The Maidu live on the Greenville, Berry Creek, Enterprise, Mooretown, Auburn and Chico Rancherias. (Eargle: 1986)

The Northwestern Maidu are called Knokow, and the Southern Maidu are called Nisenan. Maidu houses were round, semi-subterranean, and covered with earth. They were valley and plains gatherers, like the Wintun, Miwok and Yokuts, hunting antelope, elk and deer, catching salmon and harvesting acorns.

The Maidu held and annual mourning ceremony, the Keruk, for the recently deceased, which re-enacted the death of the creator, Kukumat. For this ceremony a male and female effigy were created, clothed and burned, rather like the burning of the corn dolly in Europe. Other things such as food, money and blankets were also given to the god by burning. The Maidu participated in the Kuksu cult, also practiced by the Patwin, Pomo, northern Costanonans and the Coast and Sierra Miwok. Kuksu, "the South God" renews the world each year. The ritual was celebrated in round dance houses by dancers with elaborate costumes including large feather headdresses. (Heizer: 1980)

The Northwestern Maidu gave clam disc beads and other shell beads, salmon, salt and digger pine nuts to the Northeastern Maidu, and got bows and arrows, skins, sugar pine nuts, shell beads, deer hides and acorns. They gave obsidian from the Patwin, log rafts from the Southern Maidu and clam disc beads from the Yana. They got clam disc and other shell beads from the Central Wintun and shell beads from the Northern Wintun.(Davis: 1966)

Some contemporary artist of the Maidu people are Judith Lowry, a Mountain Maidu/Hammawi-Pit River Indian, Dalbert S. Castro is a Nisenan Maidu who lives on Auburn Rancheria, Harry Fonseca, a Nisenan artist, Frank D. Tuttle Jr. is a Knonkow Maidu on his mother's side and Yuki on his father's side. He teaches in the Art Department at Mendocino College. Frank L. Day (1902 to 1976) was a Konkow Maidu, an artist in the tradition of naive American art. (This information is from the California Native American Calendar for 1998 by Heyday Press)

Back to Penutian

California Native American Language Map