The Native American Era

The Nisenan

Sacramento Valley, including Citrus Heights, was home to the Nisenan group of Native Americans. They were a part of a larger group known as the Maidu. The Nisenan people lived off the area’s rich natural resources, hunting, fishing and gathering plant-based foods. Acorns gathered from the oak forest that surrounded them was a main food staple. They used mortar and pestle grinding stones to make acorn meal. These grinding tools have been found in and around the Citrus Heights area. 

A severe malaria epidemic in the 1830s killed an estimated 75% of the Native American population in this area. This was about the time that European fur trappers arrived in the Sacramento Valley. A few years later, the gold rush attracted hundreds of thousands of Europeans. They appropriated the Nisenan’s land, decimated their resources and brought violence and more disease. The Nisenan people were no longer in the Citrus Heights area by the time the first Europeans settled here in the late 1840s. 

Please click any of the thumbnails below to enlarge.