The Atsugewi are Native Americans residing in northeastern

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Their traditional lands are near

Mount Shasta Mount Shasta ( Shasta: ''Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki''; Karuk: ''Úytaahkoo'') is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California. At an elevation of , it is the second-highest peak in the Cascades ...

, specifically the

Pit River The Pit River is a major river draining from northeastern California into the state's Central Valley. The Pit, the Klamath and the Columbia are the only three rivers in the U.S. that cross the Cascade Range. The longest tributary of the Sacr ...

drainage on Burney, Hat, and Dixie Valley or Horse Creeks. They are closely related to the

Achomawi Achomawi (also Achumawi, Ajumawi and Ahjumawi), are the northerly nine (out of eleven) bands of the Pit River tribe of Palaihnihan Native Americans who live in what is now northeastern California in the United States. These 5 autonomous bands ...

and consisted of two groups (the Atsugé and the Apwaruge). The Atsugé ("pine-tree people") traditionally are from the Hat Creek area, and the Apwaruge ("juniper-tree people") are from the Dixie Valley. They lived to the south of the

History

The Atsugewi traditionally lived by

hunting and gathering A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

and lived in small groups without centralized political authority. There was a cultural division into two smaller bands, based on the area of habitation. Inhabitants of Hat Creek were known as the "pine tree people" or Atsuge. In turn the residents of Apwariwa or Dixie Valley were known as the "juniper tree people" or Mahuopani; or by the more common Apwaruge, named after the valley itself. Exchanges of gifts and commercial trades were very common between the two bands.

Neighboring cultures

Relations with the nearby

settlements were varied for both Atsugewi bands. For example interactions between the territoriality adjacent band of Achomawi, the Illmawi, and the Atsuge were generally terse. These bad feelings arose in part from particular Atsuge trespassing upon Illmawi territory while traveling through to collect obsidian from the nearby Glass Mountain. In general however the Achomawi speaking peoples were the principal trading destination for most Atsugewi manufactured goods and foodstuffs. Contact between the Achomawi and Atsugewi speakers with the

Klamath Klamath may refer to: Ethnic groups *Klamath people, a Native American people of California and Oregon **Klamath Tribes, a federally recognized group of tribes in Oregon *Klamath language, spoken by the Klamath people Places in the United States * ...

and

Modoc Modoc may refer to: Ethnic groups *Modoc people, a Native American/First Nations people ** Modoc language **Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe of Modoc *Modoc War, the last armed resistance of the Modoc people in 1873 *The "Mo ...

to the north largely wasn't documented. Despite this Garth found it probable that there were extensive interactions between the cultures prior to the adoption of horses by the Northerners.

Leslie Spier Leslie Spier (December 13, 1893 – December 3, 1961) was an American anthropologist best known for his ethnographic studies of American Indians. He spent a great deal of his professional life as a teacher; he retired in 1955 and died in 1961.Rob ...

concluded that the Klamath and their Modoc relatives gained horses in the 1820s. Atsugewi settlements were likely attacked primarily by Modoc. Outsahone was applied to both the Klamath and Modoc peoples. Captured people would be sold into slavery at an intertribal

slave market A slave market is a place where slaves are bought and sold. These markets became a key phenomenon in the history of slavery. Slave markets in the Ottoman Empire In the Ottoman Empire during the mid-14th century, slaves were traded in special ...

The Dalles The Dalles is the largest city of Wasco County, Oregon, United States. The population was 16,010 at the 2020 census, and it is the largest city on the Oregon side of the Columbia River between the Portland Metropolitan Area, and Hermiston ...

in present-day Oregon. Atsugewi manufactured bows were prized by the neighboring

Paiute Paiute (; also Piute) refers to three non-contiguous groups of indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Although their languages are related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, these three groups do not form a single set. The term "Pai ...

and

. Called dumidiyi, the bows were of a similar design to those made by the

Yurok The Yurok (Karuk language: Yurúkvaarar / Yuru Kyara - "downriver Indian; i.e. Yurok Indian") are an Indigenous people from along the Klamath River and Pacific coast, whose homelands are located in present-day California stretching from Trinidad ...

. The best dumidiyi were made of yew wood by the Atsuge. As fairly peaceable relations developed with Paiute groups by 1870, these yew bows became a common trade item. The visiting Paiute would bring stockpiles of

buckskins Buckskins are clothing, usually consisting of a jacket and leggings, made from buckskin, a soft sueded leather from the hide of deer. Buckskins are often trimmed with a fringe – originally a functional detail, to allow the garment to s ...

red ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

, glass beads, guns, and especially

shell currency Shell money is a medium of trade, exchange similar to coin money and other forms of commodity money, and was once commonly used in many parts of the world. Shell money usually consisted of whole or partial sea shells, often worked into beads or o ...

created from Olivella biplicata shells in central and southern California. In return these trading goods were exchanged for Atsugewi basket and bow goods. The

Tolowa The Tolowa people or Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni’ are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethno-linguistic group. Two rancherias (Smith River and Elk Valley) still reside in their traditional territory in northwestern California. Tho ...

, Shasta, Yurok, Klamath, Atsugewi and groups of

Western Mono The Mono ( ) are a Native American people who traditionally live in the central Sierra Nevada, the Eastern Sierra (generally south of Bridgeport), the Mono Basin, and adjacent areas of the Great Basin. The Eastern mono is often grouped under t ...

and Paiute were among those known to have adopted buckskin clothing from the distant

Plains Indians Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of N ...

. For the Astugewi, this relatively new clothing was called dwákawi. They did not employ a system of consistently smoking the fresh skins. Only buckskins for formal occasions were smoked, leaving daily worn buckskins prone to water damage. The Astugewi potentially did not recognise the water resistance given the smoking process. Garth conjectured that the treating the buckskins with smoke was a recent development, having "a close connection with the introduction of buckskin clothing itself" but lacked direct evidence of this trend.

Culture

Ethnobotany

A full list of Atsugewi plants can be found at http://naeb.brit.org/uses/tribes/19/ (68 documented uses).

Language

The

Atsugewi language Atsugewi is a recently extinct Palaihnihan language of northeastern California spoken by the Atsugewi people of Hat Creek and Dixie Valley. In 1962, there were four fluent speakers out of an ethnic group of 200, all elderly; the last of these d ...

is a

Palaihnihan Palaihnihan (also Palaihnih) is a language family of northeastern California. It consists of two closely related languages, both now extinct: # Atsugewi ''(†)'' # Achumawi ''(†)'' (ís siwa wó disi, also known as Achomawi, Pit River Indian ...

language. As of 1994, an estimated three people spoke Atsugewi. The majority of the tribe speaks

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Tribes

Today many Atsugewi are enrolled in the

Pit River Tribe The Pit River Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of eleven bands of indigenous peoples of California. They primarily live along the Pit River in the northeast corner of California.Susanville Indian Rancheria The Susanville Indian Rancheria is a federally recognized ranchería of Native Americans in northeastern California whose people are from the Washoe, Achomawi, Mountain Maidu, Northern Paiute, and Atsugewi tribes.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 Achumawi and Atsugewi as 3,000. A more detailed analysis by Fred B. Kniffen arrived at the same figure. T. R. Garth (1978:237) estimated the Atsugewi population at a maximum of 850.Garth, T. R. Atsugewi. In ''Handbook of North American Indians,'' William C. Sturtevant, general editor, vol. 8, California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 236-243. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1978. p. 237 Kroeber estimated the combined population of the Achumawi and Atsugewi in 1910 as 1,100. The population was given as about 500 in 1936.

Notes

Bibliography

* * * * * *

External links

Atsugewi
College of the Siskiyous * , Four Directions Institute

fro

{{DEFAULTSORT:Atsugewi Pit River tribes Native American tribes in California