Enter a name, company, place or keywords to search across this item. Then click "Search" (or hit Enter).
A Case Study of a Northern California Indian Tribe - Cultural Change to 1860 (1977) (109 pages)
Go to the Archive Home
Go to Thumbnail View of this Item
Go to Single Page View of this Item
Download the Page Image
Copy the Page Text to the Clipboard
Don't highlight the search terms on the Image
Show the Page Image
Show the Image Page Text
Reset View and Center Image
Zoom Out
Zoom In
Rotate Left
Rotate Right
Toggle Full Page View
Flip Image Horizontally
More Information About this Image
Get a Citation for Page or Image - Copy to the Clipboard
Go to the Previous Page (or Left Arrow key)
Go to the Next Page (or Right Arrow key)
Page: of 109
The southern boundary line then crossed the headwaters of the North Fork of the
Cosumnes River and followed the Middie Fork of the Cosumnes River and the Mokelumne
River to the Sacramento River. The western boundary of the Nisenan nation ran north,
following the Sacramento and Feather Rivers, and northeast above the North Fork of
the Yuba River to the southern end of Sierra Valley.’
Kroeber refined Dixon's views on Nisenan political boundaries. Kroeber
doubted that the eastern boundary of the Nisenan nation extended to the crest of the
Sierra Nevada mountain range. Washo Indians had hunted west of the Sierras along the
Stanislaus River and probably corssed the Sierras into Nisenan territory.° This
thesis is supported by a notation in John C. Fremont's diary.
-++.a party of Indians (probably Washo) passed them (Fremont's
party) on snow shoes (in the South Lake Tahoe area) who said
that they were going to the western side of the Sierra mountains
to fish.
Kroeber theorized that the southern boundary line of the Nisenan was delineated by an
abrupt linguistic change. It did not follow the Mokelumne River to its junction with
the Sacramento River, but linked a point on the Cosumnes River, ten miles downstream
from the confluence of the Middle and North Forks of the Cosumnes River, toa point
on the Sacramento River, four miles below the city of Sacramento. Kroeber also assumed
that Nisenan occupied the tule marsh on both sides of the Sacramento River, five miles
upstream from its junction with the Feather River to a point four miles below the
city of Sacramento, 19
The tule marsh was permanently occupied only at natural mounds
remaining above the spring run-off water line. Some valley Nisenan villages that
were located next to tributaries of the Sacramento River, i.e., the village at Slough
House on the Cosumnes River, were built on artificial mounds. ?2
Nisenan political boundaries remain controversial and not Subject to fixation. A map in the appendix of this text incorporates Dixon's and Kroeber's theses.
The reader can now appreciate the general distribution of Nisenan territory before
immigrant contact. The purpose of this thesis is to reveal systematically the nature
of this interaction up to 1859,