Buena Vista band of Miwok Indians, Ione Valley, California

Rhonda Morningstar Pope is the current tribal chairperson for the Buena Vista band of Me-wuk Indians. She is the great-granddaughter of Louis and Annie Oliver, who were federally recognized as leaders of the band in 1927.

The Me-Wuk Indians have been living on aboriginal tribal land of what later became Amador County since at least 1817, more than 30 years before the devastation of northern California Tribal governments and communities that coincided with the start of the 1849 "Gold Rush."

Each Me-wuk village included a dance house, a place for ceremonial assembly. These buildings were constructed over a large pit 40 to 50 feet in diameter and about 3 to 4 feet in depth. Posts set into the ground around the perimeter and heavy beams supported the roof, which was built in the form of a low cone and covered with thatch and earth. At the center of the floor was a fire pit.

This photograph showing the dance house at the Buena Vista Rancheria in the Jackson Valley.

Casus Oliver and his family stand in front of their homestead at the Buena Vista Rancheria.

The Tribe has been listed by the Secretary of the Interior as such since 1985. The Tribe’s Rancheria land is a 67-acre parcel in Amador County just outside the town of Buena Vista.

This photograph of Casus Oliver and his wife, Amanda, was taken at the Buena Vista Rancheria by C. Hart Merriam in 1903. Oliver was baptized as Jesus Alvarez, but know as a Me-wuk captain of great hospitality. Amanda, a Nisenan woman from the village near Gold Hill in Eldorado County, was the daughter of Capt. John Oitey.

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Information, photographs courtesy of the Amador County Archives, The Historical Marker Database, The Chronicling America Database, and Larry Cenotto, Amador County's Historian