The Nisenan are an Indigenous people of California whose homeland runs between the Sacramento River and the Sierra Nevada, from about the Cosumnes River in the south to somewhere between the Yuba and Feather Rivers in the north. They are often grouped as the Southern Maidu, a label the Nisenan themselves dispute.
Acorns from the valley’s oak trees made up most of the traditional diet, alongside salmon, deer and elk. The Nisenan name for the American River is Kum Sayo, meaning roundhouse river. Some Nisenan people today are enrolled in the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, a federally recognized tribe.