Tribal History

The Beginning of Time
There was a time when there were no humans, and the world was inhabited by only animals. These were not animals as we think of them today- they were hybrids, having qualities of both human and animal. We still remember these First People and continue to tell oral histories about them- Coyote, Grizzly Bear, Lizard, Deer, Eagle, Condor, Falcon, and others. The First People made the world as it is, and their stories explain a lot about the world as we know it today- how the Sun and Moon went to the sky, how people were created, why people have five fingers, why people die, and how to find various needs such as food, water, fire, music, and medicine.
First European Contact
Spanish-Indian First Contact in the Delta, 1772-1776 In late March 1772, a party of Spanish explorers under Pedro Fages arrived on the shore of the San Joaquin River in the Pittsburg-Antioch area of present-day Contra Costa County, where they looked across the river to Sherman Island, the southernmost point of land in Sacramento County. The next day three explorers turned west and south for Monterey (Crespi [1772] in Bolton 1927:295-298; Fages [1772] in Stanger and Brown 1969:125-126). Although the 1772 expedition diaries do not explicitly mention encounters with Miwok-speaking people of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River confluence, entries in diaries of the subsequent Anza expedition of 1776 suggest that Fages or his scouts had visited a village in the area in 1772. The Anza-Font exploratory expedition from Monterey did document their encounter with the native Miwok-speaking people who held the Sacramento-San Joaquin confluence, including islands in the southern extent of Sacramento County. They arrived at a village of “large, round, and well made” huts in the Antioch vicinity on April 3, 1776.
Chaplain Pedro Font described the initial interaction with the people:
The commander made an effort to please the Indians, giving them glass beads to dispel the fear they manifested as soon as they saw us, for the women went and hid themselves in their huts and the men remained outside, talking rapidly … One of them went and put on the top of the temescal which they had there, a long pole with feathers on the end, and a long strip of rabbit skin with the hair on, which he hung from it like a banner. This we supposed was the sign of peace with which they welcomed us. But meanwhile the children and also some women jumped into the water, embarking on their launches, for they had many very well made of tule, with railings, and with swoop and prow ending in an elevated point, and all the rails equipped with arched poles as if they served as a balustrade or as a back, and with some small oars they rowed with great facility and lightness of touch. The Indians reciprocated the gift by offering us feathers, little sticks, and other gewgaws esteemed by them. [Font (1776) in Bolton 1930:383-384]
Font wrote that the Anza expedition was not the first Spanish party to visit the village. A soldier told him that the 1772 expedition had “arrived at the same village and found it in the same place where we found it” (Font [1776] in Bolton 1930:385). These Miwok probably sent their women and children across the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers to their main village in the present Collinsville area of Solano County. The elaborateness of the described tule boats illustrates the river-and-marsh adaptation of the native people of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Gabriel Moraga led the first Spanish exploratory expedition into the lower Sacramento Valley in October 1808 (Cutter 1957). Since his 1806 expedition, only a few Indian people had left Central Valley villages for the missions, so in 1808 the line between tribal and mission control was just east of Mt. Diablo and south of Carquinez Strait. The Moraga party traveled by horseback eastward from Santa Clara into the San Joaquin Valley, crossed the San Joaquin River, and turned north from Delta Yokuts lands to Plains Miwok-speaking territories. They reached the Cosumnes River on October 5 and on October 7 moved into Nisenan-speaking territory on the American River. On October 9 they arrived at the Feather River in the Nicolaus vicinity, which they mistakenly identified as the Sacramento River. There Moraga noted:
Spanish Era
The Spanish invaded and occupied Alta California in the late 18th century. Twenty-one Franciscan missions were built in California to settle the area, spread the Roman Catholic religion, extract resources from the land, and enslave indigenous people for their labor. The Nisenan people had less interaction with Spanish settlers from the coast compared to neighboring tribes. They were relatively undisturbed by Spanish missionaries and religious missions, though Spanish and Mexican troops occasionally set foot on Nisenan land to capture enslaved indigenous people who had fled (many of whom in one particular example were of the neighboring Miwok tribe), find livestock, or traverse the land (Hurtado 2006).
Spanish penetration toward the lower Sacramento Valley was slowed by the measles epidemic of 1806, but it gathered steam in 1809 and early 1810 when most of the Miwok who controlled both sides of Carquinez Strait were taken to Mission Dolores in San Francisco. Next, in May 1810, the Spanish removed the roadblock of the resistant Suisun Patwins by attacking and destroying three of their villages in the Fairfield area of Solano County (Milliken 1995:210). The Julpun Miwok of the Oakley area in eastern Contra Costa County were taken to Mission Dolores in February and March 1811. The Julpuns Miwok had hunting and fishing rights on the eastern portion of Sherman Island in Sacramento County, and therefore were the first group from this area to be taken to the missions. Four months later, in June 1811, the majority of the Miwok of the Pittsburg-Collinsville area were baptized at Mission San Jose. They also had hunting and fishing territory among the marshy islands that form the southernmost tip of Sacramento County.
The first Spanish boat expedition into the Delta occurred in October 1811. The party of Spanish soldiers, missionary Ramon Abella, and Mission Indian oarsmen explored as far north as Walnut Grove in Sacramento County. Heading out from the San Francisco Presidio, they passed through Miwok lands at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, then turned south to explore the Delta channels of the San Joaquin River and visit a number of Delta Yokuts groups. On October 22, they entered the main channel of the San Joaquin near present-day Lathrop and turned downstream to the north (Abella [1811] in Cook 1960:263). After passing the Stockton area, the party passed north into the territories of Plains Miwok-speaking groups in the Sacramento River portion of the Delta.
They arrived at a large village in the current Walnut Grove vicinity on October 24:
Later Spanish commentaries indicate that one of the two Plains Miwok groups at Walnut Grove were Unisumnes. Proximity, from reconstructed ethnogeography, suggests that the others were Quenemsias. The Unisumne subsequently harbored fugitive Christian Indians, but this event was clearly a “first contact” moment. On the following day, the Spaniards and their Mission Indian rowers entered the main Sacramento River channel and returned south. On the way, they passed the main Bay Miwok village. “Down here, where the two channels unite [Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers], there is a village of the Ompins. Some of the people have already been baptized at San Jose, because they pass over to the opposite shore,” wrote the diarist Abella ([1811] in Cook 1960:264), implying that they had left their main village in Solano County and crossed the river to move south to Mission San Jose. The Plains Miwok-speaking Anizumnes of the Rio Vista vicinity of eastern Solano County were the next river group to be taken to the missions. They arrived en masse at Mission San Jose in March 1812. Like the Ompins and Julpuns Bay Miwok, their hunting and fishing lands extended out into the twisted maze of water channels of southern Sacramento County. Still, as of 1812, no groups with major villages within Sacramento Region had yet been taken to the missions—and none would do so until twelve years later. The long halt in new baptisms from the Sacramento River seems to have been triggered by some undocumented event that caused a number of new Bay Miwok Julpun, Ompin, and Plains Miwok Anizumne Christian converts to flee Mission San Jose in 1812 or 1813. The fact of their flight is known from Mission San Jose death register entries for many of them, entries that state that they died away from the mission as huidos or runaways.
In October 1813, in response to this flight, Sergeant Francisco Soto led 12 soldiers and 100 Mission San Jose Indian auxiliaries into southern Sacramento County by boat to force the runaways to return. But the Indians had been forewarned. The expedition report stated that the men from four local independent groups hid their women and children, then gathered to meet the invading Spanish-led party. A three-hour battle took place on October 27 at the same Walnut Grove location the Abella party had visited in 1811. The fight left an unknown number of tribal men and one Mission Indian leader dead. The Spanish soldiers and Indian auxiliaries returned to their settlements without having retrieved any fugitive Mission San Jose converts (Arguello [1813] in Cook 1960:266-267).
Mission Secularization
Secularization meant the return to the lower Sacramento Valley of large numbers of recently baptized, Cosomne, Gualacomne, Ochejamne, and Ylamne Plains Miwoks, in the late 1830s. Furthermore, it triggered the land distribution process that led the Mexican government to assign large portions of local tribes’ lands in the Sacramento Valley to Hispanic and non-Hispanic westerners during the early 1840s. The return of people to Sacramento Valley and the initiation of ranchos there are described below.
Mission San Jose and Sacramento Valley Groups, 1834-1839 No letup occurred in baptisms at Mission San Jose immediately following passage of the 1834 secularization rules. Over the last three months of the year, 513 new neophytes were baptized there, including 111 Muquelemnes (Lodi region), 48 Ylamnes (Yolo region), 41 Cosomnes (Wilton region), and 26 Ochejamnes (Courtland region). New-convert baptisms dropped, with 56 in 1835 and 68 in 1836. The new converts represented 26 different groups. Most highly represented were the Cosomnes (33 people), Ylamnes (20 people), Muquelemnes (15 people), Ochejamnes (9 people), and Gualacomnes (7 people).
Mission San Jose was closed as a land-holding institution on November 29, 1836. While administration of mission properties was turned over to a governmental appointee, a Franciscan priest stayed on at the mission to conduct the mass, baptisms, weddings, and burials. Jose Jesus Vallejo was appointed administrator, to tally the mission’s holdings and analyze the needs of its Indian community. Vallejo assessed the Indians as needing none of it. The infrastructure of Mission San Jose began to decline rapidly (Belcher 1843:117-118). Most of the bay shore and interior valley lands throughout the East Bay were distributed as private ranchos in 1837, none of it was given back to the Miwok.
The Mission San Jose Indians had to make choices during 1837. The mission-born adults, descended from local tribes near the Eastern San Francisco Bay, could move to the Pueblo of San Jose in search of work or find a place as house servants, field hands, or vaqueros on the new private ranchos. Most of the Indian people at the mission, however, were new neophytes—mainly Plains Miwoks from the Sacramento Valley, with some Sierra Miwoks from the central Sierra Nevada—who had been taken there during and since the late 1820s. They too had a choice, either to stay and work on the East Bay ranches or to return to their Sacramento Valley homelands. The Mission San Jose population dropped from 1,550 in the summer of 1837 to 589 in 1839 (Atherton 1964:57-58; Hartnell in Berger 1941:332). The greater part of the drop was the result of the Miwok going back home to the Sacramento Valley. A British exploratory party encountered an emancipated group of Indians on the lower Sacramento River on their way up to its confluence with the Feather River in November 1837, then met them again on the way back down:
On our passage down, we visited the Indians whom we had found encamped. They were also of the tribe…. They appeared as if they had just returned from plundering the dresses of a theatre, being partially clothed in shirts, jackets, and trousers; in many instances wearing but half of one of the articles; the effect of which, in the case of trousers, was ridiculous in the extreme. Those who could not sport these grotesque dresses, were fancifully decorated with those pigments which wood fires produce, and which, when nearly dry, was scored off, thus displaying skeletons, tattoos, and some indeed exhibited the new patterns of fancy shirts very admirably imitated. [Belcher 1843:125-126]
Similar mixes of ornament probably could have been observed among ex-mission groups at a number of locations in the lower Sacramento Valley. Evidence that Miwoks stayed to work on East Bay ranches is found in the Mission San Jose baptismal register for the late 1830s and early 1840s. The register lists a number of baptisms of infants born to Indians parents on named East Bay ranches. Among the Plains Miwok parents were nine Ochejamnes, four Unizumnes, three Cosomnes, three Muquelemnes, three Seuamnes, two Chucumnes, two Musupumnes, two Ilamnes, and one Gualacomne, along with an Olonapatme Nisenan. Patwin parents included six Tolenas, one Ululato, and one Zoneto. One or two Yokuts, Ohlone, Coast Miwok, Bay Miwok, Sierra Miwok, and Wappo speakers were among the parents of identified rancho-born infants. The identified sets of parents clearly show that some people from Central Valley local tribes remained and work in the East Bay after the Mission San Jose slavery and genocide came to an end.
As the 1830s came to a close, few new converts from the Central Valley were baptized at the Mission San Jose. The 68 converts of 1836 were followed by only eight in 1837, 15 in 1838, and nine in 1839. The 32 converts over 1837- 1839 represented 12 scattered groups of the Sacramento Valley and Sierra foothills. Most highly represented were the Cosomnes of the Wilton region, with four converts in 1837 and another seven in 1838.
Mexican families of the 1830s were not interested in securing ranchos in the Central Valley, due to the conditions of hostility between the Coast Ranges ranchers and some Central Valley local tribes. However, the Mexican government did want to gain control of the Valley lands. They supported Swiss national Johann Sutter in his request to settle in the lower Sacramento Valley. Sutter, guided by an ex-Mission Indian pilot, went up the Sacramento River and founded the outpost of New Helvetia (now Sacramento) at its confluence with the American River in August 1839. Sutter immediately tried to ally himself with the remnant Plains Miwok of the lower Sacramento River, themselves recently returned from their brief stay at Mission San Jose.
Fur Trade
In 1827 American fur trappers arrived in Wilton Rancheria’s ancestral territory. For the next twenty years the intermittent presence of these independent characters would present the ancestors of the tribe with new risks and obstacles withing their homelands. Jedediah Smith led the first American trapping party of seventeen men and a few women into the ancestral territory of the tribe. Smith struck the Cosumnes River near present-day Wilton. His men went out to set traps for beaver, but the Miwok attacked two of them who narrowly escaped. The next morning Smith’s men discovered that some of their traps had been taken. When a Miwok man appeared across the Cosumnes river, one of the trappers killed him with his rifle (Brooks). Smith then proceeded to the American River in an effort to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but snow blocked his way. Smith and his crew retreated to the central valley to wait for the snow to melt enough to open the Sierra passes to head east to the Rocky Mountains. Smith opened the door for the fur trade within the tribe’s ancestral territory. The year 1833 marked the arrival of a deadly new intruder in the interior- malaria, a disease brought by members of the Hudson’s Bay Company to California. The 1833 Malaria epidemic weakened and killed thousands of indigenous people within the Central Valley (Cook).
Invasion of John Sutter
In 1839 John A. Sutter, a Swiss immigrant along with a few companions and three small boats entered the ancestral territory of the tribe. On his way up the Sacramento River, Sutter encountered a tribe just south of downtown Sacramento. Sutter understood that he was likely to encounter former mission Indians in the valley, so he hailed the people in Spanish. He convinced Anashe, a Plains Miwok leader who was there, that he wished to settle among them and be their friends. Sutter soon set up a permanent encampment where Sacramento now stands and enlisted the local tribe to build adobe structures that eventually became known as Sutter’s Fort. Sutter’s enterprise included extensive farming and livestock grazing, all of which was done with the Sutter enslaved Native peoples by making war on local tribes, which provided him with a steady source of free labor for his enterprises as well as a source of income by which to reduce his debts through the sale of orphaned Miwok and Nisenan children (Hurtado).
The Gold Rush
In short, the gold rush was a disaster for the indigenous people living in Sacramento and surrounding counties. The gold rush further displaces the ancestors of the tribe, a process of displacement and dispossession that began with the Spanish missions, continued under Sutter’s regime, and accelerated under American rule.
California Statehood
While the history of the Federal-Indian relationship in California shares some common characteristics with that of Native people elsewhere in the United States, it is different in many aspects. It includes the unprecedented magnitude of non-native migration into California after the discovery of gold in 1848, nine days before the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; the Senate’s refusal to ratify the 18 treaties negotiated with California tribes during 1851-52; and the lawless nature of California’s settlement after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, including State sanctioned efforts to “exterminate” the California indigenous population.
Under pressure from the California Congressional delegation, the United States Senate not only refused to sign the 18 treaties that had been negotiated, but they also took extraordinary steps to place the treaties under seal. Between the un-ratified treaties and the Land Claims Act of 1851, most California Indians became landless.
Early State of California laws and policies prohibited California Indians from practicing their religion, speaking their languages or practicing their traditional ceremonies and customs included:
- The 1850 Act of the Government and Protection of Indians and related amendments;
- California militia policies and “Expedition against the Indians” during 1851 to 1859;
- The State of California’s official response to federal treaties negotiated with California Indians during 1851 to 1852; and
- Early and current state fish protection laws exempt California Indians from related
The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians facilitated removing California Indians from their traditional lands, separating at least a generation of children and adults from their families, languages, and cultures (1850 to 1865). This California law provided for “apprenticing” or indenturing Indian children and adults to Whites, and also punishing “vagrant” Indians by “hiring” them out to the highest bidder at a public auction if the Indian could not provide sufficient bond or bail.
The California Legislature created the laws that controlled California Indians’ land, lives and livelihoods, while enforcing and implementation occurred at the county local township levels. Some examples include:
- County-level Courts of Sessions and local township Justices of the Peace determined which Indians and Indian Children were “appreciated” or indentured pursuant to the 1850 Act for Government and Protection of
- Under the same act, Justices of the Peace, mayors or recorders of incorporated towns or cities, decided the status and punishment of “vagrant”
- Under the California Constitution and stat militia laws, California governors ordered local sheriffs to organize the men to conduct the “Expeditions against the Indians”.
From 1851 to 1859, the California Legislature passed twenty-seven laws that that State Controller relied upon in determining the total expenditures related to the Expeditions against Indians. The total amount of claims to the State of California Controller for these Expeditions against the California Indians was $1,293,179.20.
The California Legislature was involved in influencing the U.S. Senate’s ratification process of the 18 treaties negotiated with California Indians during 1851 to 1852. These treaties were never ratified and kept secret from 1855 to 1905. Prior to the President submitting the treaties to the Senate, the California Legislature conducted considerable debate, made reports, drafted and passed resolutions that mostly opposed ratification of the treaties.
Boarding Schools
Three of the 25 Indian boarding schools run by the U.S. government were in California. Their goal was to stamp out all vestiges of Native cultural traditions and replace them with white, Christian customs and norms. It was common practice for administrators to bathe new students in kerosene and to cut off their hair. School days were regulated with military precision. Children were put into a cultural assimilation program and were punished for speaking in their Native language or for practicing any ancestral customs. Children’s given names were replaced with Christian ones. So-called “outing programs” trained children to work as farmers, maids, and cooks for white families, providing a steady stream of cheap labor. There were reports of physical, including sexual, abuse at the schools.
Native children resisted.
Some ran away, refused to work, and secretly spoke their languages. For years, Native communities protested for the right to educate their own children. However, it wasn’t until 1978 that parents won the legal right to prevent family separation. Many boarding schools that once housed assimilation programs are now public schools. To address intergenerational trauma, tribes in California are insisting that these schools reflect the students they serve, with curriculum that incorporates their language, culture, and traditions.
Wilton Rancheria, Establishment & Contemporary Times
Major shifts in federal Indian policy at the national level during the late 19th century exacerbated the Indian problems in California. Passage of the General Allotment Act in 1887 opened part of the limited lands in California to non-Indian settlement. In 1905 the public was finally advised of the 18 unratified treaties. Citizens sympathetic to the economic and physical distress of California Indians encouraged Congress to pass legislation to acquire isolated parcels of land for homeless California Indians. Between 1906 and 1910, a series of appropriations were passed that provided funds to purchase small tracts of land in central and northern California for landless Indians of those areas. The land acquisitions resulted in what has been referred to as the Rancheria System in California.
In 1927 An Indian Affairs agent made a “List of landless Indians near Wilton, Sacramento County, California” the list of native families in the Sacramento area, includes many of the family names of Wilton Rancheria Distributees. During this time (mid to late 1920s) the Bureau was seeking land for the Sacramento County group of Indians, and “Certain Indians” brought the Cosumnes Company property to the Superintendent’s attention. A Cosumnes Company letter, November 1, 1927, stated they had land ideally suited for Indians because of its location in a well- developed agricultural area that would supply employment for Indians. Indian Affairs Superintendent Dorrington regards this as “one of the very best propositions for landless Indians,” and urges favorable recommendation from the Commissioner. Dorrington also writes that the vicinity contains “thirty-three families, comprising at least one hundred and fifty landless Indians,” who obtain employment in the vicinity during much of the year. Dorrington believed this to be a sufficient number and reason to warrant “serious consideration” for the establishment of the Wilton Rancheria. He notes the Indians have been landless and in need of a home site within proximity to the local labor opportunities where they have been working for many years. The tract proposed is at the intersection of two important highways and is near a Post Office, School “available for Indian Pupils” and the town of Wilton.
The land will be purchased for $5,000 and is expected to provide homes for more than thirty families in a population of approximately 140 Indian people. Superintendent Dorrington states that this will assist the Indian people who reside in Sacramento County for the purpose of procuring employment at various seasons throughout the year. The location that we are negotiating for is ideal and very centrally located, it being possible to reach all labor localities without inconvenience.
Dorrington notes that the rancheria will have water from a well provided by the Cosumnes Company that will run approximately 100 gallons to the minute and is 60 feet deep (Dorrington Letter, April 19, 1928, to Commissioner of Indian Affairs; Pg. 10). Assistant Commissioner E. B. Merett submitted a check dated July 7th, 1928, in the sum of $5,000 in favor of the Cosumnes Company for 38.77 acres of land to be held in trust for the Indian people who were living in Sacramento County.
By 1931 there were 5 families living on the Rancheria and by 1933 there were 30 residences living on the Wilton Rancheria. During this time, Field Agents became active in tribal activities. The lack of winter employment is commented on by an “Acting Field Agent in Indian Re-organization” (name not indicated on memo), September 9, 1935. The agent reports that the seven families on Wilton have “poor and insufficient land” and they depend on seasonal employment in “hop fields, orchards and vineyards for their support.” The employment lasts about six months of the year, requiring these people to “shift around trying to find any kind of work they can” during winter and spring.
Those living on the Rancheria continued to act as a cohesive sovereign government holding traditional Tribal Council meetings and adopting the first constitution of Wilton Rancheria in 1935. The Rancheria residents continued their communal traditions and helped one another out when times were tough. Hunting, fishing, and gathering plants along that stretch of the Cosumnes River continued to be a staple for sustenance in those early rancheria days.
In 1948, the federal government declared its intention to “terminate” government services to all Indians, and in so doing, divide Indian land and resources among individuals. Indian property would be moved from trust status to fee status and therefore taxed. California Indians were among the first to experience the results of this action; several termination bills were introduced in Congress specifically for California, and the federal government proceeded to end its services to the State’s Indians. Termination was a major issue for California Indians. There were many cases where neither the County nor State governments would act on behalf of Indian people.
Assistance services were refused if Indian people would not sell their land. The Rancheria Act of 1958 authorized the methods to be used for termination. A great deal of pressure was put on Indians to vote favorably for termination. In 1953 the BIA reported that most heads of families at the Wilton Rancheria would like to obtain title to their land assignments and are thus willing to pay taxes. The government believed this tribe could be assimilated. The government believed that assimilation of this Indian community is possible because the rancheria is small and is surrounded by non-Indian land; people work off the reservation usually for non-Indians; children attended public schools; the community is English speaking; only 5% of diet is from native food; and the Tribe is fortunate to reside near the city of Sacramento where there exist employment opportunities. In accordance with the California Rancheria Act (Act of August 18, 1958; 72 Stat. 619 as amended) the Wilton Rancheria was terminated from federal trust responsibilities in 1964.
This Act set forth the distribution of assets of the Wilton Rancheria. The title to the land allotments were distributed to those heads of families that resided on that property at that time. This meant that the Wilton Rancheria would no longer be recognized by the government and the people residing on the Rancheria were no longer considered Indian by the government. As time went on the parcels were sold to Indians and non-Indians alike. Some parcels were forcibly given up for simple tax delinquency payments.
Since Termination, court actions were filed against the federal government over mismanagement of rancherias and failure to meet basic standards, especially in housing and water systems, required at the time of termination. Many native people were unable to pay the required taxes on terminated land, and subsequently lost their property. Termination has been reversed for several tribes throughout the State and many tribes are in the application process of reinstatement, an arduous task, through the BIA’s Bureau of Acknowledgement and Research (BAR). Others have gained reinstatement congressionally or through the courts.
Wilton Rancheria Tribal Citizens began working on the restoration of tribal recognition by the federal government in the 1980s with California Indian Legal Services (CILS). In 1991, using a private attorney, they reorganized their tribal government, and in 1999 they requested the United States to formally restore their federal recognition. Ten years later in June of 2009, a U.S. District Court restored the Wilton Rancheria to a Federally Recognized Tribe. The Tribal Constitution, established in 2011, created four branches of government: the Office of the Chair and Vice Chair, the Tribal Council, a Tribal Court, and the General Council.
In 2017, the Federal Government finally took land into trust for the purpose of economic development for the Tribe. The Tribe’s Federal Trust Lands are in Sacramento County, within the City of Elk Grove. Today most citizens reside in Sacramento County. The Tribal headquarters and economic development are in Elk Grove, Sacramento County, California. The Wilton Rancheria is composed of individuals descended from members of what is referred to as the Eastern Miwok, which is comprised of the Bay Miwok, Plains Miwok, and Northern Sierra Miwok. The Tribe’s citizens also descend from both Valley and Hill Nisenan. The traditional relationships among these Tribes fostered ease of movement into one another’s territories during forced relocations in historic times. Their post- contact movements and frequent intermarriage were outcomes of devastating impacts to their populations and cultures by decades of foreign incursions into their traditional territories. The result of this cultural and genealogical blending is an amalgamated cultural group with collective ancestry, which has come to be known as the Wilton Rancheria. The Wilton area offered a place for these extended families to come together and form the Wilton Rancheria as we know it today.