Wintu

The Wintu lived on the west side of the Sacramento River. Their name means "people" in their native language. Their neighbours were the Costanoans, Maidu, Miwok and the Yokut. They were organised into tribelets, made up of a main permanent village and several temporary satellite villages. According to Carl Waldman, the author of Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes (1988): "They wore little clothing, mainly breechcloths, aprons, blankets, and robes."

Evelyn Wolfson has pointed out that: "They lived in conical houses which they framed with saplings and covered them with evergreen boughs and bark. They arranged them around a large sweat house. The foundation of the sweat house was dug below ground and the upper portion was framed and covered like their houses. It was used only by the men for bathing and socializing."

The Wintu netted and speared salmon. Robert F. Heizer has pointed out that tribes such as the Wintu "were able to harvest considerable quantities of fish during part of the year... but their other potential food resources were so abundant that fish did not become a staple as it did in Northwestern California."

Using dogs, the Wintu were skilled hunters of deer and elk. They also smoked brown bears from their dens and went on group rabbitt hunts. The women also collected acorns, seeds and grubs. The ethnographer, Dorothy Demetrocopoulou, has argued that the Wintu's relationship with nature was "one of intimacy and mutual courtesy. He kills for a deer only when he needs it for his livelihood, and utilizes every, part of it, hoof and marrow and hide and sinew and flesh: waste is abhorrent to him, not because he believes in the intrinsic virtue of thrift, but because the deer had died for him."

Dorothy Demetrocopoulou interviewed a Wintu woman about the tribe's attitude towards the environment. "The white people never cared for land or deer or bear. When we Indians kill meat we eat it all up. When we dig roots we make little holes. When we build houses we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don't chop down the trees. We use only dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull up the trees, kill everything... The spirit of the land hates them. They blast out trees and stir it up to its depths. They saw up the trees. That hurts them. The Indians never hurt anything, but the white people destroy all."

Robert F. Heizer argues: "Hunters had to be physically clean if deer were to allow themselves to be shot, and so the hunter bathed, stood in fragrant smoke, avoided sexual contact for a certain period before he hunted, and thought pure thoughts. Where some, today, might say that a hunter purified himself to remove the human odor, which would alarm the deer, Indians would have said that that was the way the deer wished it if they were to permit themselves to be shot... A Wintu hunter had to possess two things. First was skill in stalking deer and the ability to use his bow. Second was what was called luck, by which was meant ensuring that the spirit of the deer was not offended by the failure of the hunter to go through the proper ritual preparation."

In August 1826 Jedediah Smith, a mountain man and a member of the American Fur Company, decided to search out new trapping grounds in the southwest. In August 1826, Smith and a 15 men team headed for the Wasatch Mountains. After crossing the Colorado River the men entered the Black Mountains of Arizona. Smith was unable to find "beaver water" and instead of retracing his steps decided to cross the Mojave Desert in California. It took the party 15 days to cross this flat, salt-crusted plain under a blazing sun. Eventually they arrived at what is now Los Angeles. As Kevin Starr has pointed out that "the Smith party constituted the first American penetration of California overland from the east." During this journey they became the first American pioneers to meet the Wintu.

After the 1849 Gold Rush the settlers came into conflict with the Wintu. Evelyn Wolfson has argued: "In the mid-1850s a group of white settlers in Shasta County hosted a feast for the Wintu and put poison in the food. One hundred Wintu died at the feast. The survivors tried to warn another group not to share a feast with neighbouring whites, but it was too late. Forty-five more natives died from poisoned food. Later the settlers dynamited a natural rock bridge traversing Clear Creek to keep the Wintu from crossing. They burned a Council House and killed three hundred more Indians." It is estimated that between 1840 and 1900 the population of the Wintu fell from 14,000 to 395.

The Shastra Dam, across the Sacramento River, at the north end of the Sacramento Valley, was constructed between 1935 and 1945. This resulted in the flooding of the traditional lands of the Wintu. More than 90 percent of their original land was lost, and the ten percent that remains now lies along the lower McCloud River. A large number of burial sites and other sacred locations are now several hundred feet below the surface of Shasta Lake.

Primary Sources

(1) Dorothy Demetrocopoulou, Wintu Songs (1935)

The white people never cared for land or deer or bear. When we Indians kill meat we eat it all up. When we dig roots we make little holes. When we build houses we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don't chop down the trees. We use only dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull up the trees, kill everything. The tree says, "Don't. I am sore. Don't hurt me." But they chop it down and cut it up. The spirit of the land hates them. They blast out trees and stir it up to its depths. They saw up the trees. That hurts them. The Indians never hurt anything, but the white people destroy all. They blast rocks and scatter them on the earth. The rock says, "Don't. You are hurting me...." The water, it can't be hurt. The white people go to the river and turn it into dry land. The water says, "I don't care. I am water. You can use me all you wish. I am always the same. I can't be used up. Use me. I am water. You can't hurt me." The white people use the water of sacred springs in their houses. The water says, "That is all right. You can use me but you can't overcome me." All that is water says this. "Wherever you put me I'll be in my home. I am awfully smart. Lead me out of my springs, lead me from my rivers, but I came from the ocean and I shall go back into the ocean. You can dig a ditch and put me in it, but I go only so far and I am out of sight. I am awfully smart. When I am out of sight I am on my way home."

(2) Robert F. Heizer, The Natural World of the California Indians (1980)

All over California rituals of supplication, appreciation, and condolence were made in connection with hunting or plant-food gathering, an acknowledgment by man of the crucial help he had received. These feelings were given tacit expression in rituals such as the first-salmon ceremony among the Yurok Indians of Northwestern California. The ritual was designed to assure a constant and adequate supply of salmon, even for tribes living above the Yurok on the Klamath River. Hunters had to be physically clean if deer were to allow themselves to be shot, and so the hunter bathed, stood in fragrant smoke, avoided sexual contact for a certain period before he hunted, and thought pure thoughts. Where some, today, might say that a hunter purified himself to remove the human odor, which would alarm the deer, Indians would have said that that was the way the deer wished it if they were to permit themselves to be shot. A Wintu hunter had to possess two things. First was skill in stalking deer and the ability to use his bow. Second was what was called luck, by which was meant ensuring that the spirit of the deer was not offended by the failure of the hunter to go through the proper ritual preparation. A Wintu hunter who had lost his luck that is, could not succeed in killing a deer - did not say. "I cannot kill deer any more"; he said, "Deer don't want to die for me."