Mountain Maidu

Background

The southern and eastern portion of the Lassen region, including Warner Valley and Juniper Lake, is the Mountain Maidu's home. Lassen Volcanic National Park places the wider Maidu people across homelands running from Lassen Peak to the edge of the high desert great basin, down the Sierra Mountains, along the foothills of the Sacramento Valley, up the river canyons and into the mountain meadows. The park says the Lassen area was a meeting point for at least four Native American groups, Atsugewi, Yana, Yahi and Maidu, and that the weather and snow conditions, the generally high elevation and the seasonally mobile deer populations made it unsuitable for year-round living, so the groups camped there in the warmer months for hunting and gathering. In 2008 the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center became the first park facility to receive a Tribal name. The Susanville Indian Rancheria counts Maidu among the four anthropological tribes associated with the Rancheria, alongside Paiute, Pit River and Washoe.

Parks on its homelands

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Mountain Maidu people at the foot of Lassen Peak's southeast slopes call themselves Nah-Kan-Koyom Maidum. In 2008 the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center, whose name means snow mountain in Mountain Maidu, became the park's first facility to carry a tribal name. Source

Sources

• https://www.nps.gov/lavo/learn/tribes.htm

Checked September 2026.

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