Shasta people

Shasta people

Total population
653[1]
Regions with significant populations
United States ( California,  Oregon)
Languages
English, formerly Shastan languages
Related ethnic groups
Okwanuchu

The Shastan peoples are a group of linguistically related Indigenous peoples from the Klamath Mountains. They traditionally inhabited portions of several regional waterways, including the Klamath, Salmon, Sacramento and McCloud rivers. Shastan lands presently form portions of the Siskiyou, Klamath and Jackson counties. Scholars have generally divided the Shastan peoples into four languages, although arguments in favor of more or fewer existing have been made. Speakers of Shasta proper-Kahosadi, Konomihu, Okwanuchu, and Tlohomtah’hello "New River" Shasta resided in settlements typically near a water source. Their villages often had only either one or two families. Larger villages had more families and additional buildings used by the community.

The California Gold Rush drew in an influx of outsiders into California in the late 1840s eager to gain mineral wealth. For the Shasta, this was a devastating process as their lands soon had thousands of miners operating along various waterways. Conflicts arose as the outsiders did not respect the Shasta or their homeland. Introduction to new diseases and fighting against invading Americans rapidly reduced the number of Shasta. The Shasta residents of Bear Creek were active in Rogue River Wars and assisted the Takelma until they were forcibly removed to the Grande Ronde and Siletz Reservations in Oregon. In the late 1850s the Shastan peoples of California were forcibly removed from their territories and also sent to the same two distant reservations.^[2] By the early years of the 20th century perhaps only 100 Shasta individual existed.^[3] Some Shasta descendants still reside at the Grand Ronde and Siletz Reservations, while others are in Siskiyou county at the Quartz Valley Indian Reservation or Yreka. Many former members of the Shasta tribe have also been inducted into the Karuk and Alturas tribes.