When the sheriff followed his certificate of sale to ‘lastings, referred to above, with a deed to the same individual, dated some sven months later, he described the valley as “the place formerly called “rokayo’ and bounded on the south by the Rancho of Don Fernando Feliz ind on the north, east and west by the country inhabited by the unchristianized Indians.” It is in this instrument that the present spelling, “Y: okayo,” “ppears, shorn of the foreign prefix de,® and is the one officially adopted by the Indians. The lands in the Russian River Valley adjacent to Ukiah were held as Communal property for generations by the progenitors of these Indians. Fneroachment by the whites began in 1844,° when Fernando Feliz obtained the Sanel grant, now known as Sanel Valley, the site of Hopland. Although, ’S was mentioned above, the grant to Juarez was made in 1846, conveying eight “sitios de ganado mayor,” or eight places for cattle—approximately cight square leagues—the first actual settler in the Ukiah Valley seems to 209 @ 4 Vo 2 lo ( court ) CQ