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Volume 066-4 - October 2012 (6 pages)
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Page: of 6
NCHS Bulletin October 2012
The current Nevada City Rancheria Tribal
Council Chairman Richard Johnson as a
very young boy on the old Reservation.
county government so that it was relatively safe from the
persecution the Nisenan were receiving at that point in time.
Later, at a time before women in the United States could
vote, the Nisenan would be protected by a strong woman,
Belle Rolfe Douglas. Belle was born in Nevada City in
1868, the daughter of Gold Rush pioneers. She was a charter
member of the local Native Daughters of the Golden West,
Laurel Parlor #6, and with the assistance of the Native Sons
of the Golden West, they secured lawyers to represent the
Nisenan and assist Headman Charley Cully in obtaining a
land allotment in 1887. Upon Cully’s death in 1911 the Sons
and Daughters intervened again, this time using Nevada
City’s not insignificant political influence to obtain a presidential executive order from President Woodrow Wilson
that turned Cully’s land allotment into a federally recognized reservation called the Nevada City Rancheria.
Unfortunately, the Nevada City Rancheria was terminated by Congress in 1964 during the termination era and
the Rancheria act. The Tribe’s land was sold at auction to
the highest bidder. Today, all but four of California’s 44
terminated Rancherias (or reservations) have been restored
and the Tribes have regained their federal status as Indians.
The Nevada City Rancheria is one of the four that was not
restored. The local Nisenan continue to fight for restoration, and in order to do so all members of the Nevada City
Rancheria are required to clearly show their genealogy and
document their direct family ties to this place prior to 1848,
confirming the Tribe’s existence into the future.
Today, the Nevada City Rancheria and its Nisenan people are governed by a modern Tribal Council. The current
Council Chairman is Richard Johnson, who, along with
Tribal Elders Rose Kelly Enos and Carol Mix Hall, was
born on the Rancheria. In 1951 authorities removed all the
children from the Rancheria and placed them in foster care.
The Tribe is not certain exactly how or why these removals
happened but has begun research into the details.
Historically, American Indian children throughout the
West have been forcibly removed from their natural homes
and placed in Indian Boarding Schools. These schools allegedly were created in order to “kill the Indian and save
the man.” Horrendous stories of widespread abuse in these
schools have now come to light. Generations of Native
Americans suffered at the hands of the Boarding Schools
and the various “missionaries” who ran them for the federal
Apache children before and after being taken from their
families and sent to an Indian Boarding School.