"To begin the story of the ConCow Maidu we travel back in time to the year 1828. Summer was coming to an end and the ConCow peoples were returning from their summer camps around Grassy Lake. Grassy Lake is about twenty-five miles northeast of their more permanent winter home in the KonKow Valley and surrounding foothills. The KonKow Valley is about twenty miles north of present day Oroville, in Butte County, California.
The ConCow migrated with the water up the hills in the summer and back down in the fall of the year. That is when, in the year 1828 that Jedediah Smith first met the ConCow. Jedediah and a party of trappers stayed the six months of winter with our people. In 1833, trappers Michael Lafromboise and John Work spent the winter in the ConCow territory. And between 1828 and 1836 the Hudson Bay Company sent more trappers to the ConCow territory.
As a result of the contact with the Euro-Americans, a malaria epidemic swept through the ConCow villages in 1833 killing an estimated 800 people.
In the year 1848 gold was discovered and by the year 1849 the ConCow territory was overrun by gold seekers and accompanying settlers. Traditional food sources quickly became scarce and conflicts broke out between the Euro-Americans and the native population." - https://amertribes.proboards.com/thread/2448/concow-maidu-trail-tears
"I am Sierra soil and sunlight, granite and snow, mountain and meadow, river ravine, acorn, pine, cedar, and am constantly aware of the sharp edge of coyote shadow. I am Concow Maidu. I am from northern California. My people survived the California gold rush. That's why I write, to tell the stories that sometimes seem too painful, are too stark and sharp for most who are ignorant of thruthful history. I have to tell it." - Linda Noel
Poem: Understanding Each Other (pg 234)