Foothill Yokuts

The Foothill Yokuts were the Sierra Nevada branch of the Yokuts peoples, the Indigenous inhabitants of California's San Joaquin Valley, occupying the oak-grass foothills on the valley's eastern edge from the Kings River to the Tule River. Their tribes included the Gashowu or Casson and the Yaudanchi, who called themselves the Nutaa and held the North and Middle Forks of the Tule River. They spoke Yokuts dialects transitional between valley and foothill speech.

They lived by hunting, fishing and gathering, above all acorns, in seasonal villages, and traded with valley Yokuts and the Mono. Spanish soldiers reached their country in 1772, and after 1800 inland missions drew off foothill people for forced labor.

A malaria epidemic carried from the coast in 1833 swept through their sweat houses and cut their numbers sharply, leaving them weakened on the eve of the American take-over of California.