"Miwok," "Yosemite," and "Pai-u'-ti" Chapters from Tribes of California by Stephen Powers (1877)

Summary

Stephen Powers had a unique way of learning about the Native Americans of California. Instead of talking to translators, early European settlers, or just reading other people’s writings, he talked directly to Native Americans tribes in California. Mr. Powers seemed to have a real knack to relate to the Indian people that others could not. Mr. Powers has been criticized in his time as an “amateur,” but his research is first-rate, even if some of his conclusions are suspect (such as the high population estimates before European settlement). Still, he has done first-rate original research, rather than repeat or distort inaccurate “facts” second-hand.

The information presented here is just two chapters from Mr. Powers’ book, Tribes of California—the chapters pertaining to the Miwok people in Yosemite. The information was gathered in 1871 and 1972 and 1875 and 1876. The book was printed as a report under the authority of the U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, then under the command of Major J. W. Powell, who had an interest in collecting information about American Indians.

Anthropologist Alfred L. Krober, in Handbook of the Indians of California (1925), said this of Mr. Powers’ Tribes of California:

[It is] one of the most remarkable documents ever printed by any government. Powers was a journalist by profession, and it is true that his enthology is often the crudest . . . . He possessed . . . an astoundingly quick and vivid sympathy, a power of observation as keen as it was untrained, and an invariably spirited gift of portrayal that rises at times into the realm of the sheerly fascinating. Anthropologically his great service lies in the fact that with all the looseness of his data and method he was able to a greater degree than anyone before or after him to seize and fix the salient qualities of the mentality of the people he described.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introductory

Chapter XXXIII.

THE MI'-WOK.

A dense aboriginal population—A common language, but no nationality—Greeting—Characteristics—Tribal geography—The Walli—Houses—Food—Shell-money—Chieftainship—Old Sam—Tai-pok'-si—Honeymoons—Kill one of twins—Medicine—Dancers—Annual mourning—A legend of the Tu-ol-um-ne—Creation of man—Numerals.

Chapter XXXIV.

YOSEMITE.

Meaning of names—Origin of the word—Interpreters—Old Jim—List of names—Translations—Villages in the valley—Legend of Tu-tok-a-nu'-la—Legend of Tis-sé-yak—Other legends.

Chapter XXXVI.

TRIBES RELATED TO THE PAI-U'-TI [PAIUTE].

On Kern River— Lodges and canoes of tule— Chico— An aboriginal philosopher— A number of quaint. and curious conceits— Pokoh'— The sun and the coyote— The Tilli— The Pohalli-Tilli— The Monos— Personal appearance— More warlike than Californians— The black eagle— The big trees— Bears in council.

Chapter XXXVII.

GENERAL FACTS.

Fate of California Indians—A shy race—The reservations—A failure for lack of management—Terror of the reservation—Moral abdication—Physically considered—Superior to Chinese—Height and weight—Fine teeth—Fondness for bathing—Half-breed girls—War and women—Not a warlike race—Contests with the Spaniards—Women not so low as among the Algoukins—Absence of bloody rites—Lack of breadth of character—Very imitative—Indifference to defeat in gamine Lack of poetry in character—Quickness of their self-adaptation to civilization—Native humor—Naturally thievish—Northern tribes avaricious—Rule of the gift-givers—Feuds, murder, and revenge—A licentious race—But outwardly modest—No aboriginal idea of a Supreme Being—Spirits and devils—Rev. J. G. Wood’s theory of savage vices combated—The Californians were prosperous and happy—Dense populations—A healthy race—Romance of savage life a delusion.

Appendix: Linguistics.

• Comparative Vocabularies. Orthography.
• Mūt'-sun Family.
  [Note: only the portion of the Appendix for the Miwok and Tuolumne vocabularies (classified by Powers under the "Mūt'-sun Family" are included.]

Illustrations.

• Figure 32. Acorn granaries.
  
  
• Figure 34. A sweat and cold plunge.
• Figure 35. Pu-sí-na-chuk-ha. (Squirrel and acorn granary).
• Figure 36. Cho-ko-nip-o-deh. (baby-basket).
• Figure 37. Yosemite Lodge.
• Figure 38. Tis-se'-yak.

Map.

• Map showing the distribution of the Ind[i]an tribes of California to illustrate Report of Stephen Powers. 1877.
  [Note: only the portion of Central California showing Power’s Mut-sun language group, which include the Miwok and Yosemite, has been copied.]

Bibliographical Information

Stephen Powers 1840-1904 Tribes of California in Contributions to North American Ethnology, Volume III, Department of the Interior, U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, J. W. Powell, in charge (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1877). Reprinted 1976 by University of California Press with an introduction and annotations by Dr. Robert F. Heizer (1915-1979). The reprint omits a foldout map and the Appendix with word lists for various California Indian dialects.

The chapters on the Mi'-wok and Yosemite were first published in serial form, with less detail, in “The California Indians: No. VII—The Meewocs,” Overland Monthly 10(4);322-333 (April 1873).

Digitized by Dan Anderson, June 2004 and August 2007. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice is left intact.
    —Dan Anderson, www.yosemite.ca.us

Buy this book at Amazon.com Tribes of California by Stephan Powers   (Paperback, 1877)

INTRODUCTORY

There is some difficulty in drawing a line sharp between the California Indians and their neighbors. With some exceptions they shade away from tribe to tribe, from valley to valley, so that one can seldom put his finger on a river or a mountain-range and say that here one nation ends and another begins.

There are certain general customs which mark the California Indians, as, for instance the use of the assembly chamber, the non-use of torture on prisoners of war, cremation, and the prevalence of a kind of plutocracy, or if the word is allowable, dorocracy, that is, the rule of the gift-givers. But cremation and the assembly chamber are also used, to a certain extent, by some vicinal tribes that cannot be classed with these; and, on the other hand, cremation is not universal in California.

The term “Digger”, vulgarly applied to the race, is opprobious and unjust, equally as much as it would be to designate Chinamen as “Rat-eaters”. There are tribes, notably the Apaches, who subsist much more on roots than do the California Indians

Aside from language, the most radical difference between the Californians and the Paiuti or Nevada Indians is, that the latter build their lodges more or less on hill-tops, while the former build theirs near water-courses. As to the Californians and the Siwash, or Oregon Indians, probably the most notable difference is, that the latter have no large assembly chamber proper. Both these points of difference show that the Californians are a more peaceful, effeminate, and sensuous race than their neighbors. They are also more devoted to joyous, social dances and merry-makings.

But the crucial test is that of language. Not only are the California languages distinguished for that affluence of vowel sounds which is more or less characteristic of all tongues spoken in warm climates, but most of them are also remarkable for their special striving after harmony. There are a few languages found in the northern mountains which are harsh and sesquipedalian, and some on the upper coast that are guttural beyond the compass of our American organs of speech; but with these few exceptions the numerous languages of the State are beautiful for their simplicity, the brevity of their words, their melody, and their harmonic sequences.

The Tinné or Athabascan races extend far into California along the coast, reaching to the headwaters of Eel River. The tribes immediately around Humboldt Bay probably do not belong to them, but to the Californians. The former drove the Californians up the Trinity to the mouth of New River. They hold the Smith, the Klamath, Mad, and Eel Rivers entire, except the lower reaches of the last two. They also hold Scott River. Beginning at the head of this river, the line runs across to Mount Shasta; thence to the forks of the Pit; thence up South Fork and down along the Sierra to Honey Lake; thence along the western line of the double crest (the Wá-sho generally hold the summit meadows) to Alpine County. I have not seen the Indians of this county, but they are said to belong to the Paiuti. In Southern California the Paiuti tribes have pushed down King’s River and the San Joaquin nearly to the plains, and down the Kern to its mouth, also through Tahichapa Pass, holding nearly the whole Kern Basin. Of the tribes in the Mohave and Colorado Deserts I can say very little.

An accurate distribution of tribes within these limits is a difficult task. In the mountain regions where there are certain natural, well-defined territories, as valleys, etc., there are generally names which may be dignified as tribal; but on the great plains the Indians become scattered and diffused in innumerable little villages or camps, of which it is very seldom the case that even two are bound together by a common name. The chiefs could not hold them together. Hence, on the plains the only useful boundaries are linguistic; and the extent of any given language is generally far greater than in the mountains.

There will be found in these pages no account of the quasi-Christianized Indians of the missions Their aboriginal customs have so faded out, their tribal organizations and languages have become so hopelessly intermingled and confused, that they can no longer be classified. They are known as Diegeños, Migneleños, Rafaeleños, and the like Spanish names, which are formed from the missions to which they respectively belonged; and for purposes of classification it is useless to take down a vocabulary and call it the “San Miguel language”, for instance, for the Indians who originally lived there may be all dead, while those who give the vocabulary may be descended from Indians brought by the Spanish missionaries from the San Joaquin Valley, or some other point a hundred miles distant, and which has been forgotten even by the whites.

In this work I have followed the system of orthography recommended in the “Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 160”, which is substantially the same as the Continental. Occasionally it is found necessary to employ the consonants ng to denote the French nasal sound, also the German umlaut. has the sound of ch in the German Buch. Indian words are accented and syllabicated the first time they occur; after that they are written solid.

Owing to the great number of dialectic variations in California languages, there is probably not an Indian word in this volume which a person knowing only one dialect could not prove to be wrong.

PREFACE

The word “Pomo” (from punt, paum, pom, which signify “earth” in various languages) denotes “earth-people”. Though it is the specific name of only one nation on Russian River, it is equally applicable to all the aborigines of California, since they all believe that their first ancestors were created directly from the soil of their respective present dwelling-places.

There are several ideas which the reader who is acquainted only with Atlantic tribes must divest his mind of, in taking up the study of the California Indians. Among them is the idea of the “Great Spirit”, for these people are realistic and seek to personify everything; also that of the “Happy Hunting Grounds”, for the indolent Californian reared in his balmy clime knows nothing of the fierce joy of the Dakota hunter, but believes in a heaven of Hedonic ease and luxury. The reader must also lay aside the copper-color, the haughty aquiline beak, and the gorgeous, barbaric ornamentation of the person. He must lay aside the gory scalp-lock (for the most part), the torture of the captive at the stake, the red war-paint of terrible import (the Californians used black), the tomahawk, the totem, and the calumet. As the plain and simple “Pomo” is to the more resounding “Algonkin”, so is the California aborigine to his Atlantic cousin.

It is a humble and a lowly race which we approach, one of the lowest on earth; but I am greatly mistaken if the history of their lives does not teach more wholesome and salutary lessons—lessons of barbaric providence, plenty, and contentment, of simple pleasures and enjoyments, and of the capacities of unprogressive savagery to fill out the measure of human happiness, and to mass dense populations—than may be learned from the more romantic story of the Algonkins.

Perhaps it is too much to ask any one-to believe that there are regions of California which supported more Indians than they over will of white men. But if those who honor this book with a perusal shall lay it aside with the conviction that the cause of his extinction does not “lie within the savage himself”, and that the white man does not come to “take the place which the savage has practically vacated”, I shall be content. Civilization is a great deal better than savagery; but in order to demonstrate that fact it is not necessary to assert, as Wood does in his work, that savagery was accommodatingly destroying itself while yet the white man was afar off. Ranker heresy never was uttered, at least so far as the California Indians are concerned. It is not well to seek to shift upon the shoulders of the Almighty (through the savages whom He made) the burden of the responsibility which attaches to the vices of our own race.

Let it not be thought that this book will attempt to gloze or to conceal anything in the character or conduct of the aborigines. While they had fewer vices than our own race, they committed more frequently the blackest crimes. Revenge, treachery, cruelty, assassination—these are the dark sides of their lives; but in this category there was nothing ever perpetrated by the California Indians which has not been matched by acts of individual frontiersmen. As above remarked, the torture of captives was not one of their customs. Infanticide was probably more frequent than among us; and their occasional parricide, done in cold blood, stands perhaps without a parallel.

In order to study their customs I traveled among them the greater part of the summers of 1871 and 1872, and lived many months in sufficient proximity to their villages.

I am indebted to Prof. H. N. Bolander and Mr. R. P. C. Stearns for assistance in the matter of sundry scientific details; and to A. W. Chase, Esq., of the United States Coast Survey, for sketches and photographs.

S. P.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE MI'-WOK.

By much the largest nation in California, both in population and in extent of territory, is the Miwok, whose ancient dominion extended from the snow-line of the Sierra Nevada to the San Joaquin River, and from the Cosumnes to the Fresno. When we reflect that the mountain valleys were thickly peopled as far east as Yosemite (in summer, still further up), and consider the great extent and fertility of the San Joaquin plains, which to-day produce a thousand bushels of wheat for every white inhabitant, old and young, in certain districts; then add to this the long and fish-full streams, the Mokelumne, the Stanislaus, the Tuolumne, the Merced, the Chowchilla, and the San Joaquin encircling all, along whose banks the Indians anciently dwelt in multitudes, we shall see what a capacity there was to support a dense population. Even the islands of the San Joaquin were made to sustain their quota, for on Feather Island there are said to be the remains of a populous village. The rich alluvial lands along the lower Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and Merced contained the heart of the nation, and were probably the seat of the densest population of ancient California.

And yet, broadly extended as it was, and feeble or wholly lacking as was the feeling of national unity, this people possess a language more homogeneous than many others not half so widely ramified. An Indian may start from the upper end of Yosemite and travel with the sun 150 miles, a great distance to go in California without encountering a new tongue, and on the San Joaquin make himself understood with little difficulty. Another may journey from the Cosumnes southward to the Fresno, crossing, three rivers which the timid race bad no means of ferrying over but casual logs, and still hear the familiar numerals with scarcely the change of a syllable, and lie can sit down with a new-found acquaintance and impart to him hour-long communications with only about the usual supplement and bridging of gesture (which is great at best). To one who has been traveling months in regions where a new language has to be looked to every ten miles sometimes, this state of affairs is a great relief.

There are, as always, many and abrupt dialectic departures, but the root remains, and is quickly caught tip by the Indian of a different dialect. There are not so often whole cohorts of words swinging loose from the language. A ride, through the Nishinam land is like the march of a, regiment through a hostile country; every half-day’s journey there is a clean breach of a whole company of words, which is replaced by another.

For instance, north of the Stanislaus they call themselves mi'-wok (“men” or “people”); south of it to the Merced, mi'-wa; south of that to the Fresno, mi'-wi. On the Upper Merced the word “river” is wa-kal'-la; on the Upper Tuolumne, wa-kal'-u-mi; on the Stanislaus and Mokelumne, wa-kal'-u-mi-toh. This is undoubtedly the origin of the word “Mokelumne”, which is locally pronounced mo-kal'-u-my. So also kos'-sūm, kos'-sūm-mi (salmon) is probably the origin of the word “Cosumnes”, which is pronounced koz'-u-my. For the word “grizzly bear” there exist in different dialects the following different forms: u-zu'-mai-ti, os-o'-mai-ti, uh-zu'-mai-ti, uh-zu'-mai-tuh.

Their language is not lacking in words and phrases of greeting, which are full of character. When one meets a stranger he generally salutes him, wu'-meh? “[Whence] do you come"? After which follows, whi-i'-neh? “What are you at"? Sometimes it is wi'-oh u-kūh'? about equivalent to “How do you do?” How like the savage! Instead of inquiring kindly as to the new comer’s health and welfare, with the inquisitiveness and suspicion of his race he desires to know from what quarter he hails, whither he is going, what for, etc. After the third or fourth question has been asked him, the stranger frequently remarks he'-kang-wa, “I am hungry”, which never fails to procure a substantial response, or as substantial as the larder will permit. Perhaps lie will acknowledge it by ku'-ui, “Thank you”; more probably not. When the guest is ready to take his departure, he never fails to say wūk'-si-mus-si, “I am going”. To which the host replies ko-to-el-le', “You go ahead”, an expression which arises from their custom of walking single file. These rudely-inquisitive greetings are heard only when two Indians meet abroad. At home the stranger is received in silence.

Some of the idioms are curiously characteristic of that point-no-point way of talking which savages have in common with children. Thus, hai'-em is “near”, and hai'-et-kem is also “near”, but not quite so near; and kotun is a “long way off”, though that may be only on the opposite bank of the river. Chu'-to is “good”; chu-to-si-ke' is “very good”, the only comparative expression there is.

While this is undoubtedly the largest, it is also probably the lowest nation in California, and it presents one of the most hopeless and saddening spectacles of heathen races. According to their own confession, in primitive times both sexes and all ages went absolutely naked. All of them north of the Stani[s]laus, and probably many south also, not only married cousins, but herded together so promiscuously in their wigwams that not a few white men believe and assert to this day the monstrous proposition that sisters were often taken for wives. But this is unqualifiedly false. The Indians all deny it emphatically, and not one of their accusers could produce an instance, having been deceived into the belief by the general circumstance above mentioned.

They eat all creatures that swim in the waters, all that fly through the air, and all that creep, crawl, or walk upon the earth, with a dozen or so exceptions. They have the most degraded and superstitious beliefs in wood-spirits, who produce those disastrous conflagrations to which California is subject; in water-spirits, who inhabit the rivers, consume the fish; and in fetichistic spirits, who assume the forms of owls and other birds, to render their lives a terror by night and by day.

In occasional specimens of noble physical stature they were not lacking, especially in Yosemite and the other mountain valleys; but the utter weakness, puerility, and imbecility of their conceptions, and the unspeakable obscenity of some of their legends, almost surpass belief.

But the saddest and gloomiest thing connected with the Miwok is the fact that many of them, probably a majority of all who have any well-defined ideas whatever on the subject, believe in the annihilation of the soul after death. When an Indian’s friend departs the earth, be mourns him with that great and poignant sorrow of one who is without hope. He will live no more forever. All that lie possessed is burned with him upon the funeral pyre, in order that nothing may remain to remind them afterward of one who is gone to black oblivion. So awful to them is the thought of one who is gone down to eternal nothingness that his name is never afterward even whispered. If one of his friends is so unfortunate as to possess the same name, he changes it for another, and if at any time they are compelled to mention the departed, with bated breath they murmur simply it'-teh, “him”. Himself, his identity, is gone; his name is lost; he is blotted out; itteh represents merely the memory of a being that once was. Like all other tribes in California, they are gay and jovial in their lives; but while most of the others have a mitigation of the final terrors in the assured belief of an immortality in the Happy Western Land, the Miwok go down with a grim and stolid sullenness to the death of a dog that will live no more. It is necessary to say, however, that not all entertain this belief. It seems to prevail more especially south. of the Merced, and among the most grave and thoughtful of these. Throughout the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys one will occasionally meet ail Indian who holds to annihilation; but the creed is no where so prevalent as here.

The Miwok north of the Stani[s]laus designate tribes principally by the points of the compass. These are tu'-mun, chu'-much, he'-zu-it, ol'-o-wit (north, south, east, west), from which are formed tribal names as follows: Tu'-mun, Tu'-mi-dok, Ta-mo-le'-ka; Chu'-much, Chūm'-wit, Chu'-mi-dok or Chim'-i-dok, Chūm-te'-ya; Ol'-o-wit, Ol-o'-wi-dok, Ol-o-wi'-ya, etc. Ol-o'-wi-dok is the general name applied by the mountaineers to all the tribes on the plains as far west as Stockton and the San Joaquin.

But there are several names employed absolutely. On the south bank of the Middle Cosumnes are the Kâ'-ni; on Sutter Creek, the Yu-lo'-ni; in Yosemite, the A-wa'-ni; on the South Fork of the Merced, the Nūt'-chu; on the Stanislaus and Tuolumne, the extensive tribe of the Wal'-li; on the Middle Merced, the Ch-ūm-te'-ya; on the Upper Chowchilla River, the Heth-to'-ya; on the Middle Chowchilla, the Chau-clil'-la; on the north bank of the Fresno, the Po'-ho-ni-chi. There were probably others besides on the plains, but they have been so long extinct that their names are forgotten. Dr. Bunnell mentions the “Potoencies”, but no Indian had ever heard of such a tribe; also, the “Honachees”, which is probably a mistake for the Mo-na'-chi, a name applied by some Indians to the Paiuti.

How extremely limited were their journeyings of old may be judged by the fact that all of them, no matter what two rivers they live between, always employ the same phrases: wa-kal'-u-mi tu'-mun (north river), and wa-kal'-u-mi chu'-much (south river). The only fixed name I was ever able to learn was O-tūl'-wi-uh, which is the Tuolumne.

The name “Walli” has been the subject of a great deal of discussion among white men, as to its meaning and derivation. Some assert that it is a word applied by the pioneers to the Indians, without any signification; others, that it is an aboriginal word, denoting “friends”. Probably the latter theory is due to the fact that the Indians, in meeting, frequently cry out “Walli! Walli!” As a matter of fact, it is derived from the word wal'-lim, which means simply “down below”; and it appears to have been originated by the Yosemite Indians and others living high up in the mountains, and applied to the lower tribes with a slight feeling of contempt. The Indians on the Stanislaus and Tuolumne use the term freely in conversing among themselves, but on the Merced it is never beard except when spoken by the whites.

For houses, the Miwok construct very rude affairs of poles and brushwood, which they cover with earth in the winter; in summer, as the general custom is, they move into mere brushwood shelters. Higher up in the mountains they make a summer lodge of puncheons, in the shape of a sharp cone, with one side open, and a bivouac-fire in front of it.

Perhaps the only special points to be noted in their physiognomy are the smallness of many heads, and the flatness on the sinciput, caused by their lying on the hard baby-basket when infants. I felt the heads of a rancheria near Chinese Camp, and was surprised at the diminutive balls which lurked within the masses of hair. The chief, Captain John, was at least seventy years old, yet his head was still perceptibly flattened on the back, and I could almost encircle it with my hands.

Figure 32. Acorn granaries.

It is generally asserted of these Indians that they will eat anything. But there is one exception, and that is the clean, sweet flesh of the skunk. Old hunters assert that it is such, but the aborigines detest it beyond measure. So uncompromising is their horror of this animal that they have never examined one; consequently they have an erroneous impression of its anatomy. They believe that the effluvium is produced, not by any peculiar secretion, but by the emission of wind! An old hunter related all amusing method of capturing this animal which he bad seen among the Nishinam. One man attracted its attention in front while another ran up quickly behind, seized it by the tail, and by a blow with his hand on the back of the neck broke that organ before the beast could become offensive. The Miwok utilize it in one way at least; they sometimes hang the carcasses on trees along a trail difficult to follow, so that they car be guided by one sense if not by another. I have seen this myself.

They are very fond of hare, and make comfortable robes of their skins. They cut them into narrow slits, dry them in the sun, then lay them close together, and make a rude warp of them by tying or sewing strings across at intervals of a few inches.

Soap-root is used in the manufacture of a kind of glue, and the squaws make brushes of the fibrous matter encasing the bulb, wherewith they occasionally sweep out their wigwams and the earth for a small space around. Although there were millions of tall, straight pines in the mountains, the Miwok had no means of crossing rivers, except logs or clumsy rafts. All the dwellers on the plains, and as far up as the cedar-line, bought all their bows and many of their arrows from the upper mountaineers. An Indian is ten days in making a bow, and it is valued at $3, $4, and $5, according to the workmanship; an arrow at 121 cents. Three kinds of money were employed in this traffic. White shell-buttons, pierced in the center and strung together, rate at $5 a yard (this money was less valuable than among, the Nisbinam, probably because these lived nearer the source of supply); “periwinkles” (olivella?) at $1 a yard; fancy marine shells at various prices, from $3 to $10 or $15 a yard, according to their beauty.

Their chieftainship, such as it is, is hereditary when there is a son or brother of commanding influence, which is very seldom; otherwise be is thrust aside for another. He is simply a master of ceremonies, except when a man of great ability appears, in which case he sometimes succeeds in uniting two or three of the little, discordant tribelets around him, and spends his life in a vain effort to harmonize others, and so goes down to his grave at the last broken-hearted. It is of no use; the greatest savage intellect that ever existed could not have banded permanently together fifty villages of the California Indians.

When be decides to hold a dance in his village, he dispatches messengers to the neighboring rancherias, each bearing a string wherein is tied a number of knots. Every morning thereafter the invited chief unties one of the knots, and when the last one is reached they joyfully set forth for the dance—men, women, and children.

Occasionally there arises a great orator or prophet, who wields a wide influence, and exerts it to introduce reforms which seem to him desirable. Old Sam, of Jackson, Calaveras County, was such a one. Sometimes he would set out on a speaking tour, traveling many miles in all directions, and discoursing with much fervor and eloquence nearly all night, according to accounts. Shortly before I passed he had introduced two reforms, at which the reader will probably smile, but which were certainly salutary so far as they went. One was that the widows no longer tarred their heads in mourning, but painted their faces, which would be less lasting in its loathsome effects. The other was that instead of holding all annual “cry” in memory of the dead, they should dance and chant dirges.

In one of his speeches to his people he is reported to have counseled them to live at peace with the whites, to treat them kindly, and avoid quarrels whenever possible, as it was worse than useless to contend against their conquerors. He then diverged into remarks on economy in the household: “Do not waste cooked victuals. You never have too much, anyhow. The Americans do not waste their food. They work hard for it, and take care of it. They keep it in their houses out of the rain. You let the squirrels get into your acorns. When you eat a piece of pie, you eat it up as far as the apple goes, then throw the crust into the fire. When you have a pancake left You throw it to the dogs. Every family should keep only one dog. It is wasteful.”

Tai-pok'-si, chief of the Chimteya, was a notable Indian in his generation, holding undisputed sovereignty in the valley of the Merced, from the South Fork to the plains. Early every morning, as soon as the families had had time decently to prepare breakfast, be would step out before his wigwam and lift up his sonorous voice like a Stentor, summoning the whole village to work. in the gold-diggings, and himself went forth to share the labor of the humblest. Men, women, and children went out together, taking their dinners along, and the village was totally deserted until about three o’clock Every one worked hard, inspired by the example of their eat chieftain, the men making dives in the Merced of a minute or more, and bringing up the rich gravel, while the women and children washed it on shore. They got plenty of gold and lived in civilized luxury so long as Taipoksi was alive. He was described by one who knew him well as a magnificent specimen of a savage, standing fully six feet high, straight and sinewy, shiny-black as an Ethiopian, with eyes like an eagle’s, a lofty forehead, nostrils high and strongly chiseled, each of them showing a clean, bold ellipse. He died in 1857, and was buried in Rum Hollow with unparalleled pomp and splendor. Over 1,200 Indians were present at his funeral. After this grand old barbarian was gone his tribe speedily went to the bad; their industry lagged; their gold was gambled away; their fine clothing followed hard after it; dissension, disease, and death scattered them to the four winds.

Among the Miwok a bride is sometimes carried to the lodge of her husband on the back of a stalwart Indian, amid a joyous throng, singing songs, dancing, leaping, and whooping. In return for the presents given by the groom, his father-in-law gives the young couple various substantial articles, such as are needful in the scullery, to set them up in housekeeping. In fact, here, as generally throughout the State, it is a pretty well established usage that the parents are to do everything for their children, and the latter nothing until they marry. The father often continues these presents of meat and acorns for several years after the marriage. And what is his reward? Making himself a slave, he is treated substantially as such, and when he has become old, and ought to be tenderly nurtured, he frequently has to shift for himself.

Mention is made of a woman named Ha-u-chi-ah', living near Murphy’s, who, in 1858, gave birth to twins and destroyed one of them, in accordance with the universal custom.

Some of their shamans are men and some women. Scarification and prolonged suction with the mouth are their staple methods. In case colds and rheumatism they apply California balm of Gilead (Picea grandis) externally and internally. Stomachic affections and severe travail treated with a plaster of hot ashes and moist earth. They think that their male shamans or sorcerers can sit on a mountain top, fifty miles distant from a man whom they wish to destroy, and accomplish that result by filliping poison toward him from their finger-ends. The shaman’s prerogative is that be must be paid in advance; hence a man seeking his services brings his offering with him, a fresh-slain deer, or so many yards of shell-money, or something, and flings it down on the ground before him without a word, thereby intimating that he desires the equivalent of that in medicine and treatment. The patient’s prerogative is that if he dies his friends may kill the physician.

In the acorn dance the whole company join hands and dance in a circle, men and women together—a position of equality not often accorded to the weaker sex. They generally have to dance by themselves in an outside circle, each woman behind her lord. Besides this fixed anniversary there are many occasional fandangoes, for feasting and amusement. They resemble a civilized ball somewhat, inasmuch as the young men of the village giving the entertainment contribute a sum of money wherewith to procure a great quantity of hare, wild-fowl, acorns, sweet roots, and other delicacies (nowadays generally a bullock, sheep, flour, fruit, etc.). Then they select a sunny glade, far within some sequestered forest where they will not be disturbed by intruders, and plant green branches in the ground, forming large circle. Grass and pine-straw are scattered within to form at once divan and a dancing-floor. Here the invited villagers collect and spend frequently a week; gambling, feasting, and sleeping in the breezy shade by day, and by night dancing to lively tunes, with execrable and most industrious music, and wild, dithyrambic crooning of chants, and indescribable dances, now sweeping around in a ring beneath the overhanging pine-boughs, and now stationary, with plumes nodding and beadery jingling. It is wonderful what a world of riotous enjoyment the California Indians will compress into the space of a week.

They observe no puberty dance, neither does any other tribe south of Chico.

There is no observance of the dance for the dead, but an annual mourning (nūt'-yu) instead; and occasionally, in the case of a high personage, a special mourning, set by appointment a few months after his death. One or more villages assemble together in the evening, seat themselves on the ground in a circle, and engage in loud and demonstrative wailing, beating themselves and tearing their hair. The squaws wander off into the forest wringing their arms piteously, beating the air, with eyes upturned, and adjuring the departed one, whom they tenderly call “dear child”, or “dear cousin” (whether a relative or not), to return. Sometimes, during a kind of trance or frenzy of sorrow, a squaw will dance three or four hours in the same place without cessation, crooning all the while, until she falls in a dead faint. Others, with arms interlocked, pace to and fro in a beaten path for hours, chanting weird death-songs with eldritch and inarticulate wailings—sad voicings of savage, hopeless sorrow.

On the Merced the widow does not apply pitch over the whole face, but only in a small blotch under the ears, while the younger squaws singe off their hair short. When some relative chances to be absent at the time of the funeral some article belonging to the deceased (frequently a hat nowadays) is preserved from the general sacrifice of his effects and retained until the absent member returns, that the sight of it may kindle his sorrow and awaken in his bosom fresh and piercing recollections of that being whom he will never more behold.

On the Lower Tuolumne, after dancing the frightful death-dance around the fresh-made grave into which the body has just been lowered, they go out of mourning by removing the pitch until the annual mourning comes round, when they renew it. On the latter occasion they make out of clothing and blankets manikins to represent the deceased, which they carry around the graves with shrieks of sorrow.

As soon as the annual mourning is over in autumn all the relatives of the departed are at full liberty to engage in their ordinary pursuits, to attend dances, etc., which before that were interdicted. That solemn occasion itself too frequently winds up with a gross debauch of sensuality. The oldest brother is entitled to his brother’s widow, and lie may even convey her home to his lodge on the return from the funeral, if he is so disposed, though that would be accounted a very scandalous proceeding.

Although cremation very generally prevailed among the Miwok there never was a time when it was universal. Captain John states that long before they had ever seen any Europeans, the Indians high up in the mountains buried their dead, though his people about Chinese Camp always burned. As low down on the Stanislaus as Robinson’s Ferry long ranks of skeletons have been revealed by the action of the river, three or four feet beneath the surface, doubled up and covered with stones, of which none of the bones showed any charring.

In respect to legends, they relate one which is somewhat remarkable. First it is necessary to state that there is a lake-like expansion of the Upper Tuolumne some four miles long and from a half mile to a mile wide, directly north of Hatchatchie Valley (erroneously spelled Hetch Hetchy). It appears to have no name among Americans, but the Indians call it O-wai'-a-nuh, which is manifestly a dialectic variation of a-wai'-a, the generic word for “lake”. Nat. Screech, a veteran mountaineer and hunter, states that he visited this region in 1850, and at that time there was a valley along the river having the same dimensions that this lake now has. Again, in 1855, lie happened to pass that way and discovered that the lake bad been formed as it now exists. He was at a loss to account for its origin; but subsequently he acquired the Miwok language as spoken at Little Gap, and while listening to the Indians one day lie overheard them casually refer to the formation of this lake in an extraordinary manner. On being questioned they stated that there had been a tremendous cataclysm in that valley, the bottom of it having fallen out apparently, whereby the entire valley was submerged in the waters of the river. As nearly as he could ascertain from their imperfect methods of reckoning time this occurred in 1851; and in that year, while in the town of Sonora, Screech and many others remembered to have heard a huge explosion in that direction which they then supposed was caused by a local earthquake.

On Drew’s Ranch, Middle Fork of the Tuolumne, lives an aged squaw called Dish-i, who was in the valley when this remarkable event occurred. According to her account the earth dropped in beneath their feet and the waters of the river leaped up and came rushing upon them in a vast, roaring flood, almost perpendicular like a wall of rock. At first the Indians were stricken dumb and motionless with terror, but when they saw the waters coming they escaped for life, though thirty or forty were overtaken and drowned. Another squaw named Isabel says that the stubs of trees, which are still plainly visible deep down in the pellucid waters, are considered by the old superstitious Indians to be evil spirits, the demons of the place, reaching up their arms, and that they fear them greatly. This account, if authentic, is valuable as throwing some light on the origin of Yosemite and other great canons of the high Sierra.

An Indian of Garrote narrated to me a myth of the creation of man and woman by the coyote, which contained a very large amount of aboriginal dirt. When the legends of the California Indians are pure, which they generally are, they are often quite pretty; but when they diverge into impurity they contain the most gratuitous and abominable obscenity ever conceived by the mind of man.

The following is a fable told at Little Gap:

CREATION OF MAN.

After the coyote had finished all the work of the world and the inferior creatures lie called a council of them to deliberate on the creation of man. They sat down in an open space in the forest, all in a circle, with the lion at the head. On his right sat the grizzly bear, next the cinnamon bear, and so on around according to the rank, ending with the little mouse, which sat at the lion’s left.

The lion was the first to speak, and he declared he should like to see man created with a mighty voice like himself, wherewith he could frighten all animals. For the rest he would have him well covered with hair, terrible fangs in his claws, strong talons, etc.

The grizzly bear said it was ridiculous to have such a voice as his neighbor, for he was always roaring with it and seared away the very prey lie wished to capture. He said the man ought to have prodigious strength, and move about silently but very swiftly if necessary, and be able to grip his prey without making a noise.

The buck said the man would look very foolish, in his way of thinking, unless be had a magnificent pair of antlers on his head to fight with. He also thought it was very absurd to roar so loudly, and he would pay less attention to the man’s throat than be would to his ears and his eyes, for he would have the first like a spider’s web and the second like fire.

The mountain sheep protested be never could see what sense there was in such antlers, branching every way, only to get caught in the thickets. If the man had horns mostly rolled up, they would be like a stone on each side of his bead, giving it weight, and enabling him to butt a great deal harder.

When it came the coyote’s turn to speak, he declared all these were the stupidest speeches he ever heard, and that be could hardly keep awake while listening to such a pack of noodles and nincompoops. Every one of them wanted to make the man like himself They might just as well take one of their own cubs and call it a man. As for himself he knew he was not the best animal that could be made, and he could make one better than himself or any other. Of course, the man would have to be like himself in having four legs, five fingers, etc. It was well enough to have a voice like the lion, only the man need not roar all the while with it. The grizzly bear also had some good points, one of which was the shape of his feet, which enabled him easily to stand erect; and he was in favor, therefore, of making the man’s feet nearly like the grizzly’s. The grizzly was also happy in having no tail, for he had learned from his own experience that, that organ was only a harbor for fleas. The buck’s eyes and ears were pretty good, perhaps better than his own. Then there was the fish, which was naked, and which he envied, because hair was a burden most of the year; and lie, therefore, favored a man without hair. His claws ought to be as long as the eagle’s, so that he could hold things in them. But after all, with all their separate gifts, they must acknowledge that there was no animal besides himself that had wit enough to supply the man; and he should be obliged, therefore, to make him like himself in that respect also—cunning and crafty.

After the coyote had made an end, the beaver said he never heard such twaddle and nonsense in his life. No tail, indeed! He would make a man with a broad, flat tail, so he could baul mud and sand on it.

The owl said all the animals seemed to have lost their senses; none of them wanted to give the man wings. For himself, he could not see of what use anything on earth could be to himself without wings.

The mole said it was perfect folly to talk about wings, for with them the man would be certain to bump his head against the sky. Besides that, if he had eyes and wings both, he would get his eyes burnt out by flying too near the sun; but without eyes he could burrow in the cool, soft earth, and be happy.

Last of all, the little mouse squeaked out that he would make a man with eyes, of course, so he could see what he was eating; and as for burrowing in the ground, that was absurd.

So the animals disagreed among themselves, and the council broke up in a row. The coyote flew at the beaver, and nipped a piece out of his cheek; the owl jumped on top of the coyote’s head, and commenced lifting his scalp, and there was a high time. Every animal set to work to make a man according to his own ideas; and, taking a lump of earth, each one commenced molding it like himself; but the coyote began to make one like that be had described in the council. It was so late before they fell to work that nightfall came on before any one had finished his model, and they all lay down and fell asleep. But the Cunning coyote staid awake and worked hard on his model all night. When all the other animals were sound asleep, lie went around and discharged water on their models, and so spoiled them. In the morning early he finished his model and gave it life long before the others could make new models; and thus it was that man was made by the coyote.

Figure 34. A sweat and cold plunge

Following are the Miwok numerals, as spoken in Yosemite. There are slight variations everywhere, but the only one of importance is found on Calaveras River, where lu'-teh is substituted for keng'-a.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
YOSEMITE.

There is no doubt the Indians would be much amused if they could know what a piece of work we have made of some of their names. As stated in the Introduction, all California Indian names that have any significance at all must"be interpreted on the plainest and most prosaic principles; whereas the great, grim walls of Yosemite have been made by the white man to blossom with aboriginal poetry like a page of “Lalla Rookh”. From the “Great Chief of the Valley” and the “Goddess of the Valley” down to the “Virgin Tears” and the “Cataract of Diamonds”, the sumptuous imaginations of various discoverers have trailed through that wonderful gorge blazons of mythological and barbarian heraldry of an Oriental gorgeousness. It would be a pity, truly, if the Indians had not succeeded in interpreting more poetically the meanings of the place than our countrymen have done in such bald appellations as “Vernal Fall”, “Pigeon Creek”, and the like; but whether they did or not, they did not perpetrate tbe melodramatic and dime-novel shams that have been fathered upon them.

In the first place the aborigines never knew of any such locality as Yosemite Valley. Second, there is not now and there has not been anything in the valley which they call Yosemite. Third, they never called “Old Ephraim” himself Yosemite, nor is there any such a word in the Miwok language.

The valley has always been known to them, and is to this day, when speaking among themselves, as A-wa'-ni. This, it is true, is only the name of one of the ancient. villages which it contained; but by prominence it gave its name to the valley, and, in accordance with Indian usage almost everywhere, to the inhabitants of the same. The word “Yosemite” is simply a very beautiful and sonorous corruption of the word for “grizzly bear”. On the Stanislaus and north of it the word is u-zú-mai-ti; at Little Gap, o-so'-mai-ti; in Yosemite itself, u-zú-mai-ti; on the South Fork of the Merced, uh-zú-mai-tuh.

Mr. J. M. Hutchings, in his “Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California", states that the pronunciation on the South Fork is “Yohamite”. Now, there is occasionally a kind of cockney in the tribe, who cannot get the letter “h” right. Different Indians will pronounce the word for “wood” su- sú-eh, sú-suh, hu-hú-eh; also, the word for “eye”, hun'-ta, hun'-tum, shun'-ta. It may have been an Indian of this sort who pronounced the word that way; I never beard it so spoken.

In other portions of California the Indian names have effected such slight lodgment in our atlases that it is seldom worth while to go much out of the way to set them right; but there are so many of them preserved in Yosemite that it is different. Professor Whitney and Mr. Hutchings, in their respective guide-books, state that they derived their catalogues of Indian names from white men. The Indians certainly have a right to be heard in this department at least; and when they differ from the interpreters every right-thinking man will accept the statement of an intelligent aborigine as against a score of Americans. The Indian can very seldom give a connected, philosophical account of his customs and ideas, for which one must depend on men who have observed them; but if he does not know the simple words of his own language, pray who does?

Acting on this belief, I employed Choko (a dog), generally known as Old Jim, and accounted the wisest aboriginal head in Yosemite, to go with me around the valley and point out in detail all the places. He is one of the very few original Awani now living; for a California Indian, he is exceptionally frank and communicative, and he is generally considered by Americans as truthful as he is shiftless, a kind of aboriginal Sam Lawson. His statements and pronunciations I compared with those of other Indians, that the chances of error might be as much reduced as possible. In the following list the signification of the name is given whenever there is any known to the Indians.

Wa-kal'-la (the river). Merced River.

Kai-al'-a-wa, Kai-al-au'-wa, the mountains just west of El Capitan.

Pūt'-pūt-on, the little stream first crossed on entering the valley on the north side.

Lung-u-tu-ku'-ya, Ribbon Fall.

Po'-ho-no, Po-ho'-no, (though the first is probably the more correct), Bridal-Veil Fall. In Hutchings’s Guide-Book, it is stated that the Indians believe this stream and the lake from which it flows to be bewitched, and that they never pass it without a feeling of distress and terror. Probably the Americans have laughed them out of this superstition, as it certainly is not now perceptible. This word is said to signify “evil wind”. The only “evil wind” that an Indian knows of is a whirlwind, which is poi-i'-cka or kan'-u-ma.

Tu-tok-a-nu'-la, El Capitan. This name is a permutative substantive formed from the verb tūl-tak'-a-na, to creep or advance by degrees, like a measuring-worm. This may, therefore, be called the “Measuring-worm Stone”, of which the origin will be explained in the legend given below.

Ko-su'-ko, Cathedral Rock.

Figure 35. Pu-sí-na-chuk-ha. (Squirrel and acorn granary).

Kom-pom-pe'-sa, a low rock next west of Three Brothers. This is erroneously spelled “Pompompasus”, applied to Three Brothers, and interpreted “mountains playing leap-frog”. The Indians know neither the word nor the game.

Loi'-a, Sentinel Rock.

Sak'-ka-du-eh, Sentinel Dome.

Cho'-lok (the fall), Yosemite Fall. This is the generic word for “fall”.

Ūm'-mo-so (generally contracted by the Indians to Ūm'-moas or Ūm'-mo), the bold, towering cliff east of Yosemite Fall. According to Choko, there was formerly a hunting-station near this point, back in the mountains, where the Indians secreted themselves to kill deer when driven past by others. If we may credit him, they missed more than they hit. In his jargon of English, Spanish, and Indian, supplemented with copious and expressive pantomime, he described how they hid themselves in the booth, and how the deer came scurrying past; then lie quickly caught up his bow and shot, shot, shot; then peered out of the bushes, looked blank, laughed, and cried out, “All run away; no shoot um deer!”

Ma'-ta (the cañon), Indian Cañon. A generic word, in explaining which the Indians hold up both hands to denote perpendicular walls.

Ham'-mo-ko (usuall'y contracted to Ham'-moak), a generic word, used several times in the valley to denote the broken débris lying at the foot of the walls.

U-zu'-mai-ti Lâ'-wa-tuh (grizzly-bear skin), Glacier Rock. The Indians give it this name from the grayish, grizzled appearance of the wall and a fancied resemblance to a bear-skin stretched out on one of its faces.

Tu-tu'-lu-wi-sak, Tu-tūl'-wi-ak, the southern wall of South Cañon.

Figure 36. Cho-ko-nip-o-deh. (baby-basket).

Tol'-leh, the soil or surface of the valley wherever not occupied by a village; the commons. It also denotes the bank of a river.

Pai-wai'-ak (white water?), Vernal Fall. The common word for “water” is kik'-kuh, but a-wai'-a means “a lake” or body of water. I have detected a conjectural root, pai, pi, denoting “white”, in two languages.

Yo-wai'-yi, Nevada Fall. In this word also we detect the root of awaia.

Tis-se'-yak, South Dome. This is the name of a woman who figures in a legend related below. The Indian woman cuts her hair straight across the forehead, and allows the sides to drop along her cheeks, presenting a square face, which the Indians account the acme of female beauty; and they think they discover this square face in the vast front of South Dome.

To-ko'-ye, North Dome. This rock represents Tisseyak’s husband. On one side of him is a huge, conical rock, which the Indians call the acorn-basket that his wife threw at him in anger.

Shun'-ta, Hun'-ta (the eye), the Watching Eye.

A-wai'-a (a lake), Mirror Lake.

Sa-wah' (a gap), a name occurring frequently.

Wa-ha'-ka, a village which stood at the base of Three Brothers; also, that rock itself. This was the westernmost village in the valley, and the next one above was

Sak'-ka-ya, on the south bank of the river, a little west of Sentinel

Hok-ok'-wi-dok, which stood very nearly where Hutchings’s Hotel now stands, opposite Yosemite Fall.

Ku-mai'-ni, a village which was situated at the lower end of the great meadow, about a quarter of a mile from Yosemite Fall.

A-wa'-ni, a large village standing directly at the foot of Yosemite Fall. This was the ruling town, the metropolis of this little mountain democracy, and the giver of its name, and it is said to have been the residence of the celebrated chief Ten-ai'-ya.

Ma-che'-to, the next village east, at the foot of Indian Cañon.

No-to-mid'-u-la, a village about four hundred yards east of Macheto.

Le-sam'-ai-ti, a village standing about a fifth of a mile above the last-mentioned.

Wis-kul'-la, the village which stood at the foot of the Royal Arches, and the uppermost one in the valley.

Figure 37. Yosemite Lodge

LEGEND OF TU-TOK-A-NU'-LA.

This is not only a true Indian story, but it has a pretty meaning, being a kind of parallel to the fable of the bare and the tortoise that ran a race. What all the great animals of the forest could not do the despised measuring-worm accomplished simply by patience and perseverance. It also has its value as showing the Indian idea of the formation of Yosemite, and that they must have arrived in the valley after it bad assumed its present form. It should be remarked that the word tultakana means both the measuring-worm and its way of creeping.

We turn now to the legend of Tis-se'-yak. As it stands in Hutchings’s Guide-Book it was written by S. M. Cunningham, one of the earliest settlers in the valley, who first printed it in an eastern newspaper. It is a thousand pities to back and slash in such a miserable way this somewhat tropical legend, but fidelity to aboriginal truth compels me to do it. In its present shape it is a production quite too embellished to have originated in a California Indian’s imagination, hence it is not representative, not illustrative. Tisseyak, instead of being a “goddess of the valley”, was a very prosaic and commonplace woman, who was beaten by her husband because she drank the water before him; and the picture of Indian life revealed in that action, however rude and brutal it may be, is wholly concealed in the story as Mr. Cunningham wrote it.

LEGEND OF TIS-SE'-YAK.

Figure 38. Tis-se'-yak.

South Dome is the woman and North Dome is her husband, while beside the latter is a lower dome which represents the basket. The acme of female beauty is reached in the fashion of cutting off the hair straight across the top of the forehead, and allowing the side-locks to droop beside the ears; and the Indians fancy they discover this square-cut appearance on the face of the South Dome. Probably the only significance of this little story is a reference to some severe drought that once prevailed in the valley.

There are other legends in Yosemite, including one of a Mono maiden who loved an Awani brave and was imprisoned by her cruel father in a cave until she perished; also one of the inevitable lover’s leap. But neither Choko nor any other Indian could give me any information touching them, and Choko dismissed them all with the contemptuous remark, “White man too much lie.”

CHAPTER XXXIV.
TRIBES RELATED TO THE PAI-U'-TI [Paiute].

I have above intimated that there is a large infusion of Paiuti elements in the lower end of the great California basin, arising from early invasions. Among these tribes are the Pal-li-ga-wo-nap' (from pal-up', “stream”, and e-ke'-wan, “large”) on Kern River; the Ti-pa-to-la'-pa on the South Fork of the Kern; and the Wi-nan-gik' on the North Fork. Another name for the Tipatolapa was the Ku-chi-bich-i-wa-nap' Pal-up' (little stream). At Bakersfield was a tribe called by the Yokuts, Pal-e'-um-mi. In the famous Tahichapah Pass was a tribe called by themselves Ta-hi-cha-pa-han'-na; by the Kern River Indians, Ta-hichp'; and by the Yokuts, Kâ-wi'-a-suh. They are now extinct. The Kern River Indians were called by the Yokuts of Fort Tejon, Pi-tan'-ni-suh; and the Indians at Kern Lake, Pal-wu'-nuh (which denotes “down below”). On Kern River Slough are the Po-e'-lo; at Kern River Falls, the To-mo'-la; on Posa Creek, the Be'-ku. On White River there are no Indians, neither have there been any for many years, owing to the prevalence of malaria; but there are indications that the lands along this stream were once inhabited.

THE PAL-LI-GA-WO-NAP'.

As above stated, these Indians lived on Kern River; this one tribe may stand for all on the branches of this stream, and also for those formerly occupying Posa Creek and White River. All the lower waters of the Kern and of these other streams flow through a low malarious region which is very unhealthy. It is related by the Indians that all the aborigines living about Kern Lake perished in one year with the scourge of chills and fever. The dwellers on Posa Creek and White River often suffered terribly from the same disease, and finally, within the American period, or very soon before it, they all removed to a place called Whisky Flat, in the more salubrious region of the foot-hills, from which they went down to their old home only once a year, in the spring, to gather food-seeds.

The Palligawonap have the Paiuti custom of burying the dead. They have no sweat-houses, but there are ruins of old ones in various places in their domain, which were doubtless made there by the California Indians proper, whom they expelled.

They live in wigwams made of tule, woven and matted into various fashions. Tule is also the material from which they construct a rude watercraft. This is only about six feet in length, with the bow very long and sharp-rounded, and the stern cut nearly square across; sides perpendicular; a small tule keel running along the middle, dividing the bottom into two sides. It will carry only one man, and he has to be very careful when standing up to keep his feet one on each side of the keel, or the bobbing thing will capsize. It is used principally in fishing, for which purpose they employ a three-pronged gig pointed with bone. They show much more skill in balancing themselves in the boat than they do in making it.

I saw only one of the tribe, named Chico, on the Tule River Reservation, and he presented the traditional physique of the Californian—very dark-skinned, pudgy in stature, large cheek-bones, nose depressed at the root, brachycephalic head, etc. He was a singular Indian, a real philosopher; had traveled much over Southern California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, broadening the range of his intellectual vision; spoke English and Spanish fluently, besides several Indian tongues; and was as full of curious, quaint, barbaric superstitions, poetical conceits, common sense, and inflated egotism as an egg is of meat, though these various knowledges and fancies were wofully mingled in his brain. I will attempt to give only a few of his ideas.

Po-koh', the Old Man, created the world. He was a being of a capacious head, full of many and great thoughts, and in his voluminous blankets he found room to carry about enough gifts for all men. He created every separate tribe out of soil taken from the place where they now live; hence it is that the Indian’s desire is so strong to live and die in his native place. Pokoh intended that men should not wander and travel, but should be content in their birthplace. In the folds of Ins great blankets he carried around an immense number of gifts, with which he endowed every man according to his will, and every tribe according to his pleasure, with which gifts every one ought to be content.

Long ago the sun was a man, and was bad, but the moon was good. The sun’s rays are arrows, and he has a quiver full of them. These arrows are deadly, for the sun wishes to kill all things. IIe gave an arrow to every animal according to his power; to the lion the greatest; to the grizzly bear the next, and so on, though no animal received an arrow that would kill a man. The man is lord of all.

The sun has two daughters (Venus and Mercury), and twenty men kill them; but after fifty days they return to life again.

The rainbow is the sister of Pokoh, and her breast is covered with flowers. Other Indians say, whenever they see a rainbow, that at that very hour some maiden has reached that first mysterious and momentous event which marks her transition from girlhood to womanhood.

Lightning strikes the ground and fills the flints with fire, which is the source of fire. A “California diamond” will be found wherever it strikes the ground. Some say the beaver brought fire from the east, hauling it on his broad, flat tail, and that is the reason why it has no hair on it to this day.

The carved stone mortars found in many parts of California were made by a race of men that lived long ago. There is one book for the father, and another for the son. Men pass away, and others come in their places.

There are many worlds, some that have passed, and some that are to come. In one world the Indians all creep, in another they all walk, in another they all fly, etc. They may even begin by swimming in the water like fish; in the next, they may walk on four legs; in the next, on two, etc. Other men may walk in this world, and in another crawl like a snake or swim like a fish. These are bad men.

THE SUN AND THE COYOTE.

A long time ago the coyote wanted to go to the sun. IIe asked Pokoh the road, and he showed him. He went straight out on this road, and traveled in it all day, but the sun went round, so that the coyote came back at night to the place where he started in the morning. The next morning he asked Pokoh the road, and he showed him, but he traveled all day, and came back at night to the same place again. But the third day he started early, and went right out to the edge of the world and sat down on the hole where the sun came up. While waiting for the sun he pointed with his bow and arrow toward various places, as if he were about to shoot, and pretended not to see the sun. When the sun came up he told the coyote to get out of his way. But the coyote told him to go round, that it was his road, and he would not get out of the way. But the sun came up under him, and he had to hitch forward a little. After the sun came up a little way it began to get hot on the coyote’s shoulder, and he spit on his paw and rubbed his shoulder. Then he wanted to ride up with the sun. The sun tried to persuade him not to do it, but he would go. So he got on, and the sun started up a path in the sky which was marked off into steps like a ladder, and as he went up he counted “one, two, three “, etc. Presently the coyote got very thirsty, and he asked the sun for a drink of water. He gave him an acorn-cup full, and the coyote asked him why he had no more. Toward noon he got impatient. It was very hot, and the sun told him to close his eyes. He did so, but opened them again, and so kept opening and shutting them all the afternoon. At night, when the sun came down, the coyote took hold of a tree, clambered off, and got down to the ground.

In this pathway of the sun, with steps like a ladder, there is undoubtedly a trace of an ancient zodiac myth. Some persons insist that the Indians must have learned this from the Mexicans or the early Jesuits. The story is sufficiently poor, certainly, but such as it is it must be the invention of the Indians in everything except the one little particular of the graded pathway, at any rate, for no civilized person would have conceived such a fable. These critics, then, would leave the Indians everything but this item; but this they would take away from them because it has a faint suspicion of civilization about it! Such reasoning is contemptible.

THE MONO.

In their own language these Indians call themselves Nūt'-ha. Why the Spaniards named them Mono (monkeys) is not very clear. Although rather an undersized race, they by no means justify the appellation, either in appearance or in character, for they are a manly, warlike people, and were anciently a great terror to the Yokuts. They are several shades lighter than the latter; and with their raven-black hair worn quite down to the shoulders, their smallish features, and their quick, suspicious eyes glancing out from under their great Spanish sombreros, they present a rather singular appearance. They still retain many of the simple virtues of a race of hardy, honest mountaineers, and are mostly free from those brutish practices which disgrace the lowlanders. For years they resisted the inroads of whisky, the great leveler which laid low their valley neighbors. They are a healthy people, and are said to be increasing even now. They do not bathe the entire person daily, like the lowland tribes, but they sometimes take sweat-baths, then run and plunge into cold water. Probably owing largely to their isolated position they are exclusive, and refuse to intermarry with other tribes.

The Mono are an offshoot of the Nevada Indians, and should be properly classified with them, but they have been so long on the western slope of the Sierra, and acquired so many California habits and usages, that they may be included here. Many years ago—it is impossible to ascertain how long ago—they came over from Owen’s River Valley, and conquered for themselves a territory on the upper reaches of the San Joaquin and King’s River, the lower boundaries of which were indicated in the previous chapter.

They are not such a joyous race as the Californians, and have no annual merry-makings, though they sometimes celebrate a good harvest of acorns; and they think that a certain great being in the east, who is nameless to them, must be propitiated at times with a grand hunt and a feast following it, else there will be disease and bad luck in their camps. Their business is with war, and fighting, and hunting; hence they have more taciturnity, more stern immobility of feature, than the Californians. It was they who introduced among the Yokuts, in recent years, the red paint, the terrible emblem of war and bloodshed, which appears to have been unused by the latter before that. They pursue and slay the grizzly bear in single-handed combat, or in companies, with bows and arrows, but the Yokuts hold that animal in mortal terror, and refuse even to partake of its flesh when slain.

The black eagle is sacred to them, and they never kill one, but they pluck out the feathers of those that die, and wear them on their heads as one of their most valuable ornaments. When they succeed in capturing a young one, after two weeks they have a great dance and jubilation around it, then sell it to another village, that they may do likewise.

The California big tree is also in a manner sacred to them, and they call it woh-woh'-nau, a word formed in imitation of the hoot of the owl, which is the guardian spirit and deity of this great monarch of the forest. It is productive of bad luck to fell this tree, or to mock or shoot the owl, or even to shoot in his presence. Bethel states that they have often, in earlier years, tried to persuade him not to cut them down—pity they could not have succeeded!—and that when they see a teamster going along the road with a wagon-load of lumber made from these trees, they will cry out after him, and tell him the owl will visit him with evil luck.

The hunter who penetrates into the great forests of the high Sierra sometimes notices a tree which looks scratched about the base. The Mono account for this appearance in the following manner : Once in awhile the grizzly bears assemble in a council, great and small together, and sit down in a circle in the forest with some huge Old Ephraim occupying the post of honor as chairman. There they sit a long time, bolt upright on their tails, in a silence as profound as that of a Quaker meeting. After awhile the old chairman drops down on all-fours and goes to the tree, rears up and hugs it with his fore-paws, and dances around it. After him the next largest one takes his turn, then the next, and so on, down to the cubs. When a Mono hunter sees them in a council thus, or perceives by the indications that they have recently held one, he hastens home and notifies his companions of the circumstance. They consider that the bears hold these councils for the purpose of making war on them, and for a certain number of days after the discovery is made they carefully refrain from hunting the animals, or even from firing off a gun where they would be likely to hear it, lest they should enrage them. The younger Indians laugh at this story.

Subjoined are the numerals of some of those tribes, taken at the localities indicated. As the Tahichapahannah are extinct, I was obliged to procure their numerals from the Kern River Indians.

CHAPTER 27.
GENERAL FACTS.

It has been the melancholy fate of the California Indians to be more vilified and less understood than any other of the American aborigines. They were once probably the most contented and happy race on the con tinent, in proportion to their capacities for enjoyment, and they have been more miserably corrupted and destroyed than any other tribes within the Union. They were certainly the most populous, and dwelt beneath the most genial heavens, and amidst the most abundant natural productions, and they were swept away with the most swift and cruel extermination.

Pity for the California Indian that he was not a Christian born, instead of a “Gentile”, as the good God made him, for therefore he was written down by the Jesuit padres near to the lowest levels of humanity, that the more conspicuous might appear that self-sacrificing beneficence which reached down to pluck him up to salvation. Pity for him that his purple-tinted and snowy mountains were ribbed with silver and fat with gold-dust, for thereby he became to the American a vagabond thief and a liar, “uncanny and repulsive”. Pity for him that his shining valleys, lying warm and genial in the sun, were capable of making the greedy wheat-grower rich in seven good harvests, for thereby he became to him “a mean, thieving, revengeful scoundrel, far below the grade of the most indifferent white”.

It is small concern to pioneer miners to know aught of the life-story, customs, and ideas of a poor beggar who is so fatuously unwise as to complain that they darken the water so he can no longer see to pierce the red-fleshed salmon, and his women and children are crying for meat. And when, persisting, he is shot down and lies stark and stiff in the arid gulch, where the pitiless sun of California shakes above him the only winding-sheet that covers his bloody corpse, he is not prolific in narration of his people’s legends and traditions. Dead men tell no tales.

Besides that, the California Indians, above all others, are a shy, foxy, secretive race, who will not impart whatever information they possess until confidence has been grounded on long acquaintance, and even then not completely unless one shows sufficient regard fir them to learn their language. This singular secretiveness has kept the great body of the whites in profound ignorance of their ideas, whatever they may have observed of their customs.

The multitude of tongues is another serious obstacle. One may spend years in acquiring an Indian tongue, then ride a half-day’s journey and find himself adrift again.

It is frequently difficult also to clear away the débris created by the white man during twenty years and get down to the bed-rock of the old tribal organization. So morally feeble and self-abnegative were they that their tribes crumbled under the touch of the pale-face, and their members were proud to group themselves about some prominent pioneer and call themselves by his name. They frequently accounted it greater honor to be called Bidwell’s Indians or Reading’s Indians, or so, than Winton or whatever the vernacular title might happen to be. Then, again, it is seldom that a tribe call their neighbors by the name the latter themselves use; and there are some tribes that have no name taken from their own language, as they have adopted the one bestowed by their neighbors.

Physically considered the California Indians are superior to the Chinese, at least to those brought over to America. There is no better proof of this than the wages they receive for labor, for in a free and open market like ours a thing will always eventually fetch what it is worth. Chinamen on the railroad receive $1 a day and board themselves; Indians working in gangs on public roads receive seventy-five cents a day, sometimes $1, and their board, the whole equal to $1.25 or $1.50. But on the northern ranches the Indian has $1.50 to $2 a day and his board, or $1 a day when employed by the year. Farmers trust Indians with valuable teams and complicated agricultural machinery far more than they do the Chinese. And the Indian endures the hot and heavy work of the ranch better than even the Canton Chinaman, who comes from a hot climate but wants an umbrella over his head. The valley Indians are more willing to labor and more moral now than the mountain Indians, because the latter have better opportunities to hunt game and can pick up small change and old clothes about the mining towns.

There is a common belief among the prejudiced and ignorant that the Indian is such an enormous eater as to overbalance his superior value as a laborer over the Chinaman. This is untrue. It is the almost universal testimony of men who have employed them and observed their habits to any purpose, that when they first come in from the rancheria with their stomachs distended from eating the innutritious aboriginal diet, for a day or two they eat voraciously until they become sated on our richer food; and after that they consume no more than an American performing the same labor.

I am inclined to attribute something of the mental weakness of the California aborigines to the excessive amount of fish which they consumed in their native state; also, perhaps, to the quantity of bitter acorns they ate. It is generally accounted that fish is rich in brain-food, but it is an indisputable fact that the grossest superstitions and lowest intellects in the race are found along the sea-coast.

Another erroneous impression generally prevails among Americans as to their physique, because they have seen only the wretched remnants of the race, the inferior lowlanders, whereas the nobler and more valorous mountaineers were early cut off. On the Round Valley Reservation the Pit River men wear shoes averaging five and six in size, the women two and three. The Potter Valley men are, however, a little larger in the feet; their shoes run from seven to ten, averaging eight and nine; the women of the same tribe range from four to seven, averaging five and six. The men’s hands are as small and handsome as their feet, and so are the women’s when young, but the hard and unremitting toil of after-life makes their hands grow large, coarse, and ugly.

Old pioneers, especially on the upper waters of the Trinity and the higher foot-hills of the Sierra, have frequently spoken with enthusiasm of giants they had seen in early days weighing one hundred and eighty, two hundred, even two hundred and fifty pounds; tall, fine fellows, not gross, but sinewy, magnificent specimens of free and fighting savagery. On the other hand the desiccation of body in old age, especially in the women, is something phenomenal. In a wigwam near Temecula I have seen an aged man who certainly would not have weighed over fifty pounds, so extraordinarily was he wasted and shrunken. Many others have nearly equaled him. This fact accounts for the repulsively wrinkled appearance of the aged, that which has made them so odious in the eyes of superficial writers and the fastidious tourists. There is probably no other race so excessively fat in youth and so wasted in old age.

All of them emit an odor peculiar to themselves as that of the Chinese is to them. Although they are filthy in their wigwams and in their apparel, yet of the many hundreds I have seen there was not one who still observed the aboriginal mode of life that had not white teeth and a sweet breath. This is doubtless due to the fact that before they became civilized they ate their food cold; when they drink hot coffee and eat hot bread they are liable to toothache and offensive breath like ourselves.

There is another singular and apparently paradoxical fact connected with their habits of body. Though they are so generally uncleanly about their lodges and clothing, there is no nation, unless it was the ancient Romans, who bathed oftener than they. They were almost amphibious, and rival the Kanakas yet in their capacity to endure prolonged submergence. They had no clothing to put off and on, and they were always splashing in the water. They never neglected the morning bath, and many of them do not to this day, though pestered with clothing.

And never since the fatal hour when Adam and Eve tied about then the fig-leaves in Eden has clothing been a symbol so freighted with evil portent as to these people. On excessively hot days they would lay off the miserable rags of civilization which hampered and galled their free-born limbs; and then would come colds, coughs, croups, quick consumption, which swept them off by thousands.

It is a curious fact which has frequently come under my observation, and has been abundantly confirmed by the pioneers, that among half-breed children a decided majority are girls. There is a reason for this which would be a proper subject of explication in a medical work but not in these pages. Suffice it to say that the Indian women thus chosen for wives were generally the finest and most ambitious of their race, while their white husbands were the lowest of theirs. The above-named fact certainly seems to indicate that the California Indian is not without a certain aggressiveness of vitality.

It has been said that the two cardinal tests of national greatness are war and women—prowess in one and progress in the other. Tested by this ordeal, the California Indians seem to fall short. They certainly were not a martial race, as is shown by the almost total absence of the shield, and the extreme paucity of their warlike weapons, which consisted only of bows and arrows, very rude spears, slings, and stones and clubs picked up on the battle-field. It is unjust to them to compare their war record with that of the Algonkins. Let it not be forgotten that these latter tribes gained their reputation for valor, such as it is, through two long and bloody centuries, wherein they contended, almost always in superior force, with weak border settlements, hampered with families, and enfeebled by the malarial fevers which always beset new openings in the forest. Let it be remembered, on the other hand, that after the Republic had matured its vast strength and developed its magnificent resources, it poured out hither a hundred thousand of the picked young men of the nation, unincumbered with women and children, armed with the deadliest steel weapons of modern invention, and animated with that fierce energy which the boundless lust for gold inspired in the Americans, and pitted them against a race reared in an indolent climate, and in a land whore there was scarcely even wood for weapons. They were, one might also say, burst into the air by the suddenness and the fierceness of the onslaught. Never before in history has a people been swept away with such terrible swiftness, or appalled into utter and unwhispering silence forever and forever, as were the California Indians by those hundred thousand of the best blood of the nation. They were struck dumb; they crouched in terror close around the few garrisoned forts; if they remained in their villages, and a party of miners came up, they prostrated themselves and allowed them to trample on their booties to show how complete was their submission. Let a tribe complain that the miners muddied their salmon-streams, or steal a few pack-mules, and in twenty days there might not be a soul of them living.

It is not to this record that we should go to form any fair opinion of the California Indians’ prowess, but rather back to those manuscript histories of the old Spaniards, every whit as brave and as adventurous as ourselves, who for two generations battled so often and so gallantly, and were so often disastrously beaten by “los bravos Indios,” as the devout chroniclers of the missions were forced against their wills to call them. The pioneer Spaniards relate that at the first sight of horsemen they would flee and conceal themselves in great terror; but this was an unaccustomed spectacle, which might have appalled stouter hearts than theirs; and this fact is not to be taken as a criterion of their courage. It is true also that their battles among themselves, more especially among the lowlanders of the interior—battles generally fought by appointment on the open plain—were characterized by a great deal of shooting at long range, accompanied with much voluble, Homeric cursing; but the brave mountaineers of the Coast Range inflicted on the Spaniards many a sound beating. It is only necessary to mention the names of Marin, Sonoma, Solano, Colorado, Quintin, Calpello, and the stubborn fights of the Big Plains, around Blue Rock, at Bloody Rock, on Eel River, and on the Middle Trinity, to recall to memory some heroic episodes

And it is much to the credit of the California Indians, and not at all to be set down to the account of cowardice, that they did not indulge in that fiendish cruelty of torture which the Algonkin races practiced on prisoners of war. They did not generally make slaves of female prisoners, but destroyed them at once.

But if on the first count they must be allowed to rank rather inferior, in the second, I think, they were superior to the Algonkin races, as also to the Oregon Indians. For the very reason that they were not a martial race, but rather peaceable, domestic, fond of social dances, and well provisioned (for savages), they did not make such abject slaves of their women, were far less addicted to polygamy (the Klamaths are monogamists), and consequently shared the work of the squaws more than did the Atlantic Indians. The husband always builds the lodge, catches all the fish and game and brings most of it home, and brings in a considerable portion of the fuel. In a company of fifty-seven who passed through Flealdsburgh, there were twenty-four squaws riding on horseback and only three walking, while there were thirteen braves riding and seventeen walking. The young boy is never taught to pierce his mother’s flesh with an arrow to show him his superiority over her, as among the Apaches and Iroquois; though he afterward slays his wife or mother-in-law, if angry, with very little compunction. But there is one fact more significant than any other, and that is the almost universal prevalence, under various forms, of a kind of secret league among the men, and the practice of diabolical orgies, for the purpose of terrorizing the women into obedience. It shows how they were continually struggling up toward equality, and what desperate expedients their lords were compelled to resort to to keep them in due subjection.

The total absence of barbarous and bloody initiations of young men into secret societies was a good feature of their life. They show sufficient capacity to endure prolonged and terrible self-imposed penances or ordeals, but these seldom take any other form than fasting, and that principally among the northern tribes. In their liability to intense religious frenzy, or rather, perhaps, a mere nervous exaltation and exhaustion, resulting from then passionate devotion to the dance, they equal the African races. The same religious bent of mind reveals itself in the strange, crooning chants which they intone while gambling.

As they were not a race of warriors, so they were not a race of hunters. They have extremely few weapons of the chase, but develop extraordinary ingenuity in making a multitude of snares, traps, etc. At least four-fifths of their diet was derived from the vegetable kingdom.

If there is one great and fatal weakness in the California, Indians, it is their lack of breadth and strength of character; hence their incapacity to organize wide-reaching, powerful federative governments. They are infinitely cunning, shrewd, selfish, intriguing; but they are quite lacking in grasp, in vigor, and boldness. Since they have mingled with Americans they have developed a Chinese imitativeness, and they take rapidly to the small uses of civilization; but they have no large force, no inventiveness. Their history is painfully deficient in mighty captains and great orators. But I venture the assertion that no Indians on the continent have learned to copy after civilization in so short a time. I will give a few instances. Shasta Frank, a Wintūn, born and bred to savagery, was a perfect gentleman in the neatness and elegance of his dress, in his manners, and in his speech. For instance, having inadvertently said “setting “, he instantly corrected himself with “sitting”. He gave me a brief account of his language, which delighted me by its accuracy, clearness, and philosophic insight. I was told of another Wintūn who had become a book-keeper and was drawing a good salary as such. Matilda, a Modok woman, living in the wildest regions of the frontier, showed me a portfolio of sketches, made by herself with a common pencil upon letter-envelopes and such casual scraps of paper, which were really remarkable for their correctness. She would strike off, at first sight, an American, an Englishman, a German, a Chinaman, or any odd and eccentric face she happened to see, with a fidelity and expressiveness that were quite amusing. If she had ever had any advantages, she would have been heard of iii the art-world. The pioneers acknowledge that they speedily acquire a subtileness of cheating in card-playing which outwits even themselves, and would have done honor to the “heathen Chinee”. Again, it is the testimony of the reservation agents that the Indian children pick up simple Sunday-school melodies and the like with the facility of the plantation pickaninny down South.

There is a curious feature of aboriginal character, which is manifested more particularly in their games. An Indian seems to be very little chagrined by defeat. I have often watched young men and boys, both in native and American games, and have never failed to remark that singularly lymphatic good-nature with which everything is carried forward. American boys will contend strenuously, and even fight, for nice points in the game, down to a finger’s breadth in the position of a marble; but Indian youths are gayly indifferent, jolly, easy, and never quarrel. They appear to be just as well pleased and they laugh just as heartily when beaten as when victorious. Everything goes on with a limp and jelly-like hilarity, which makes it extremely stupid to an American to watch their contests very long. When engaged in an athletic game, it is true, they exert themselves to their utmost, and accomplish truly wonderful feats of agility and bottom; but they do all this purely for the physical enjoyment and the satisfaction of the animal spirits, not for the joy of conquest at all, so far as anybody can perceive. They never brag, never exult.

An Indian will gamble twenty hours at a sitting, losing piece after piece of his property, to his last shirt, which he takes off, hands to the winner, and emerges naked as he was born; yet he exhibits no concern; he passes through it all, and comes out with the same gay and reckless stoicism. There is not a tremor in his voice, not a muscle quivers, his face never blanches; when he takes off the shirt, his laugh is just as vacuously cheerful and untainted with bitterness as it was when he commenced. Ile borrows another, throws himself on his face, and in five minutes he sleeps the untroubled, dreamless sleep of an infant. It is difficult for a white man to comprehend how one can be so absorbed in the process and so indifferent to the result.

There is another notable defect in their character, that is their lack of poetry, of romance. Though a very joyous and blithe-hearted race, they are patient, plodding, and prosaic to a degree. This is shown in their names, personal and geographical, the great majority of which mean nothing at all, and when they do have a signification it is of the plainest kind. The burden of their whole traditional literature consists of petty fables about animals, though some of these display a quaint humor and an aptness that would not do discredit to Aesop. And it must always be borne in mind that they are forbidden by their religious ideas to speak of the dead, which fact may account for the almost total lack of human legends.

There is not even enough poetry in them to make them tawdry in dress. There is hope of gaudy savages who are thoroughly wasteful and thoroughly devoted to beauty, as they understand it. But these are not wasteful enough even to have feasts, that is, downright, gluttonous “feeds”. Their feasts, such as they are, are not held for the purpose of eating, pure and simple; they merely carry to a common rendezvous a store of provisions a little better than the every-day allowance, which they endeavor to make hold out as long as possible, in order that they may enjoy the dance for many days, which is the one great object of desire, while the feast is secondary. Food is gambled away recklessly, but not thrown away, though civilized men and women are apt to consider their prodigal hospitality as little better than sheer wastefulness All Indians are “cousins” when they come to a camp hungry.

I have said that they are not tawdry in their dress. Young Indians who have mingled with the whites a few years show uniform good taste in their dress, especially in the northern counties; and even old Indians are never seen with those grotesque medleys of all conceivable objects, pepper-casters, patent-medicine labels, oyster-cans, and the like, heaped about their necks, such as may be seen in the interior of the continent.

Mention was made above of their ready adaptation of themselves to the uses of civilization. Who would ever have seen an Algonkin brave offer to go to work for his conquerors? In 1850-’51, before the Indians of the Sacramento Valley had any knowledge whatever of civilization, an adventurous pioneer went to the Upper Sacramento and commenced chopping wood on the banks, for which he received $16 a cord. Sometimes it was necessary to carry the wood a few rods to cord it up close to the water, and he had no trouble in getting Indians to do this work for him for a pittance of flour and bacon. The headman of the village, distinguished only by a feather or a green sprig in his hair, would lay three or four sticks on the back of each squaw or brave, to the number of thirty or forty, then take a stick himself, and with great importance and gravity march with the procession to the river.

There are not lacking instances which show that the California Indians have a sense of humor that the grave, taciturn Iroquois did not possess. The Nishinam of Bear River have several cant or slang names for the Americans, which they use among themselves with great glee. One is the word boh, “road”, hence, perhaps, derivatively, “road-maker” or “roadster”, which they apply to us in a humorous sense, because we make so many roads, which to the light-footed Indians seem very absurd, indeed. Another is ka'-kīn, “spirit”, which is given in compliment to the subtle and mysterious power the American possesses of doing many things beyond their comprehension. Perhaps as common an appellation as any is chu'-pup, “red” or “red-faced”. Here we have a reversal of the traditional “Paleface” of the eastern dime-novel. But the most humorous name they give us, and the one which amuses them most, is wóhah, which is formed from the “whoa-haw” that they heard the early immigrants use so much in driving their oxen. Let an Indian see an American coming up the road, and cry out to his fellows, “There comes a wóhah!” at the same time swinging his arm as if driving oxen, and it will produce convulsive laughter. At Healdsburgh they call a locomotive toot-toot-toot. A Chinaman is called by the Nishinam, chó-li-i, which means “shaved head”. There are other names which they apply to us, which are very amusing, but they will not bear translation.

Felicitously characteristic of one feature of Indian life, as well as humorous within itself; was the remark of an observing old man, “Injun make a little fire and set close to him; white man make a big fire and set ”way off.”

Frequently their humor is of the kind that may be called unconscious, and is none the less pleasing on that account. One day I applied to an Indian for certain information, and he began to give me the desired names in “American”. I interrupted him, and told him I wanted him to talk Indian talk. At that he pulled a black, scowling face, and said, “Guess mebbe bimeby all white man want to learn to talk Injin talk.” To any one knowing the peculiar relations which exist between many whites and the aborigines, the satire of this remark is delightful.

They are great thieves, whenever it is safe to be so. Like ill-mannered white people, to use the mildest phrasing, they are fond of borrowing small articles, knives, pipes, pencils, and the like, which they will presently insert into their pockets, hoping the owner may forget to ask for them. One means of protection which old pioneers advised me to take, was, in journeying anywhither, always to keep at my tongue’s end the names of several prominent citizens of the vicinity, to impress the savages with the belief that I was well acquainted there, had plenty of friends, and ample means of redress if they did me any wrong. They are strongly attached to their homes, and they have learned by tough experience that if they commit any thievery it will be the worse for them, and that it will go hard but the whites will burn their rancherias and requite the stealing double. Hence they are proverbially honest in their own neighborhood; but a stranger in the gates who seems to be friendless may lose the very blankets off him in the night. They resemble the fox, which never steals near its nest.

The northern tribes are much the most miserly and given to hoarding treasure, and none of them do a white man the smallest service without expecting payment. For instance, Ta'-kho Kol'-li, chief of the Ta-ta-ten', refused to count ten in his language unless I paid him for the service in advance. Once I was sitting with three stalwart and sinister-looking Yurok on a rugged promontory, waiting for the tide to ebb; and when lunch-time arrived we fell to—they on their dried smelt, I on some sandwiches. They had no claim on me, and therefore asked for nothing; but presently I commenced talking with one about Indian matters, and in an instant the crafty savage perceived the drift, saw he had established a claim, and said, “Me talk you Injun talk, you give me piece of bread and meat.” No Indian in Southern California ever thought of driving such petty bargains as this.

White men who have had dealings with Indians, in conversation with me have often bitterly accused them of ingratitude. “Do everything in your power for an Indian,” they say, “and he will accept it all as a matter of course; but for the slightest service you require of him he will demand pay.” These men do not enter into the Indian’s ideas. This “ingratitude” is really an unconscious compliment to our power. The savage feels, vaguely, the unapproachable elevation on which the American stands above him. He feels that we had much and he had little, and we took away from him even his little. In his view giving does not impoverish us, nor withholding enrich us. Gratitude is a sentiment not in place between master and slave; it is a sentiment for equals. The Indians are grateful to one another. Sambo did not feel that he was stealing when he took his owner’s chickens; it is very much so with the Indian.

Though not by any means a warlike people, and therefore generally laying very little stress on the taking of scalps, they have the usual treachery, revengefulness, and capacity for rancorous hate of all savages. I have before me as I write a terrible memento, and one that opens up a dark and bloody picture of savage life. It is only a stone, a longish stone, rudely blocked out to be made into a pestle, with which a Nishinam woman beat out her sister’s brains, while the husband of the murderess looked on. But, worse still, a niece of the murdered woman, in addition to this aunt, lost at various times her mother, a cousin, and a brother, all cut off in cold-blooded murder by her own tribe, and that before they became acquainted with the Americans, and while they were living in “primitive innocence”. It is not pleasant to think of these things, and they dispel whole volumes of the romantic nonsense written about aboriginal Arcadias. Still, we must not judge savages by our standard, but bear always in mind that revenge is taught to them as a virtue from the baby-basket to the grave, and that anything which will secure the getting of that revenge is justifiable.

Notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary by false friends and weak, maundering philanthropists, the California Indians are a grossly licentious race. None more so, perhaps. There is no word in all their languages that I have examined which has the meaning of “mercenary prostitute “, because such a creature is unknown to them; but among the unmarried of both sexes there is very little or no restraint; and this freedom is so much a natter of course that there is no reproach attaching to it, so that their young women are notable for their modest and innocent demeanor. This very modesty of outward deportment has deceived the hasty glance of many travelers. But what their conduct really is, is shown by the Argus-eyed surveillance to which women are subjected. If a married woman is seen even walking in the forest with another man than her husband she is chastised by him. A repetition of the offense is generally punished with speedy death. Brothers and sisters scrupulously avoid living alone together. A mother-in-law is never allowed to live with her son-in-law. To the Indian’s mind the opportunity of evil implies the commission of evil. He cannot comprehend the case of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, or else he is totally incredulous. If a brother and a sister should chance to dwell together a short time after their parents’ death, and are reproached for it, the ready answer is, “Well, what of it'? You Americans do it”, mentioning some citizen whose bachelor household is presided over by his sister, and against whose fair reputation not the faintest breath of suspicion was ever blown. They cannot understand such a case, and refuse to believe in the blamelessness of the parties.

But while they thus carefully avoid the appearance of evil, the daily conversation of most of them, even in the presence of their wives and children, is as foul as the lowest white men indulge in when alone together. It is a marvel that their children grow up with any virtue whatever. Yet they far less often make shipwreck of body and soul than do the offspring of the civilized, because when the great mystery of maturity confronts them they know what it means and how to meet it.

Marriage frequently takes place at the age of twelve or fourteen. Parents desire to marry their children young, to remove them from temptation, and they willingly provide them with food for a year or two, so as to lighten the matrimonial yoke. Since the advent of the Americans the husband often traffics in his wife’s honor for gain, and even forces her to infamy when unwilling; though in early days he would have slain her without pity and without remorse for the same offense.

In making the following assertion, I do it not unaware that it may be stoutly challenged. With the exception, perhaps, of a few tribes in the northern part of the State, I am thoroughly convinced that a great majority of the California Indians had no conception whatever of a Supreme Being. True, nearly all of them now speak of a Great Man, the Old Man Above, the Great One Above, and the like; but they have the word and nothing more. Vox, et praeterea nihil. This is manifestly a modern graft upon their ideas, because this being takes no part or lot in their affairs; is never mentioned in the real and genuine aboriginal mythology or cosmogony; creates nothing, upholds nothing. They have heard of the white man’s God, and some of them have taken enough interest to translate the word into their own language, as Po-koh', Lūsh, Sha, Ko-mūs', Kem'-mi Sal'-to, and the like; but with that their interest ceases. It is an idea not assimilated, and to become assimilated the whole of their ancient system of legends and theogony (if the word can be used where there are no gods) would have to be overthrown. By long acquaintance one may become so familiar with even a California Indian as to be able to penetrate his most secret ideas; yet when you ask him to give some account of this being he can tell nothing, because he knows nothing. “He is the Big Man Above”; that is the extent of his knowledge. But ask him to tell you about the creation of the world, of man, of fire, and of familiar objects, and his interest is aroused; instantly this fabulous being disappears, and the coyote comes forward. The coyote did everything, made everything. That is what his father told him, and his father’s father told him. If this Great Man had any existence in early days, why does he not appear sometimes in the real aboriginal legends? It is no argument against this theory that the names for the Supreme Being above given are purely Indian words. There are pure Indian words in many languages for such terms as “wheat”, “rye”, “iron”, “gun”, “ox”, “horse”, and a hundred others which they never heard of until they saw Europeans. They are very quick to invent names for new objects.

Therefore I affirm without hesitation that there is no Indian equivalent for “God”. There are numerous spirits, chiefly bad, some in human form, some dwelling in beasts and birds, having names which they generally refuse to reveal to mortals, and haunting chiefly the hills and forests, sometimes remaining in the Happy Western Land. Some of these spirits are those of wicked Indians returned to earth; others appear to be self-existent. There are great and potent spirits, bearing rule over many of their kind; and there are inferiors. All these spirits are to be propitiated, and their wrath averted. There is not one in a thousand from whom the Indians expect any active assistance; if they can only secure their non-interference all will go well. To the California Indians great Nature is kindly in her moods and workings, but these malign spirits constantly thwart her beneficent designs, and bring trouble upon her children. Nature was the Indian’s God, the only God he knew; and the coyote was his minister.

In an article in the Atlantic Monthly, Prof. John Fiske says : “Dr. Brinton has shown that none of the American tribes had any conception of a devil. * * * * * Barbaric races, while believing in the existence of hurtful and malicious fiends, have not a sufficiently vivid sense of moral abnormity to form the conception of diabolism.” If, by the devil, we are to understand a being the opposite and equal of God, this is true. Of course, the thin and meager imagination of the American savages was not equal to the creation of Milton’s magnificent, imperial Satan, or Goethe’s Mephistopheles, with his subtle intellect, his vast powers, his malignant mirth; but in so far as the Indian fiends or devils have the ability they are wholly as wicked as these. They are totally bad, they think only evil; but they are weak, and undignified, and absurd; they are as much beneath Satan as the “big Indians” who invent them are inferior in imagination to John Milton. The true test of a devil is in his usefulness; and the Indians stand much more in awe of theirs than we do of ours.

In his admirable work, “Uncivilized Races of Men”, Mr. J. G. Wood makes the following remark : “I have already shown that we can introduce no vice in which the savage is not profoundly versed, and feel sure that the cause of extinction lies within the savage himself, and ought not to be attributed to the white man who comes to take the place which the savage has practically vacated.” Of other savages I am not prepared to speak, but of the California Indians this is untrue. They smoked tobacco only to a very limited extent, never chewed it, and were never drunk, because they had no artificial beverage except manzanita cider, and that in extremely limited quantities unfermented for a brief season of the year. They had the vice of gambling much more than we, but, as shown above, it had no injurious effect on their health. Great and violent paroxysms of anger were almost unknown; they made no such senseless use as we do of ice-water, and of hot, heavy, and strongly-seasoned food. They had not even the vice of gluttony, except after an enforced fast, which was seldom, because their plain and simple food was easily procured and kept in stores. Licentiousness was universal, but mercenary prostitution was absolutely unknown; hence there were none of those appalling maladies which destroyed so many thousands on their first acquaintance with Americans.

Next, as to the second part of his remark, that the white man “comes to take the place which the savage has practically vacated.” Let us see to what extent the Indians had “vacated” California before the Americans came. In Chapter V it was shown that there were sixty-seven and a half Indians to the square mile for forty miles along the Lower Klamath in 1870. Before the whites came doubtless there were one hundred, but we will take the former figure. Let us suppose there were six thousand miles of streams in the State yielding salmon; that would give a population of four hundred and five thousand. In the early stages of my investigation I was led to believe that wild oats furnished a very large source of supply, but have abandoned that idea as erroneous. In all oak-forests, acorns yielded at least four-sevenths of their subsistence, fish perhaps two-sevenths; on the treeless plains the proportion of fish was considerably larger, and various seeds contributed say one-seventh. There are far more acorns in the Sierra and the Coast Range than on the Klamath, and all the interior rivers yielded salmon nearly as abundantly as that river. I think three hundred thousand might be added to the above figure in consideration of the greater fertility of Central and Southern California; this would give seven hundred and five thousand Indians in the State.

Let us take certain limited areas. The pioneers estimate the aboriginal population of Round Valley, when they first visited it, all the way from five thousand to twenty thousand. One thousand white people in it would be considered a very fair population, if indeed it would not crowd it. Mr. Christy estimates that there were from three hundred to five hundred Indians in Coyote Valley near Ukiah; now there are eight white families there, and they think they have none too much elbow-room. General Bidwell states that in 1849 there were at least one thousand souls in the village of the Korusi (Colusa). A Mr. Robinson pointed out to me the site of a village on Van Dusen’s Fork which he thought contained one thousand people in 1850. Several other instances might be adduced if necessary. I saw enough in Northern California to convince me that there is many a valley in that section which once contained more Indians than it will of whites for the next century. The natives drew their stores from wide forests all around and from the waters; the whites depend chiefly on the valley itself.

The very prevalence of the crime of infanticide points to an over-fruitfulness and an over-population.

That they were equal to Europeans in bread-winning strength nobody claims, for they lived largely on vegetable food, and that of a quality inferior to bread and beans. But as athletes they were superior, and they were a healthy, long-lived race. In trials of skill they used to shoot arrows a quarter of a mile, or drive them a half-inch into a green oak. I knew a herald on the Upper Sacramento to run about fifty miles between ten or eleven o’clock and sunrise in September; another in Long Valley, near Clear Lake, ran about twelve miles in a little over an hour. The strength of their lungs is shown by the fact that they would formerly remain under water twice as long as an American in diving for mussels. The extraordinary treatment their women undergo in childbirth at the hands of the midwives shows remarkable endurance. No American could dance as they do, all night for days together, sometimes for weeks. Their uniformly sweet breath and beautiful white teeth (so long as they continue to live in the aboriginal way) are evidences of good health. Smoked fish and jerked venison are eaten without further preparation, and there is a considerable amount of green stuff consumed raw in the spring; but four-fifths of their food is cooked and then eaten cold. An Indian is as irregular in his times of eating as a horse or an ox, which may have an injurious effect on his health or it may not If an Indian can keep free from disease he lasts a long time; but when diseases get hold of him he goes off pretty easy, for their medicines amount to nothing. Mr. J. J. Warner, in a communication to the Los Angeles Star, gives an account of an appalling pestilence which he calls “remittent fever”, which desolated the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in 1833, and reduced those great plains from a condition of remarkable populousness to one of almost utter silence and solitude. Their treatment in the shape of a hot-air bath, followed by a plunge into cold water, added to its fatality, until there was scarcely a human being left alive. But the plains were evidently soon repeopled from the healthier mountain districts, for Captain Sutter and General Fremont, in their day, found tens of thousands there to fight or to feed. It is the testimony of the old pioneers that they were much subject to fevers and lung complaints even in primitive times, especially along the rivers. Being compelled to live near the streams to procure a supply of water, they were exposed to malarial influences. They sometimes threw up mounds for their villages to stand on, but these were rather for a defense against high water than against malaria. The old Indians protest that the present melancholy prevalence of ophthalmia, like some other diseases, is due to American influences, and that in old times they had good eyes. All things taken together, I am well convinced that the California Indians were originally a fruitful and comparatively a healthy and long-lived race. Mr. Claude Cheney, who was among them as early as 1846, on Bear River, states that, although they were rather subject to summer fevers along that stream, large families of children were quite common. They sought as much as possible to avoid the unhealthy lowlands in the dry season by going up into the mountains.

But, after all, let no romantic reader be deceived, and long to escape from the hollow mockeries and the vain pomps and ambitions of civilization, and mingle in the free, wild, and untrammeled life of the savage. It is one of the greatest delusions that ever existed. Of all droning and dreary lives that ever the mind of man conceived this is the chief. To pass long hours in silence, so saturated with sleep that one can sleep no more, sitting and brushing off the flies! Savages are not more sociable than civilized men and women, but less; they talk very fast when some matter excites them, but for the most part they are vacuous, inane, and silent. Kindly Nature, what beneficence thou hast displayed in endowing the savage with the illimitable power of doing nothing, and of being happy in doing it! I lived nearly two years in sufficient proximity to them, and I give it as the result of my extended observations that they sleep, day and night together, from fourteen to sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. They lie down at night-fall, for they have no lights; and they seldom rise before the sun, in summer generally an hour or two after. During the day they are constantly drowsing. When on a march they frequently chatter a good deal, but when a halt is called they all drop on the ground, as if overcome by the heat, and sink into a torpid silence. They will lie in the shade for hours in the middle of the day, then slowly rouse up, commence chattering, and march until night-fall.

Appendix: Linguistics

U.S. GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION.
J. W. POWELL, in Charge.

APPENDIX.

LINGUISTICS

EDITED BY

J. W. POWELL.

CONTENTS.

COMPARATIVE VOCABULARIES.

In a majority of the following vocabularies, the Smithsonian alphabet has been used; and where it has not, the fact has been noted. For convenience of reference, the following is inserted from Smithsonian Publications, No. 160, "Instructions for Research relative to the Ethnology and Philogy of America, by Geo. Gibbs".

ORTHOGRAPHY.

It is, of course, essential to the proper understanding by others of the words collected, especially in view of general comparisons, that a precise and fixed system of spelling should be used, and this is more so where the usual language of the collector is English than where French or Spanish, as there is far less certainty in the pronunciation of the first than of these last. In English, for instance, four different sounds are given as belonging to the letter a, vis, those in far, fall, fat, fate. As regards the simple vowels, the difficulty can be partly remedied by employing the Spanish or Italian sounds, as given below, and a further advantage will be found in separating the words into syllables, and marking the principal one with an accent, thus: Da-ko'-ta. There are, however, in every language, sounds peculiar to itself, and the different Indian tongues abound in them, many being almost beyond our capacity to imitate and certainly to write, without some addition to the ordinary alphabet. Various systems, contemplating a universal alphabet, or one applicable to all languages, have been devised, each having its peculiar merits; but the great difficulty, never fully overcome, has been to represent intelligibly such unfamiliar sounds without confusing the inquirer with new characters or numerous marks, or, again, by employing several letters to represent a single sound. The alphabet here recommended for adoption, without pretending to remedy these defects, will at least prove an assistance to the collector in the field. Should it be necessary to represent other sounds, not include below, it will be better for him to adopt some arbitrary mark of his own, describing fully its value or meaning.

VOWELS.

The distinction of long and short vowels to be noted, as far as possible, by the division into syllables, joining a following consonant to a short vowel, and leaving the vowel open if long. Where this is insufficient, or where greater distinctness is desirable, a horizontal mark above, to indicate a long vowel, a curved mark a short one, thus: ā, a^u, ē, e^u, &c. A nasal syllable, like those found so commonly in French, to be marked by an index, n, at the upper right-hand corner of the vowel; thus oⁿ, âⁿ, aⁿ, uⁿ, will represent the sounds of the French on, an or en, in, and un, respectively.

CONSONANTS.

. . .

MŪT'-SUN FAMILY.

1.—Mi'-wok.

Collected by Mr. Stephen Powers on Calaveras River, California, from an Indian of the tribe and his wife. The Smithsonian alphabet was used.

2.—Tuolumne.

Obtained by Mr. Adam Johnson, and published in Schoolcraft, Part IV, p. 408. He says it is spoken by several tribes on the Tuolumne River, California. It was copied for comparison by Mr. George Gibbs in Nos. 523 and 526 of the Smithsonian Collections. The original spelling is here given.

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