Yahi people
The Yana are a group of Native Americans indigenous to Northern California in the central Sierra Nevada, on the western side of the range. Their lands bordered the Yuba and Feather rivers. The Yana-speaking people comprised four groups: the Northern Yana, the Central Yana, the Southern Yana, and the Yahi. The noun stem Ya- means "person"; the noun suffix is -na in the northern Yana dialects and -hi [xi] in the southern dialects. The Yana continue to be in California as members of Redding Rancheria.
The anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber put the 1770 population of the Yana at 1,500, and Sherburne F. Cook estimated their numbers at 1,900 and 1,850, while other estimates of the total Yana population before the Gold Rush exceed 3,000. They lived on wild game, salmon, fruit, acorns and roots. Their territory was approximately 2400 square miles, or more than 6000 km2, and contained mountain streams, gorges, boulder-strewn hills, and lush meadows. Each group had relatively distinct boundaries, dialects and customs.
After James W. Marshall discovered gold in 1848, tens of thousands of gold-miners and ranchers flocked into Yana territory. Yana territory was seized, especially the lands around the Yuba and Feather rivers, where the Yana fished for salmon, a major source of food. The food supply dropped dramatically, as gold mining damaged the streams and fish runs, and deer fled the crowded area.
The Yahi were the southernmost portion of the Yana. They were hunter-gatherers who lived in small egalitarian bands without centralized political authority, and were reclusive and fiercely defended their territory of mountain canyons. The Yahi initially numbered around 400.
The Yahi were the first Yana group to suffer from the Californian Gold Rush, as their lands were the closest to the gold mines. They suffered great population losses from the loss of their traditional food supplies and fought with the settlers over territory. Lacking firearms, they were destroyed by armed white settlers in multiple raids. The settlers were led by Indian hunter Robert Anderson, whose men launched two raids in 1865 which killed about seventy people combined. The massacre reduced the Yahi, who were already suffering from starvation, to a population of less than 100.
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