YUBA
Yuba is the name of a county in the Central Valley, of Yuba City, the county-seat of Sutter County, and of the Yuba River, which is formed by the union of three branches rising in the Sierra Nevada.
The name Yuba was first applied to the river, the chief tributary of the Feather. The theory has been advanced that it received the name of Uba, or Uva, the Spanish word for grapes, from an exploring party in 1824, in reference to the immense quantities of vines loaded with wild grapes growing along its banks, Uba, becoming corrupted into Yuba, but Powers, in his Tribes of California, says Yuba is derived from a tribe of Maidu Indians named Yu-ba, who lived on the Feather River. This is probably the true explanation of the name. It is to be noted that Fremont, in his Memoirs, speaks of it as Indian: “We traveled across the valley plain, and in about sixteen miles reached Feather River, at twenty miles from its junction with the Sacramento, near the mouth of the Yuba, so-called from a village of Indians who live on it. The Indians aided us across the river with canoes and small rafts. Extending along the bank in front of the village was a range of wicker cribs, about twelve feet high, partly filled with what is there the Indians’ staff of life, acorns. A collection of huts, shaped like bee-hives, with naked Indians sunning themselves on the tops, and these acorn cribs, are the prominent objects in an Indian village.”
YOLO
Yolo is the name of a county in the northern part of the Central Valley, and of a village near Woodland.
Yolo, or Yoloy, was the name of a Patwin tribe, and the word is said by the Bureau of Ethnology to mean “a place abounding with rushes.”
In 1884 there were still forty-five of the tribe living in Yolo County.
SOLANO
This county, situated in the Central Valley, immediately northeast of San Francisco, was named, at the request of General Mariano Vallejo, in honor of an Indian chief of the Suisunes who had aided him in war against the other natives. The name of this chief in his own tongue is said to have been Sem Yeto, “the Fierce one of the Brave Hand,” or Sum-yet-ho, “the Mighty Arm,” and, judging by the description given of him by Dr. Vallejo, he must have been a living refutation of the common belief that the California Indians were invariably squat and ill-formed, for he was a splendid figure of a man, six feet, seven inches in height and large in proportion. He was converted to Christianity and received the name of the celebrated missionary, Francisco Solano, as well as a grant of land containing 17752 acres, known as the Suisún Grant.