Butte County mining camps and foothill farms were an active front in the California Indian wars. Using centuries-old tribal tactics, Butte Creeks, the Mountain Maidu tribelets’ warriors, resisted settlers’ seizures of their territories. Making a strategic shift, in 1857, they acquired bases in the neighboring Yahi’s Deer Creek Canyon. They merged with renegades and Yahi fighters, called Mill Creeks, whose raids had terrified Maidu and Tehama County farmers through the mid-1850s. Meanwhile, quarrels between miners and farmers and with John Bidwell continued as Civil War...
Butte County mining camps and foothill farms were an active front in the California Indian wars. Using centuries-old tribal tactics, Butte Creeks, ...
