Definition of "rancheria" [‖Ran•che•ri•a]

• A Mexican herdsman's hut. (noun)
• A village of these huts. (noun)
• Southwestern U.S. A rural Native American settlement. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "[30] A rancheria is a small dependent settlement of Christianized people."
• "He knew of a depository of wax-candles, and the church of the rancheria was the place in which they were kept."
• "The mountain side, as he well knew, was thickly strewn with dry branches, dead limbs, uprooted trees and all manner of combustible material, and the very warriors who, when around their own "rancheria," would have disdained doing a stroke of work of any kind, were now laboring like so many beavers to add to the great pile that was already almost on a level with the breastwork and not more than eight feet away."