The Maidu are an indigenous people to northern California residing in the central Sierra Nevada in the drainage of the Feather and American rivers and in the Humbug Valley.

The Maidu were excellent basket weavers who utilized a wide variety of roots, bark, plant stems and leaves such as fern roots, sedge roots, willow twigs, and redbud. They were exemplary basket weavers, weaving highly detailed and useful baskets in sizes ranging from thimble-sized to huge ones ten or more feet in diameter. The weaving on some of these baskets is so fine that a magnifying glass is needed to see the strands. In addition to making closely woven, watertight baskets for cooking, they made large storage baskets, bowls, shallow trays, traps, cradles, hats, and seed beaters.