The Wintu (also Northern Wintun) are Native Americans who live in what is now

Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

. They are part of a loose association of peoples known collectively as the

Wintun The Wintun are members of several related Native American peoples of Northern California, including the Wintu (northern), Nomlaki (central), and Patwin (southern).Pritzker, 152 Nomlaki The Nomlaki (also Noamlakee, Central Wintu, Nomelaki) are a Wintun people native to the area of the Sacramento Valley, extending westward to the Coast Range in Northern California. Today some Nomlaki people are enrolled in the federally recogni ...

and the

Patwin The Patwin (also Patween, Southern Wintu) are a band of Wintun people native to the area of Northern California. The Patwin comprise the southern branch of the Wintun group, native inhabitants of California since approximately 500 AD. The Patw ...

. The Wintu language is part of the

Penutian Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian s ...

language family. Historically, the Wintu lived primarily on the western side of the northern part of the

Sacramento Valley , photo =Sacramento Riverfront.jpg , photo_caption= Sacramento , map_image=Map california central valley.jpg , map_caption= The Central Valley of California , location = California, United States , coordinates = , boundaries = Sierra Nevada (ea ...

, from the

Sacramento River The Sacramento River ( es, Río Sacramento) is the principal river of Northern California in the United States and is the largest river in California. Rising in the Klamath Mountains, the river flows south for before reaching the Sacramento� ...

to the Coast Range. The range of the Wintu also included the southern portions of the Upper

(south of the Salt Creek drainage), the southern portion of the

McCloud River The McCloud River is a longU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 10, 2011 river that flows east of and parallel to the upper Sacramento River, in Siskiyou County and S ...

, and the upper Trinity River. They also lived in the vicinity of present-day Chico, on the west side of the river extending to the Coast Ranges. Today most Wintus live on reservations and rancherias in Colusa, Glenn, Yolo, Mendocino, and Shasta counties.

History

The first recorded encounter between Wintu and Euro-Americans dates from the 1826 expedition of

Jedediah Smith Jedediah Strong Smith (January 6, 1799 – May 27, 1831) was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the Western United States, an ...

, followed by an 1827 expedition led by

Peter Skene Ogden Peter Skene Ogden (alternately Skeene, Skein, or Skeen; baptised 12 February 1790 – 27 September 1854) was a British-Canadian fur trader and an early explorer of what is now British Columbia and the Western United States. During his many expedi ...

. Between 1830 and 1833, many Wintu died from a

malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. ...

epidemic An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time. Epidemics of infectious ...

that killed an estimated 75% of the indigenous population in the upper and central

. In the following years, the weakened Wintu fell victim to competition for resources by incoming European-American settlers. The settlers' sheep and cattle herds destroyed the Wintu food supply while

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rs' processing activities caused

pollution Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, th ...

of rivers. The Wintu were also forced to work as laborers in gold mining operations. In 1846,

John C. Frémont John Charles Frémont or Fremont (January 21, 1813July 13, 1890) was an American explorer, military officer, and politician. He was a U.S. Senator from California and was the first Republican nominee for president of the United States in 1856 ...

and

Kit Carson Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime by biographies and ...

accompanied by local white settlers killed 175 Wintu and Yana by force of arms Settlers tried to take over Wintu land and relocate them west of Clear Creek. At a "friendship feast" in 1850, settlers served poisoned food to local natives, from which 100 ''Nomsuu'' and 45 Wenemem Wintu died. More deaths of Wintu and destruction of their land followed in 1851 and 1852, in incidents such as the Bridge Gulch Massacre.

Culture

The Wintu language is one of the

Wintuan languages Wintuan (also Wintun, Wintoon, Copeh, Copehan) is a family of languages spoken in the Sacramento Valley of central Northern California. All Wintuan languages are either extinct or severely endangered. Classification Family division Shipley (1 ...

; it is also called ''

Wintu The Wintu (also Northern Wintun) are Native Americans who live in what is now Northern California. They are part of a loose association of peoples known collectively as the Wintun (or Wintuan). Others are the Nomlaki and the Patwin. The Wintu ...

''. The religious stories and legends of the Trinity River Wintu were told by Grant Towendolly to Marcelle Masson, who published them in ''A Bag of Bones'' (1966).

Population

Scholars have disagreed about the historic population of the tribes before European-American contact.

Alfred L. Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...

estimated the combined 1770 population of the Wintu,

Nomlaki The Nomlaki (also Noamlakee, Central Wintu, Nomelaki) are a Wintun people native to the area of the Sacramento Valley, extending westward to the Coast Range in Northern California. Today some Nomlaki people are enrolled in the federally recogni ...

, and

as 12,000. Sherburne F. Cook initially put the population of the Wintu proper as 2,950, but later nearly doubled his estimate to 5,300. Frank R. LaPena estimated a total of 14,250 in his work of the 1970s.LaPena, p. 325 Kroeber estimated the population of the Wintu, Nomlaki, and Patwin in 1910 as about 1,000. Today the population has recovered somewhat and there are about 2,500 Wintun, many of whom live on the

Round Valley Reservation The Round Valley Indian Reservation is a federally recognized Indian reservation lying primarily in northern Mendocino County, California, United States. A small part of it extends northward into southern Trinity County. The total land area, incl ...

, and on the Colusa,

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, Grindstone Creek, Redding, and Rumsey rancherias.

Notes

References

Christopher Chase-Dunn Christopher K. Chase-Dunn (born January 10, 1944, Corvallis, Oregon) is an American sociologist best known for his contributions to world-systems theory. Education and career Chase-Dunn earned his PhD in 1975 at Stanford University (studying ...

, Christopher K., and Kelly M. Mann. 1998. ''The Wintu and Their Neighbors: A Very Small World-system in Northern California''. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. . * * * Demetracopoulou, Dorothy. 1935. "Wintu Songs". ''Anthropos'' 30:483-494. * Du Bois, Cora A. 1935. "Wintu Ethnography", ''University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology'' 36:1-148. * Du Bois, Cora A., and Dorothy Demetracopoulou. 1931. "Wintu Myths", ''University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology'' 28:279-403. * Hogue, Helen S., and Margaret Guilford-Kardell. 1977. ''Wintu Trails''. Revised edition; originally published in 1948. Shasta Historical Society, Reading, California. * Hoveman, Alice R. 2002. ''Journey to Justice: The Wintu People and the Salmon''. Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Redding, California. . * Kroeber, A. L. 1925. ''Handbook of the Indians of California''. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington, D.C. * LaPena, Frank R. 1978. "Wintu", in ''California'', edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 324–340. ''Handbook of North American Indians'', William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. * LaPena, Frank R. 1987. ''The world is a Gift''. Limestone Press, San Francisco. * LaPena, Frank R. 2004. ''Dream Songs and Ceremony: Reflections on Traditional California Indian Dance''. Great Valley Books, Berkeley, California. . * McLeod, Christopher. 2001. ''In the Light of Reverence''. Videocassette. Bullfrog Films, Oley, Pennsylvania. . * McKibbin, Grace, and Alice Shepherd. 1997. ''In My Own Words: Stories, Songs, and Memories of Grace McKibbin, Wintu''.

Heyday Books Heyday is an independent nonprofit publisher based in Berkeley, California. Heyday was founded by Malcolm Margolin in 1974 when he wrote, typeset, designed, and distributed ''The East Bay Out'', a guide to the natural history of the hills and ba ...

, Berkeley, California. . * Towendolly, Grant. 1966. ''A Bag of Bones: The Wintu Myths of a Trinity River Indian''. Edited by Marcelle Masson. Naturegraph, Oakland, California. ; .