SUISÚN
Suisún Bay is a body of navigable water connected with San Pablo Bay by the Carquínez Strait, and is the outlet of the San Joaquín and Sacramento Rivers. Suisún City is in Solano County, on a slough, about fifty miles northeast of San Francisco. Suisún was the name of an Indian village on that bay, and the word is said by some persons to mean a “big expanse.” The name was probably first given to the land grant.
This region was the home of an important tribe of Indians who had an interesting and tragic history. Their religious capital, if such it could be called, was at Napa, near which place there was a certain stone from which they believed one of their gods had ascended into upper air, leaving the impress of his foot upon the stone. General Vallejo says that in 1817 a military expedition under command of Lieutenant José Sánchez crossed the straits of Carquínez on rafts, for the double purpose of exploring the country and reducing it to Christianity. “On crossing the river they were attacked by the Suisún tribe, headed by their chief Malaca, and the Spaniards suffered considerable loss; the Indians fought bravely, but were forced to retire to their ranchería, where, being hotly pursued, and believing their fate sealed, these unfortunate people, incited by their chief, set fire to their own rush-built huts, and perished in the flames with their families. The soldiers endeavored to stay their desperate resolution, in order to save the women and children, but they preferred this doom to that which they believed to await them at the hands of their enemies.” The Suisún tribe is now entirely extinct, a large number having been carried off by a frightful epidemic of smallpox. Dr. Vallejo states that this tribe, a people described by him as possessing many attractive qualities, was estimated by his father to number at least 40,000 persons in 1835. After the great epidemic, which was brought down by the Russians from the north, and which lasted during the three consecutive years of 1837-38-39, there were barely two hundred left. Thus the disappearance of the California Indians was occasioned, not by the white man’s bullets or fire-water, nor even by the deteriorating influence of a changed mode of living, nor by the loss of native sturdiness through an acquired dependence upon the church, but suddenly and fearfully by the introduction of the hideous diseases of civilization.
SACRAMENTO
Sacramento County and the city of the same name, the state capital, situated near the center of the Great Valley, received their names from the river, which, following the usual custom of the Spaniards, was christened first, being named in honor of the Holy Sacrament.
Captain Moraga first gave the name of Jesús María to the main river, calling the branch Sacramento, but later the main stream became known as Sacramento, and the branch as El Río de las Plumas (the river of the feathers).
COSUMNE
Cosumne is the name of a village in Sacramento County, about twenty-two miles southeast of Sacramento. The Cosumne river rises in El Dorado County, near the Sierra Nevada, and enters the Mokelumne about twenty-five miles south of the city of Sacramento.
Cosumne is an Indian word, said to mean “salmon,” and was taken from the tribe who lived upon the river. The frequent occurrence of the ending amni, or umne, in the names of rivers in the Sierras has led to the mistaken conclusion that the suffix actually means “river,” but we have the statement of A. L. Kroeber, Professor of Anthropology in the University of California, that, “The supposition may be hazarded that the ending amni, or umne, is originally a Miwok ending, with the meaning ‘people of’.” Thus the meaning of Cosumne may be “people of the village of Coso,” and of Mokelumne, “people of the village of Mukkel,” and so on through all the names having this ending.
Powers, in his Tribes of California, says Kos-sum-mi was the Indian word for “salmon,” and that this is the probable origin of the name Cosumne.