Shasta

Names of Shasta groups: Shasta, Kado-sadi (possible Shastan name for smaller group in Oregon) Region: Southwestern Oregon and northern California # of speakers: extinct

       "The Shastas lived primarily in northern California along the middle of the Klamath River in the drainage area of two tributaries, the Scott and Shasta rivers. A small portion of the the tribe lived across the California border in Oregon. The name Shasta is believed to be derived from a well-known tribe living near the site of Yreka, California, around 1874. One ethnologist, Roland B. Dixon, gives Kaho-sadi as the Shastan name for the smaller portion of the tribe in Oregon. Others say it is the name for the tribal language. Some Shasta villages in Oregon were south of present-day Ashland and Jacksonville on the northern borders of the Siskiyou Mountains and perhaps between Ashland and Table Rock in the Rogue River drainage area. The Oregon Shastas and two other Oregon tribes, the Takelmas and Latgawas (Rogues), had a common bond in opposing encroaching miners and settlers in the Rogue River country. On one occasion, while escaping a posse of whites the Shastas hid out in the lands of the Rogues. On July 21, 1852, the Rogues signed a tenuous peace treaty with American officials, by which they agreed not to communicate with the Shastas, whose warriors continued to join the Rogues to avenge Shastan blood spilled by miners. In their lust for gold the miners often ignored that some of their victims were friendly to whites. The Oregon Shastas were included in the treaties that the United States effected with the Indians of the Rogue River valley in the mid-1850s, and they were eventually removed with those Indians to the Grand Ronde and Siletz reservations of Oregon. One the Grand Ronde in 1871 they numbered 51. On the Siletz Reservation that same year, along with Chastacostas and Umpquas, they numbered 57." (Ruby and Brown, p. 189)

The Shasta Language Tree

---

This page was last updated on Friday, February 7, 1997 9:33:03 PM