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

A Case Study of a Northern California Indian Tribe - Cultural Change to 1860 (1977) (109 pages)

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"Trapper", probably another member of the Ewing Young trapping party of 1833, supported Warner's observations. The banks of the Sacramento River....and its tributaries +.-.were at this time (winter 1832) studded with Indian villages of from one to 1200 inhabitants each. (In fall, 1833}, from the extreme northern part of the Sacramento Valley, to the Tulare Lake, death had obtained a victory unequalled.... The decaying bodies compelled us nightly to pitch our tents in the open prairie.... Near the mouth of the American River a shadowy form or 1 ghostly figure could be seen flitting through the forest.27 During the mid 1830's, there was only one recorded exploration of valleyNisenan territory. In the fall of 1837, Captain Belcher contacted survivors of the Wallock Nisenan tribe on the east side of the Sacramento River, at its junction with the Feather River. The Wallocks fled, "leaving a large stock of acorns and all their provisions, fires, etc. behind." 7 The impact of the smallpox epidemic of 1833 on them was later discussed by William D. Brackenridge, a forty-niner. ...-upwards of 1,500 Ind#ans perished by fever in one summer (summer of 1833) their bones lay-strewed about on the hills in all directions, there not being enough of the tribe spared as we were told to bury the dead. 29 ° The smallpox epidemic of 1833 had cancelled out seventy-five percent of the valley Nisenan population.30 The survivors now faced a new assault on their land by another type of invader, the immigrant settler.