Save the Redwoods League Donates 164 Acres to Native Peoples

The Save the Redwoods League returned 164 acres to the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council (a nonprofit consortium of ten sovereign, federally-recognized California Indian tribes.) The land pictured in the map above is next to the Sinkyone Wilderness State park and contains the headwaters to the Mattole. According to an article in the SFGate (from whence came the map above,) the land which is located at the intersection of the Briceland-Whitethorn Road and Usal Road is believed to be a place where native people traditionally met for 1000 years.

The native people were nearly wiped out when white settlers began populating the region and according to the article,

Some members of the original tribe eventually made it back to their ancestral lands, including a woman named Sally Bell, who as a child had survived the massacre of her family within view of the Four Corners property. She married Richard Bell in 1897 and the couple lived at Four Corners, which was transferred to them by the federal government under the Dawes Act, which allotted land to Indians.

The Bell descendants sold the land in the late 1950s to a non-Indian family.

For those interested in local history and the environment as well as native people’s rights, this is an informative piece.