Native Cultures
The present area of the park historically fell within the customary use areas of four Indian tribes. The Atsugewi lived north and east of Lassen Peak in the Hat Creek drainage and around Eagle Lake. The Maidu inhabited a large area southeast of Lassen Peak in the rugged Feather River watershed. The Yahi occupied the narrow Mill Creek and Deer Creek valleys to the south, while the Yana lived along Battle Creek southwest of Lassen Peak. These four tribes mostly kept to their own respective territories, but they traded with one another, sometimes intermarried, and occasionally gathered resources together in the upland meadows and streams around Lassen Peak where their territories adjoined.
Sharing similar environments, the four tribes followed much the same seasonal rounds. In the summer they dispersed in the high country, including the area that is now the park, where they hunted deer, gathered roots, nuts, and berries, and fished for salmon and trout in the cold mountain streams. In the fall they moved to the lowlands to harvest acorns before gathering in semi-permanent villages at low elevations to pass the winter below the snow line. As with most subsistence-gathering cultures, the seasonal round for these tribes was characterized by a mix of staple food sources – deer, salmon, acorns – and a wide variety of alternative food sources that were relied upon when one of the favored food sources failed. For example, in addition to deer, these Indians hunted elk, mountain sheep, pronghorn antelope, black bear, grizzly bear, mountain lion, and possibly bison. They also hunted smaller animals including cottontail and snowshoe rabbits, ground squirrels, skunks, badgers, woodrats, porcupines, woodpeckers, quail, ducks, and geese.
