Local California government to consider renaming ‘sacred’ Native American mountain range

(FOX40.COM) — A natural icon of the Sacramento Valley, the Sutter Buttes, has become a point of discussion in Sutter County as the name of the world’s smallest mountain range has been put in question.

According to documentation from the U.S. Board Geographic Names , a part of the United States Geological Survey, a proposal to change the name of the Sutter Buttes to Sacred Buttes was submitted on March 21.

The proposal, sent in by Sutter Buttes Regional Land Trust Board Director Rachel Rein, states that the desire to change the name comes from the potentially offensive nature of the name.

The buttes, along with Sutter County itself, take their name from Swedish colonizer John Sutter who founded Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento.

Sutter is also known to have treated the native peoples of California extremely harshly by enslaving, whipping, starving, executing and stealing babies from them.

In 2020, a statue of John Sutter was removed from the Sutter Medical Center in Midtown Sacramento .

Hospital spokespersons at the time said the statue was removed “out of respect for some community members’ viewpoints, and in the interest of public safety for our patients and staff.”

Rein wrote in her proposal that it seemed “harmful” that a place so sacred to California’s native peoples bear the name of a person that caused them so much pain.

“The Sutter Buttes are so sacred to Native Americans that they historically were not held in any one tribe’s territory, but were territorially shared by the surrounding tribes,” Rein wrote in her proposal. “The Buttes are known as ‘Estom Yanim in Nisenan, Histum Yani or Esto Yamani in Maidu, and Olonai-To in Wintun.”

On July 23, the Sutter County Board of Supervisors will be presented with the name change proposal where they will “provide direction to staff of Board’s response to (the) proposal.”

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