Honey Lake Maidu Ethnogeography of Lassen County, California

Based mainly upon the testimonies of nineteenth and twentieth century Maidu inhabitants of the Honey Lake Valley in Lassen County, California, we present a Maidu perspective on local knowledge, such as where they lived, hunted, gathered, and buried their dead in the prehistoric and early historical periods. Drawing on family tape recordings and interview notes in the possession of the authors, as well as a range of other sources, this article is intended as a contribution to Maidu ethnogeography in the Honey Lake Valley region. While acknowledging that several ethnic groups lived in or near this region in the early historical period, and that boundaries are social constructs that may overlap and about which groups may hold different interpretations, we document a cross-generational Maidu perspective on their territorial range in the remembered past.