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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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no game....and when their squaws fail to bring them enough to eat they will go beg for something to. eat at white ranches or towns. "Fifty percent of the Nisenan in Crenshaw's district died between 1849 and 1854. ret (See A Comparative Census of Some Nisenan Tribes in 1849 and 1854, p. 66.) Crenshaw attributed their deaths to the depletion of natural food sources, epidemics, eating excessive quantities of spoiled and diseased livestock abandoned on the immi: : eee ; : sien 78 grant trails, excessive drinking and the general change in their mode of living. Prior to 1849, Nisenan tribes in Crenshaw's district could catch enough fish on the Yuba River and its tributaries in one week to feed them all winter. This food source was destroyed by the immigrants' mining operations. The acorn crop also failed in the early 1850's and Nisenan tribes had to harvest supplemental manzanita berries, toad stools and buckeye berries. In some areas, ranchers permitted squaws to pick up the small potatoes of little economic value so they would not starve 79 However, despite the great loss of life and personal hardship, Crenshaw reported that Nisenan tribes in Placer, Nevada, Sierra and Yuba Counties, with the exception of the Grass Valley, some Bear River and Yuba City (Yuba) Nisenan tribes, continually resisted every attempt by the "charitable officers" of the Federal Government to remove them to the Nome Lackee reserve, 180 . In February 1855, the deputation of Grass Valley Nisenan chiefs headed by ; King Weimer returned to their homeland from the Nome Lackee reserve and discussed relocation with their tribesman. King Weimer urged the confederation of Grass Valley tribes to return with him to the reservation where "there was plenty of bai and other eatables, good accommodations and the Indians were content .""181 However, most Grass Valley tribes had no intention of leaving their homelands and King Weimer's endorsement of the immigrants' Indian removal policy caused a general revolt. King Weimer was demoted from "king" of the confederation of Grass Valley tribes to "captain" and a spokesman of his tribe 15? The latter was the only Nisenan group that returned with him to Nome Lackee. Captain Weimer's recommendation to the confederation of Grass Valley tribes had encouraged Superintendent Henley to predict that one thousand of them would be 40