Our Pioneer Heritage

My mother, Beverly Nichols Smith, her two sister, Zylpha Nichols Thompson, and Elizabeth Nichols Smith, and her brother Frank Nichols, all grew up in a place that hasn’t changed much since the settler first came; a 1,063 acre ranch that my grandparents started near “Cabbage Patch”, what’s now near the Spenceville wildlife refuge.

Elizabeth Chandler Nichols

Meanwhile, great grandfather Nichols spent much of his time scouting around Northern California in search of a suitable ranch.  He never intended to prospect for gold, as one of his brothers did.  Jonathan Nichols came with gold fever in 1848 on the ship Eliza, encouraged his brothers to come too, and wrote one of the theme songs for the gold rush “Oh California”, sung to the tune of  “Oh Susanna”.

  The Nichols were native to Ohio.  My great grandfather wanted to be a cattle rancher and eventually drove a herd of longhorn cattle all the way from a ship in San Francisco to the ranch in Spenceville.  They even brought a milk cow along with them when they started west from Indiana.  The milk cow was a gift from Elizabeth’s father, since she was already with child when they started their journey west. 

 Great Grandfather Nichols was exceedingly religious.  He did not like persecution of anybody or anything.  They were not so much pro-Indians, they were pro-humanity.  About 60 Maidu Indians still lived on the ranch when my mother’s father was a boy.  (My Grandpa Nichols lived on this ranch until he died in 1937.)  Our family and the Maidu co-existed quite nicely.  The Indians ate small game, acorns, buckeyes – and frequently, the family cat.  The Maidu also would catch masses of grasshoppers in trenches and grind them into a meal.

Dawson Nichols

My Great Grandmother Nichols was careful not to plant anything in the meadows where the red clover grew which was also part of the Maidu diet.  The acorn harvest was never disturbed either.  Great Grandmother Elizabeth also learned their dialect so she could converse with them.  She would bake once a week and the Indians would “line up for a slice of her delicious fresh baked bread.”  We can still pick out a place the family called Indian Hill, where depressions in the ground show the location of the two former ceremonial roundhouses.

The Indian Affairs people finally caught up with our tribe.  Government agents told the Indians they had to move to rancheros, or settlements, in Auburn and Chico.  The agent gave a “glowing speech about how wonderful the rancheros would be.”  An Indian elder made his own speech in return, which translated as “a polite way of saying BS.”  He had the last word and he was right.  We have always been proud of the Maidu elder for telling him how it was.

There are about 600 direct descendants of Great Grandmother and Grandfather Nichols.  We have been a very prolific family.  The older generation is teaching the younger generation about the family’s history and participates in living history demonstrations of pioneer life at community benefits, such as Donner Memorial’s California Trail Days, and Grass Valley’s Draft Horse Classic.