CALIFORNIA STANDOFF

Butte County mining camps and foothill farms were an active front in the California Indian wars Using centuriesold 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 mid1850s Meanwhile quarrels between miners and farmers and with John Bidwell continued as Civil War loyalties undermined unity against the Indian raiders now out of Deer Creek In 1863 Bidwell urged the Interior Department to expunge Butte County of all the Maiduexcept his own workers mostly Mechoopda Maidu After centuries of selfgovernance this independent tribelet had to labor for him on their own historic territory A few Mechoopdas remembering the dignity of autonomy and selfsufficiency joined in Mountain Maidu raids on Bidwell’s ranch Bloody Butte County conflicts culminated in 1865 with that county’s final round of Indians’ and settlers’ mutual retaliatory killings