History

Independence, struggle and self-sufficiency

For thousands of years, members of our Wintun Tribe were guided by a culture robust with an understanding of medicine, technology and ways to increase food production for the benefit of all people. The towns and roads of today were once the villages and trade routes of our past. Our land was rich and our early communities thrived.

The Mission Era and the Gold Rush caused a great decline in our people

The arrival of missionaries and European explorers forever altered the course of Native people in California. Our people were enslaved to serve the missions while abuse and disease dwindled our numbers. By the 1800s, our ancestors were purged of their home and hunting lands by opportunists obsessed with gold and greed. Northern California Indians were decimated by the Gold Rush and government policies that legalized the genocide of Native people. Our tribal population fell from 15,000 to less than 15. It was during this time that our Wintun ancestors were nearly rendered extinct.

Our relatives were forcibly relocated to barren land

In the early 1900s, our relatives were forced off their ancestral lands and placed by the U.S. government on a federally created rancheria—otherwise known as a reservation—in Rumsey, California. Forty years later, our ancestors were once again forced to relocate by the federal government to a parcel of land in the Capay Valley that was too poor and barren to support even subsistence levels of agriculture. With no economic base and no option to farm, our people—who had lived sustainably for thousands of years—suddenly became dependent on the U.S. government for aid and survival. Most of our homeland was taken from us. In an effort to survive, we lost touch with our roots—with our traditions, our culture and our native language.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act allowed for economic development

Finally, in the late 1980s, the tide began to turn. Some of our ancestral lands were restored to the Tribe, providing a land base for tribal housing and economic development. It was at this time that the State of California instituted the state lottery and the federal government enacted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). The United States Congress’ enactment of IGRA in particular provided a means to promote economic development and self-sufficiency with the explicit purpose of strengthening tribal self-government. This offered us the opportunity to open Cache Creek Indian Bingo on 188 acres of our trust land.

Our focused management led to economic independence

We knew little about gaming in the beginning, so we focused our resources on building a structure for the Yocha Dehe government to provide the necessary foundation for the Tribe to manage assets generated from our bingo hall. Powered by hard work and determination, we developed our own management strategy and expanded our bingo hall into the world-class Cache Creek Casino Resort, eventually providing economic development and stability for our people.

The independence we gained from this initial influx of gaming revenue gave us the wherewithal to reacquire some of our traditional lands, to invest in the future of our children through improved education and to provide philanthropic support for communities in need. Through focused resource management and careful investment, we have now reclaimed our role as stewards of the Capay Valley.