Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) formerly occurred in great abundance within the California Central Valley drainage and were a correspondingly important part of the subsistence economics and cultures of the indigenous peoples of that region. Salmon and other fishery resources on the Central Valley floor were part of a resource base that enabled resident Native American groups to attain some of the highest population densities to occur among the non-agricultural native societies of North America. Indirect estimates of aboriginal harvests prior to Euro-American settlement of the region indicate that the native fishers may have exploited the Central Valley salmon resource on a level comparable to that later attained by the immigrant Euro-American fishers of the late ninteenth century commercial fishery. The salmon resource also figured, to varying degrees, in native interactions— from trade item tocausa belli. Among the last intact native groups in California reliant on a salmon-based subsistence economy were the McCloud River Wintu—a people who were instrumental in the successful operation of the U.S. Fish Commission egg-collecting station on the lower McCloud River that supplied salmon eggs for shipments to U.S. Eastern states and overseas countries.