53
THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INDIANS*
No. VI. The Pomo and Cahtjj
Under the name Pomo are included a great number of tribes, or little bands--
sometimes one in a valley, sometimes three or four-clustered in the region where the
headwaters of Eel and Russian rivers interlace, along the estuaries of the coast, and
around Clear Lake. Really, the Indians all along Russian River to its mouth are branches
of this great family, but below Calpello they no longer call themselves Pomos. And,
indeed, let a Pomo from Potter Valley--which may be considered the nucleus of the
family--descend the river to Cloverdale, and he will have the greatest difficulty in
making himself understood. Let him go ten miles further, and he can not recognize
Over a third of the words spoken, if so many; and at Healdsburg fewer still--so rapidly
does the language shade away from valley to valley, from dialect to dialect. Yet I have
taken down enough words all along Russian River to be certain that all these dialects
are as much descended from the Pomo as English and Italian are from Sanskrit; and,
in fact, any Indian living on that eiver can learn anv dialect spoken on its banks much
sooner than an American can learn Italian. Following are some of the extreme dialectic
variations in this large family of languages: ca, aca, cahto, for "water;" cha, chak,
cahaboona, ataboonya, "man;" seloo, shunee, "bread;" calleh, callay, "above;" mahsoo,
Inooso "log."
In disposition, the Pomos are greatly different from the Yukas or mountain-
tribes east of them, who were their hereditary tormentors; being simple, friendly,
peaceable, and quite communicative for California Indians. They are less cunning and
imitative of the Whites than the Klamath tribes, and decidely lower in mental gifts,
as is attested by their fables, if by nothing else. In physique they are the same as the
Sacramento races, and it is not necessary to describe this to California readers.
As usual, they have a certain conception of a Supreme Being; but the attributes
of this being are quite negative, and his participation in the creation and government of
the world wholly nugatory. Among the Pome Pomos he is named Chacallay, "The Man
Above," or "The Strong One Above" (the radical meaning of cha being "strong"); among
the Gallinomeros, Calletopte, "The Chief Above," or simply Calleh, "Heaven," like the
Chinese Shang. But the coyote is all in all. It is singular how great is the regard of
the California Indians for this tricksy and dishonest beast; he was not only the progenitor,
but he has been the constant benefactor, of mankind. And, indeed, he w uld be a most
expressive totem for the whole race, who ought to be called The Coyotes. All their acts
of Worship, especially of those tribes living on the lower waters of the river, are in
honor of birds or animals; or rather--for worship it should not be called--all that they
can be said to possess of religion consists of certain propitiatory acts addressed to
beasts and birds which they fear as devils. Hence there is one tribe of the family
*Overland Monthly, Vol. 9, pp. 498-507, 1872.
54
whose name signfies "Snakes," though most of the tribal designations are purely locative.
All the up-river branches believe their coyote ancestors were molded, or molded them-
selves, or somehow got molded, directly from the soil; hence the family name, though it
now signifies "people,'" originally, I think, meant "earth," being manifestly related
to the Wintoon p   or paum, which denotes "earth."
As the Pomos are less warlike, less cunning, and more simple-hearted than
the northern tribes, so they are more devoted to amusement. All the tribes hitherto
described in these papers engage with frenzied eagerness in gambling, and have numerous
varieties of dancing; but the Pomos add to these a kind of tennis, and the down-river
tribes also have a curious sort of pantomime or rude theatrical performance, besides
Devil Dances, which are very hellish and terrific.
The broadest and most obvious division of this large family is, into Eel River
Pomos. and Russian River Pomos. There are two tribes on Eel River, between it and
South Fork, who call themselves by the name of this family (Castel Pomos and Ki PoM?0)
though I can scarcely see why, since they have little in common with their Russian River
neighbors. They not only speak the language of the Wi Lackees, which is closely
related to the Hoopa, but they are fierce and warlike, and in ancient times were involved
in almost incessant contention, whereas the right Pomos are notably peaceable.
Of the Castel Pomos I know very little, for in the ferocious and destructive
wars which their audacity badgered the Americans into waginy upon them, both they and
many of the old pioneers went down together. Men now living on South Fork could impart
to me little save bald stories of butchery and bloody reprisal. Their range was between
the forks of the river, extending as far south as Big Chamise and Blue Rock. They
tattooed the face and nose very much in the fashion of the Yukas and Wi Lackees, whom
they resembled more than they did the right Pomos. Mr. Burleigh related to me a
curious instance which he once saw of tattooing by a brave, which is exceedingly rare,
except among the Mattoles; and which was the second case I ever heard of, where any
attempt was made to imitate an animal or any natural object. An old warrior whom
he once found upon the battle-field at South Fork was tattooed all over his breast and
arms, and on the under side of one arm was a very correct and well-executed picture of
a sea-otter, with its bushy tail. The second instance was a woman I saw in the Nornmoc
tribe, who had a bird's-wing very neatly pricked on each cheek. Their lodges, imple,
ments, etc., require no special description. They formerly burned their dead, which
is a true Pormo trait; but what of them now remain have generally adopted the civilized
custom, except when one dies at such a distance that the body can not be conveyed hOmneg
when they reduce it to ashes for convenience in transportation.
The Ki Pomos dwell on the extreme headwaters of South Fork, ranging east"
ward to Eel River, westward to the ocean, and northward to the Castel Pomos. With
the latter they were ever jangling, and from the manner in which Indian trails are
constructed, their battles generally raged on the hill-tops. On the vast, wind-swept,
and almost naked hogback between the two forks of Eel River, some thirty miles or
more north of Cahto, looming largely up from the broad, grassy back of the mountain
55
is the majestic, rugged, isolated bowlder called Blue Rock. A few miles still further
north there is an enormous section of this mountain-chain, almost entirely covered
With evergreen bushes, whence its name, Big Chamise. Between these two points, and
inore especially about the base of the savage old monster, Blue Rock--a most grim,
lonesome, and desolate summit, cloud-haunted as with ghosts-- is one of the most
famous ancient battle-grounds of California, where Indian-blood has been poured out like
water, and where the ground is yet strewed with flint arrowheads and spearpoints. But
the bones of the warriors who perished on this fatal field are no longer visible, having
been doubtless consumed on the funeral pyre, and sacredly carried home for interment.
One fact is notable among the Eel River Indians--I observed it more especially
Of the Ki Pomos--and that is the youthfulness at which they attain the age of puberty. In
the warm and sheltered valley of South Fork (however bleak the naked mountain-tops may
be in winter), it was a thing not at all uncommon, in the days of the Indians' ancient
Prosperity, to see a woman become a mother at twelve or fourteen. An instance was
related to me where a girl had borne her first-born at ten, as nearly as her years could
be ascertained, her husband, a White Man, being then sixty-odd. For this reason or some
Other, the half-breeds on Eel River are generally sickly, puny, short-lived, and slightly
esteemed by the fathers, who not unfrequently bes tow them as presents on any one willing
to burden himself with their nurture.
Another phenomenon I have observed among California half-breeds, which,
when mentioned to others, they have seldom failed to corroborate, and that is , the
females generally predominate. Often I have seen whole families of half-breed girls,
but never one composed entirely of boys, and seldom one wherein they were most
nlumerous. Probably the phenomenon can be accounted for on the same principle which
explains the fact that these lean, old ramrods from Pike, of the genus emigrantes,
Species remigrantes, who have not enough energy to establish a house and home, are
generally blessed with families of daughters. In any event, the fact indicates a certain
amount of vitality in the California Indians, notwithstanding they have perished so
Miserably in the transition from barbarism to culture.
I wish to call attention here to what may be called the peculiar stratification
Of the tribes in this vicinity. On the northern rivers, which debouch into the ocean
very nearly at right angles, each tribe occupies a certain length of the stream on both
Sides; but on Eel River, South Fork, and Van Dusen's Fork, which flow almost parallel
with the coast, every tribe possesses only one bank of a river, unless it chances to
dwell between two waters. It would seem that the influence of the ocean has distributed
the Indians in certain parallel climatic belts--those living nearest the coast being darker,
more obese, more squat in stature, and more fetishistic; while, as you go toward the
interior, both the physique and the intelligence gradually improve. This kind of strati-
fication does not prevail on Russian River, for there is no stream parallel; but the tribes
living directly east of the valley, in the Coast Range, are conspicuously superior in all
mlanly qualities.
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We now commence with the true Pomos. The Cahto Pomos (Lake People)
were so called from a little lake which formerly existed in the valley now called by
their name. They do not speak Pomo entirely pure, but employ a mixture of that and
Wi Lackee. Like the Ki Pomos, their northern neighbors, they forbid their squaws
from studying languages--which is about the only accomplishment possible to them,
except dancing--principally, it is believed, in order to prevent them from gadding about
and forming acquaintances in neighboring valleys, for there is small virtue among the
unmarried of either sex. But the men pay considerable attention to linguistic study,
and there is seldom one who can not speak most of the Pomo dialects within a day's
journey of his ancestral valley. The chiefs especially devote no little care to the training
of their sons as polyglot diplomats; and Robert White affirms that they frequently send
them to reside several months with the chiefs of contiguous valleys, to acquire the
dialects there in vogue.
They construct lodges in the usual manner, and do not differentiate their
costumes or utensils to any important extent. In appetite they are not at all epicurean,
and in the range of their comestibles they are quite cosmopolitan, not objecting even to
horse-steak, which they accept without instituting any squeamish inquiries as to the
manner in which it departed this life. The consume tar-weed seed, wid-oats, California
chestnuts, acorns, various kinds of roots, ground-squirrels and moles, rabbits, buck-
eyes, kelp, yellow-pine bark (at a pinch), clams, salmon, different sorts of berries, etc.
Buckeyes are poisonous; they extract the toxical principle by steaming them two or
three days underground. They first excavate a large hole, pack it water-tight around
the sides, burn a fire therein for some space of time, then put in the backeyes, together
with water and heated stones, and cover the whole with a layer of earth. When they
migrate to the ocean in the season of clams, they collect quantities of kelp and chew the
same. It is tough as whit-leather, and a young fellow with good teeth will masticate a
piece of it a whole day. Kelp tastes a little like a spoiled pickle, and the Indians relish
it for its salty quality, and probably also extract some small nutriment of juice therefrom.
There is a game of tennis played by the Pomos of which I heard nothing among
the northern tribes. A ball is rounded out of an oak-knot, about as large as those gener
ally used by school-boys, and it is propelled by a racket, which is constructed of a longs
slender stick, bent double and bound together, leaving a circular hoop at the extremity,
across which is woven a coarse mesh-work of strings. Such an instrument is not strong
enough for batting the ball, neither do they bat it, but simply shove or thrust it along on
the ground.
A game is played in the following manner: They first separate themselves
into two equal parties, and each party contributes an equal amount to a stake to be played
for, as they seldom consider it worth while to play without betting. Then they select
an open space of ground, and establish two parallel base-lines a certain number of paces
apart, with a starting-line between, equidistant from both. Two champions, one for each
party, stand on opposite sides of the starting-point with their rackets; a squaw tosses
the ball into the air, and as it descends the two champions strike at it, and one or the
other gets the advantage, hurling it toward his antagonists' baseline. Then there ensue0
a universal hurly-burly, higgledy-piggledy; men and squaws crushing and bumping--for
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squaws participate equally with the sterner sex--each party striving to propel the ball
across the enemy's base-line. They enjoy this sport immensely, laugh and vociferate
until they are out of all whooping; some tumble down and get their heads batted, and
much diversion is created, for they are exceedingly good-natured and free from jangling
in their amusements. One party must drive the ball a certain number of times over
the other's base-line before the game is concluded, and this not unfrequently occupies
them a half-day or more, during which they expend more strenuous endeavor than they
Would in ten sleeps of honest labor in a squash-field. Let those who accuse the Califor-
raia Indians of being a stupidly sluggish race, remember their exceeding fondness for
this game and for open-air dances, which they sometimes protract for two weeks, and
retract the charge.
Schoolcraft says, in his "Qieota, tt that the chiefs and graver men of the
Algonquin tribes, however much they encourage the young men in the athletic game of
ball-playing, do not lend their countenance to games of hazard. This is not true of
the California Indians, however, for here old and young engage with infatuation and
recklessness in all games where betting is involved, though, of course, the decrepit
can not personally participate in the rude bustle of ball-playing. The aged and middle-
aged, squaws, men, and half-grown children, stake on this, as well as on true games
of hazard, all they possess--clothing, beads, baskets, fancy bows and arrows, etc.
Of the latter articles they frequently have a number made only for gambling purposes--
n1ot for use in hunting.
Among the up-country tribes, especially on the Klamath, many women are
honored as medicines and prophetesses; but here none at all are admitted to the sacred
Professions. It is only the masculine sex who receive a call; there is none but braves
whom "the spirit moves"--for it is thus that the elect are assured of their divine mission
to undertake the healing of men. The methods of practice vary with the varying hour,
every physician being governed in his therapeutics by the inspiration of the spirit of
the moment; and if he fails in effecting a cure, therefore, the obloquy of the failure
recurs upon his familiar. For instance, a medicine will stretch his patient out by a
fire, and walk patiently all the livelong day around the fire, chanting to exorcise the
demon that is in him. Thus, the modi operandi are as numerous as are the whims of
this mysterious medical spirit. Besides these, they have in their pharmacopoeia
divers roots, poultices, and decoctions, and frequently scarify their breasts. When
the patient goes near to die, he is generally carried forth and cast into the forest, to
die alone and unattended; but the mere removal from the abominable smudge and
Stench of the lodge, and the exposure to the clean, sweet air of heaven, sometimes
bring him round, and he returns smiling to this friends, who are nowise pleased.
Pormerly all the dead were burned, but under the influence of the Americans, a mixed
custom prevails. An intelligent Indian told me, that, in case of burial, the corpse
Wvas always placed with the head pointing southward. Most of the Indians hitherto. des-
Cribed believe the 'Happy Land is in the west or southwest, but evidently their notions
are confused. A young man who was born and reared among the Pomos, informed
tIe that they at present burn only those killed or hanged by Americans, and bury the
Others. I know not if there be any special significance in this discrimantion. Robert
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White says he has frequently seen an aged Indian (or woman), living in hourly expectation
of his demise, go dig his own burial-place, and then repair thither for months together,
and eat his poor repast sitting at the mouth of his grave. The same strange, morbid
idiosyncrasy prevails among the Wintoons, in the Sacramento Valley. Probably the
reason of it is, that the poor old wretches perceive they are a burden and an eyesore
to their children. Before the irruption of the Americans had reduced the Cahto Pomos
to their present abject misery, they treated their parents with a certain consideration--
that is, they would divide with them the last morsel of dried salmon, with genuine
savage thriftlessness; but as for any active, nurturing tenderness, it did not exist, or only
very seldom. They were only too glad to shuffle off their shoulders the weight of their
maintenance. On the other hand, they gave their children unlimited free play. Men rho
have lived familiarly amidst them for years tell me they never yet have seen an Indian
parent chastise his offspring, or correct them any otherwise than with berating words in
a frenzy of passion, which also is extremely seldom.
They use an absurd custom of hospitality, which reminds one of the Bedouin
Arabs. Let a perfect stranger enter a wigwam, and offer the lodge-father a string of
beads for any object that takes his fancy--merely pointing to it, and uttering never a
word--and the owner holds himself bound as an Indian gentleman to make the exchange,
no matter how insignificant may be the value of the beads. Ten minutes later he may
thrust him through with his javelin, or crush in his temple with a pebble from his sling,
and the by-standers will account it nothing more than the rectification of a bad bargain.
It is wonderful how these Indians have the forest and plain mapped out on the
tablet of their memories. There is scarcely a bowlder, gulch, prominent tree, springs
knoll, glade, clump of bushes, cave, or bit of pririe within a radius of ten miles, but
nears its distinctive name. Let a hunter penetrate the wood six, eight, ten miles in
any direction, knock over a fat-ribbed buck, hang the same in the branches of a tree
above the lickerish fangs of the coyote, and return home; and he will gruffly mutter to
his squaw (or more probably to his aged father), "Ten paces from the Owl' s-head,"
or "Three bowshots up the Red Water, forty paces toward the Setting Sun;" when,
without a word more, she repairs straight to the place, and brings the venison on
her shoulders.
Most Indians are christened after animals, birds, fishes, snakes, etc., in
accordance with some whimsy, or fancied resemblance in the child's actions or babyish
pipings --as Checockaway or Chacacka (quail, an onomatopoetic word), Mesalla (snake)v
etc.
The Cahto Pomos believe in a terrible and fearful ogre, called Shillaba
Shilltoats. He is described as being of gigantic stature, wearing a high-sugar loaf
head-dress, clothed in hideous tatters, striding over a mountain or a valley at a single
step, and, like the Scandinavian Trolls, a cannibal, having a keen appetite for small
boys. He is particularly useful to the hen-pecked Indian, in the regulation and adMillnv'
stration of his housefold affairs, and especially in the "taming of the shrew." When
the squaw gets so vixenish that he can not subdue her in any other way, he has only to
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shout into the wigwam--with his eyes judiciously dilated and his hair somewhat tousled--
and to vociferate, "Shillaba Shilltoats! Shillaba Shilltoats!P' when his squaw will
scream with terror,fall flat upon the ground, cover her face with her hands--for that
squaw dies who is ever so unfortunate as to look upon this dreadful ogre--and remains
very tractable for several days thereafter. The children will also be profoundly
impressed.
This and the other branches of the Pomo family living nearest the coast
believe in a kind of Hedonic heaven for the virtuous; which is eminently characteristic
of the race. They hold, that, in some far, sunny island of the Pacific--an island of
fadeless verdure; of cool and shining trees, looped with tropic vines; of bubbling fount-
ains; of flowery and fragrant savannas, rimmed with lilac shadows; where the purple
and wine-stained waves shiver in a spume of gold across the reefs, shot through and
through by the level sunbeams of the morning--they will dwell forever in an atmosphere
like that around the Castle of Indolence; for the deer and antelope will joyously come and
offer themselves for food, and the red-fleshed salmon will affectionately rub their sides
against them, and softly wriggle into their reluctant hands; while bevies of the most
ravishingly fat and beautiful maidens will ever attend upon them, and minister to their
Pleasure. It is not by any means a place like the Happy Hunting Grounds of the lordly and
eagle-eyed Dakotahs, where they are "drinking delight of battle" with their peers, or
running in the noble frenzy of the chase; but a soft and forgetting land--a sweet, oblivious
sleep, awaking only to feast and to carnal pleasure, and then to sleep again. No Indians
in California conceive of the future state as one of activity and "bold empires."
As for the bad Indians, they will be obliged to content themselves with a
pallingenesis in the bodies of grizzly bears, cougars, snakes, etc.
Among other noted ceremonials, the Cahto Pomos observe an autumnal
Acorn Dance, in which the performers wear the mantles and head-dresses of buzzards'
or eagles' tail-feathers customary in this region, and which appears to be like the
Thanksgiving Dance of the Humboldt Bay tribes, being accompanied like that by the
Oration of Plenty. It is not strictly an anniversary dance, but rather a "movable festival"
in the Indian Fasti Dies, celebrated when the crop of acorns has proved generous, but
Otherwise omitted.
Besides the tribes above described, there are many others--as the Choam
Chadela Pomos (Pitch Pine People), in Redwood Valley; the Matomey Ki Pomos
(Wooden Valley People), about Little Lake; the Usals, or Camalel Pomos (Coast People),
On Usal Creek; the Shebalne Pomos (Neighbor People), in Sherwood Valley; the Pome
Po0nos (Earth People), in Potter Valley, etc. I have above ventured the suggestion that
the Word "Pomo"a orginally signified "earth," and the name of the last tribe strongly
Corroborates the supposition, since it is definitely known that pome has that meaning;
aed this tribe believe, as did the ancient Greeks respecting the fabled autochthones,
that they, or their coyote ancestors, sprang directly from the bosom of Mother Earth--
Whence their appellation. Near the head of Potter Valley there is a certain knoll of
Oright-red earth, curiously different from the circumjacent soil; and they believe that
their progeneitors issued forth from this identical knoll. To this day they scrupulously
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mingle this red earth with their acorn bread--I have seen them doing this--as an act of
religion, to purify and preserve their bodies. Besides the Pome Pomos, there are two
or three other little rancherias in Potter Valley, each with a different name; and the
whole body of them are called Ballo Ki Pomos (Oat Valley People), from the great
abundance of wild oats growing here; but the Pome Pomos may stand for all. Many
people in California, I believe, hold that wild oats are an acclimated product, having
spread from early scatterings left by the Spaniards; but the Indians of this valley have
a tradition, or rather they declare, that they have been growing in California so long
that they know nothing of their origin. Indeed, the simple fact that this valley bears
the name of this cereal indicates for the latter an existence therein coeval with the
Indian occupation. Then the question presents itself, How long have the Indians
themselves been in the valley? We have the means of making at least a conjecture.
This mound of earth above-mentioned is resorted to by them not only for yeast, but
also for paint; and the holes which they have excavated in digging for these purposes
are very large. Not being accustomed to estimate cubic measurements by the eye, I
quote the language of the honest farmer on whose land the mound is, and who guided
me thither. He thinks they have quarried out "hundreds of tons." At any rate, one
would think they had been occupied in the process a thousand or twelve hundred years.
Now, it is probable that they would name the valley upon their first entrance into it,
and not change the appellation afterward; from all of which premises it should appear
that wild oats were found in the valley when the Indians arrived therein.
In regard of government, the Pomos are less ochlocratic than many up-
country tribes. The chiefship is hereditary and dual--which is to say, there are two
chiefs, who might be compared, as to their functions, to the Japanese Tycoon and
Mikado, in that one administers more particularly the secular affairs, and the other
the spiritual. The Indians designate them as the war-chief and the peace-chief (arroWl
man), the war-chief becoming the peace-chief when too decrepit to conduct them to
battle. The peace-chief is a kind of censor morum-- adjusts disputes, delivers moral
homilies on certain anniversary occasions, performs the marriage ceremonies (so
far as they extend), and watches over the conduct of his people--more especially over
the wanton young squaws. Even the war-chief is obedient to him at home; and, in
fact, that functionary is of secondary importance, since the Pomos are eminently a
peaceable people.
Up to the time when they enter matrimony, most of the young women are a
kind of femmes incomprises--the common property of the young men; and after they
have taken on them the marriage vow, simple as it is, they are guarded with a Turkish
jealousy--for even the marued women are not such conjugal models as Mrs. Ford.
Indeed, the wantonness of the women is the one great eyesore of the Pomos; and it
seems to be almost the sole object of government ot keep them in proper subjection
and obedience. The one great burden of the harangues delivered by the venerable
peace-chief on solemn occasions is the beauty and the excellence of female virute;
all the terrors of superstitious sanction and the direst threats of the great prophet are
leveled at unchastity; and all the most dreadful calamities and pains of a future state
are hung suspended over the heads of those who are persistently lascivious. All the
devices the savage cunning can invent--all the mysterious and masquerading horrors
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of devil-raising, all the secret and dark sorceries, the frightful apparitions and bugbears--
that can be supposed effectual in terrifying the young squaws into virtue, are resorted
to by the Pomos.
William Potter, a high authority on Indian matters and master of several
dialects, -described to me, as far as he was able, a secret society which exists among
the Pome Pomos, for the simple purpose, he conjectures, of conjuring up terrors and
rendering each other assistance in keeping their women in subordination and chastity,
and keeping down smock-treason. Their meetings are held in a special wigwam, con-
structed of peeled pine-poles, thatched and covered with earth, and painted on the
inside red, black, and white (wood-color), in spiral stripes, reaching all the way from
the apex to the ground. When they are assembled herein, there is a vigilant door-keeper
at the entrance, who suffers no one to enter on any pretext unless he is a regular mem-
ber, sworn to secrecy. Even Mr. Potter, though held in that entire respect cherished
by savages toward a man who has never feared and never deceived them, was not
allowed to enter, albeit they offered to initiate him into this freemasonic, misogynist
guild, if he so desired. As nearly as can be ascertained, their object is simply to
"raise the devil,?" as they express it, with whom they pretend to hold communications;
and to hold other demoniacal doings therein, accompanied by frightful noises of whoop-
ing and yelling, to work upon the imaginations of the erring squaws--no whit more
guilty than themselves.
Once in seven years the Pome Pomos hold a Dance of Plenty--a great fete-
champetre; though without feasting--in which the dancers are costumed in the usual
coronals and mantles of long buzzard feathers. This, also , is seized upon as a specially
Solemn and auspicious occasion for the exhortation of the women to virtue. A rattle-
snake is captured in the forest some days beforehand, its fangs are plucked out, and
it is handled, fed, and tamed, so that it can be displayed without peril on the great
day approaching. The usual dancing and chanting of these occasions are kept up for a
certain number od days, and then the people assemble to listen to the oration. The
venerable white-haired peace-chief takes his station before the multitude, in front of
his wigwam, or perhaps under the branches of some great, overshadowing white oak,
With the rattlesnake before him as the visible incarnation of the devil (Yukukoola).
Slowly and sonorously he begins, speaking to them of morality, industry, and
obedience. Then, warming with his subject, and brandishing the horrid reptile in
his hand, full in the faces and over the heads of his shuddering auditors, with solemn
and awful voice he warns them to beware, and threatens them with the direst wrath
of the dreadful Yukukoola, if they do not live lives of chastity, decency, and sobriety,
until some of the terrified squaws shriek aloud, and fall in a swoon upon the ground.
Having such an intolerable deal of pother as they do with own women, to
keep them in a proper mood of humbleness, these Pomos make it a special point to
Slaughter those of their enemies, when the chances of battle give them an opportunity.
They do this because, as they urge, with the greatest sincerity, one woman destroyed
is tantamount to five men killed. They argue that to exterminate their enemies, the
'1Ost effectual way is to begin at the source.
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In another direction, however, the women exercise large authority. When an
Indian becomes too infirm to serve any longer as a warrior or hunter, he is thenceforth
condemned to life of a menial and a scullion. He is compelled to assist the squaws in
all their labors: in picking acorns and berries, in thrashing out seeds and mi ld oats,
making bread, drying salmon, etc. As the women have entire control of these matters,
without interference from their lords, these superannuated warriors come entirely
under their authority, as much as clildren, and are obliged to obey their commands
implicitly. We may well imagine that the squaws, in revenge for the ignoble and terror-
izing surveillance to which they are subjected by the braves, not unfrequently domineer
over these poor old nonagenarians with hardness, and make them feel their humility
keenly. Cronise, in his "Natural Wealth of California," makes mention of an ancient
tradition, to the effect that when the Spaniards first arrived in California, they found
a tribe, in what is now Mendocino County, in which the squaws were Amazons, and
exercised a gynocracy. I am inclined to think the fable was not without foundation. when
we consider the infinite trouble which the Pomos find it necessary to give themselves
in order to keep the women in subjection, and also that the latter actually bear despotic
rule over childhood and senility--the beginning and the ending of human life--we can
easily perceive that these Pomo wives are stronger than the common run of Indian
women. At least, by diligent inquiry, I never found any other trace of such a race of
Amazons.
The Pome Pomos believe that lightning is the origin of fire; that the primordial
bolt which fell from heaven deposited the spark in the wood', so that it now comes forth
when two pieces are rubbed together. As to the lightning itself, they believe it be hurled
by the Great Man above, as it was by Jupiter Tonans.
Their Happy Land is in the heavens above us, to which, like the BuddhistS,
they think they will ascend by a ladder. The souls of the wicked will fall off in the
ascent, and descend to some negative and nondescript limbo, where they will be neither
happy nor tormented, but rove vacantly and idly about forevermore; while others, in
punishment for their greater wickedness, will transmigrate into grizzly bears, or intO
ratthlesnakes condemned to crawl over burning sand, or into other animals which are
obliged to suffer hunger and thrist. (To a California Indian, a place where he is hungry
is Hades). They hold and believe that every grizzly bear is some old savage Indian,
thus returned to this world to be punished for his wickedness.
LEGEND OF THE COYOTE.
Once upon a time there lived a man among the Yukas, of the Black Chiefts
tribe, fierce and terrible, with two sons like himself--bloody-minded and evil men.
For their great wickedness, he and his two sons were turned into coyotes. They they
started from Rice's Fork and journeyed southward, biting and slaying all the beasts
they came upon. As they passed over the defile to come into Potter Valley, one of the
coyote sons drank so much water from the spring near the summit that he died, and hiS
father buried him, and heaped over him a cairn of stones, and wept for his son. Then
they journeyed on through Potter Valley, and went down to Clear Lake; and there the
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other son drank so much water that he died also, and his father buried him
and wept sore. Then the father turned back and went on alone to a place called White
Buttes, and came unto it, and discovered there much red alabaster, of which the Pomos
make beads to this day, which are to the common shell-beads as gold to silver. And
when he had discovered the red alabaster at White Buttes, his hair and his tail dropped
off his body, he stood up on his hind legs, and became a man again.
The interpretation of this legend is difficult, and its meaning mysterious.
The Tahtoos have the same fable in a slightly different form, which circumstance
throws some little light on its signification. From both taken together we gather darkly
that there was once a memorabl and terrible drought in this region, during which Eel
River totally disappeared, and there was no water anywhere, except in Clear Lake, and a
little in the spring at the head of Potter Valley, near the cairn in the pass. Both tribes
account for the heap of stones in the same manner; and the simple fact that they resort
to a legend to explain its existence, when it was so manifestly made to mark the boundary-
line, indicates that it must have been heaped up hundreds of years ago. Mystery, like
Moss, always gathers upon anything that is ancient; and these fables, originated in
explanation of so patent a metter, argue the high antiquity of the Indians. The Tahtoos,
living at the head of Potter Valley, also have traditions of two monstrous reptiles, one
of which was a hundred feet long and had a horn on its forehead, and the othe r long enough
to reach around a mountain, where it died, leaving a circle of bones which it was death
for any Indian to cross over. It is held that the Indians of Virginia had a fable of the
mammoth, which is related by Jefferson; so it would seem that the Tahtoos may have
arrived in the country at a time contemporaneous with the last of a species of saurians
now extinct. These things go to confirm the theory of a great antiquity, which I
ventured to found on the above legend.