Baskets and basket making The Maidu women were exemplary basketweavers, weaving highly detailed and useful baskets in sizes ranging from thimbles to huge ones 10 or more feet in diameter. The weaving on some of these baskets is so fine that a magnifying glass is needed to see the strands. In addition to making closely woven, watertight baskets for cooking, they made large storage baskets, bowls, shallow trays, traps, cradles, hats, and seed beaters. They used dozens of different kinds of wild plant stems, barks, roots and leaves. Some of the more common were fern roots, red bark of the redbud, white willow twigs and tule roots, hazel twigs, yucca leaves, brown marsh grassroots, and sedge roots. By combining these different kinds of plants, the women made geometric designs on their baskets in red, black, white, brown or tan.
Subsistence Like many other California tribes, the Maidu were primarily
hunters and gatherers and did not farm. They practiced grooming of their
gathering grounds, with fire as a primary tool for this purpose. They tended local groves of
oak trees to maximize production of
acorns, which were their principal
dietary staple after being processed and prepared. According to Maidu elder Marie Potts: Preparing acorns as the food was a long and tedious process that was undertaken by the women and children. The acorns had to be shelled, cleaned, and then ground into meal. This was done by pounding them with a pestle on a hard surface, generally a hollowed-out stone. The tannic acid in the acorns was leached out by spreading the meal smoothly on a bed of pine needles laid over sand. Cedar or fir boughs were placed across the meal and warm water was poured all over, a process that took several hours, with the boughs distributing the water evenly and flavoring the meal. This central California religious system was based on a male secret society. It was characterized by the Kuksu or "big head" dances. Maidu elder Marie Mason Potts says that the Maidu are traditionally a monotheistic people: "they greeted the sunrise with a prayer of thankfulness; at noon they stopped for meditation, and at sunset, they communed with
Kadyapam and gave thanks for blessings throughout the day."
Languages The Maidu spoke a language that some linguists believe was related to the
Penutian family. While all Maidu spoke a form of this language, the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary differed sufficiently that Maidu separated by large distances or by geographic features that discouraged travel might speak dialects that were nearly mutually unintelligible. The four principal divisions of the language were Northeastern Maidu or Yamonee Maidu (known simply as
Maidu); Southern Maidu or
Nisenan; Northwestern Maidu or
Konkow; and Valley Maidu or
Chico.
Rock art The Maidu inhabited areas in the northeastern Sierra Nevada. Many examples of Indigenous
rock art and
petroglyphs have been found here. Scholars are uncertain about whether these date from previous Indigenous communities or were created by the Maidu people. The Maidu incorporated these works into their cultural system, and believe that such artifacts are real, living energies that are an integral part of their world. ==Tribes==