202 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mention and use. They do not believe that these Indians had 

 tribal names, tribal chiefs, or organizations. 



These Indians, then, were greatly scattered in villages. Many 

 of these villages spoke the same language, and in this case the 

 group might be said to form a tribe. For instance, one dialect 

 was spoken by the Indians on the east side of the Sacramento Val- 

 ley, from the American River on the south to Chico Creek on the 

 north, and eastward to the summit of, or perhaps in some places 

 beyond the summit of, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, thus cover- 

 ing a territory of about ninety by fifty miles. From 1840 to 1850 

 there were from eighty to one hundred villages on that side of 

 the Sacramento Valley, and an Indian population of seven or 

 eight thousand. Yet, though the area and population were 

 large, they had no tribal name, as far as any of the old settlers 

 could ever learn, nor have I been able to trace one in my own 

 researches with Indians belonging to that tribe ; I therefore con- 

 clude that there was an entire absence of any tribal feature other 

 than language, and that we have here an unconscious, unborn 

 tribe, possibly on the verge of conscious tribal union. 



As for the villages, many of them bore the name of the creek 

 on or near which they were situated : for example, Nem-Sa-Win 

 (Nem meaning " good," and Sawin " stream "* ) was the Indian 

 name for Butte Creek, Sulam-Sa-Win for Chico Creek, and Tem- 

 Sa-Win and Kem-Sa-Win for other creeks. An Indian village 

 was situated on each of these streams, and bore the name of the 

 stream. 



The majority of the old Indian villages were inhabited be- 

 tween the years 1840 and 1860, and probably a few as late as 

 1865 or 1870. Most of these villages, it will be seen, had a pop- 

 ulation of from one to four hundred, excepting Coins, which, 

 according to General Bidwell, had, as late as the year 1845, a 

 population of a thousand or twelve hundred, and which would 

 seem to have been a sort of capital city for the Sacramento Valley 

 Indians. Upon the site of this old rancheria is located the pres- 

 ent town of Colusa, which took its name from the Colus village. 

 Many instances of this change of population are to be found 

 throughout the State of California. Thus in the particular region 

 above referred to are to be found the towns of Yuba City, Butte 

 City, and Princeton, all built upon the sites of former rancherias. 

 The city of Marysville, situated not far from the above-named 

 towns, is located between two very old Indian villages, and the 

 town limits even now are impinging upon one of them. 



The Indians of this region were dependent upon the streams 

 for existence, their villages being found only upon the banks of 

 the Sacramento River and its tributaries. There were good fish- 

 ing and hunting along these streams while the fertile soil of the 



