CENTENNIAL -MISSION TO THE INDIANS OF WESTERN NEVADA AND CALIFORNIA. *
Itinerary.
Under date of August 21, 1875, I was appointed by the Honorable Secretary
of the Interior a "special commissioner to make a collection of Indian manufactures,
&c., illustrative of Indian life, character, and habits on the eastern slope of the Sierras
and also in California, for the Centennial Exhibition of 1876."
Proceeding on my mission as soon as possible, I arrived at Pyramid Lake
Indian reservation, Nevada, September 19, 1875, and remained there four days. This
reservation is in charge of the Rev. C.A. Bateman, of the Baptist Church, and contains
about 700 Indians, most of whom were absent, by permission, collecting articles of
aboriginal food, principally pine-nuts. The reservation, aside from the desert wastes,
contains about 1, 500 acres of irrigable land at the head of the lake. The soil is of a
light, sandy character, and is difficult of irrigation, on account of the length of the
ditch required, and the consequent evaporation and seepage of the water.
The Indians on this reservation belong to the nation commonly known as the
Piutes, (they pronounce it in three syllables, Pi-u-tes;) but in their own language this
branch of them is known as "Cooyuweeweit, " from cooyuwee, a species of sucker
which formerly constituted their principal food-supply. They were not an aggressively
warlike race, though in an early day they gave the white settlers considerable trouble,
and fought with them some bloody battles. They lived in conical-shaped lodges,
constructed of tule and bound with willow wands; they also made of the same material
rude rafts, consisting of three bundles of tule lashed firmly together, with which they
navigated the lake for fishing purposes. They caught fish with nets of milkweed fiber,
with hooks of bone and greasewood fastened to throw-lines, and with bone or horn
spears, principally with the latter. To this day the quantity of fish which they take by
the latter means is sometimes remarkable. I saw two Indians come in with two large
horse-loads, at least 200 pounds, the product of twenty-four hours' labor. In winter
Wadsworth affords a ready market for all the fish offered, and a single Indian has
been known to sell $25 worth of fish per day for a short time. They were good hunters;
but their bows and arrows (partly owing to lack of material) are decidedly inferior to
those of the California Indians. They caught a great many hares with nets; and they
ate ground-squirrels and ground-hogs; also grasshoppers, crickets, and some other
species of insects. I also collected about twenty kinds of seeds and roots which they
consumed in their season. The suckers from the lake constituted certainly one-half of
their food, game perhaps a quarter, and vegetable products, principally pine-nuts,
another quarter.
* Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (for 1876), 1877.
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The men wore breech-cloths of rawhide, deer-skin leggings (in winter)
reaching to the groins, and moccasins; the women, waisbands or short petticoats of
milkweed fiber, moccasins, long deer-skin dresses, (in winter,) and skull-caps
of willow-work.
The Piutes are a well-formed race, with bolder features than those of the
typical California Indian, noses more prominent at the root, complexion lighter, and
less tendency in youth to superfluous fat. Some of them are wonderfully agile dancers.
Most of their games are sedentary, and they are all, both men and women, fatuously
fond of gambling. They enjoy practical jokes keenly, and some of their games are
comical and produce much laughter. The work of their women is less severe than
that of the acorn-eating tribes of California, and they always were and still are much
more chaste than the latter.
The present condition of the Piutes is not satisfactory. The prevalence of
ophthalmia and blindness among them, owing partly to change of habit and food, partly
to filth and venereal disease, partly to unknown causes, is alarming and disgusting.
The four reservations in Nevada are without a surgeon, while each of the three in
California has one. As above noted, many of them earn large amounts of money i
the season by catching and selling fish; but professional gamblers of their own race
come down from Virginia City and Carson and play cards with them until the greater
portion of it is absorbed. The isolation of the reservation prevents bad white men
from visiting it to any extent; on the other hand, the few whites owning hay-ranches
along the Truckee set them a poor example of thrift and industry, and, as the agent
and his subordinates. The enormous amount of sawdust formerly thrown into the
Upper Truckee was destructive to the fish; and, on the other hand, the citizens com-
plained that the agent, or the Indians, by his permission, built fish-dams in the river,
which totally prevented the fish from ascending from the lake to points where they
would be accessible to the settlers. The irrigating appliances have not been managed
well; a number of ditches have been constructed or attempted at various times; which
began too low down to give the water sufficient elevation to irrigate any considerable
amount of territory. Consequently the amount of cereals produced (no vegetables are
raised) has been small, and the supply precarious; and the Indians have had to re-
plenish their larders largely from their own resources -- from their earnings in the
fisheries or from aboriginal products. I judge that not more than half of their yearly
consumption has been produced on the reservation.
Many of these Indians labor willingly for the whites, and they frequently
solicit and obtain permission to go off the reserve and hire themselves to the ranchmen
about Reno and in Carson Valley, or to work in the lumber-mills and chutes, for
which they receive from $1 to $2 or $2. 50 a day, according to the season and the
emergency. Indeed, a very large proportion of the very small amount of agricultural
labor done in Nevada is performed by the Piutes. In the towns and mining camps many
are employed in washing clothes or washing dishes. A Piute man dislikes to wash
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clothes, but he will wash dishes quite readily.
The disposition of the whites toward these unfortunate people is generally
friendly. Indeed, with the indiscriminate generosity characteristic of the Pacific
Coast, there is too much readiness to give them cast-off clothing and fragmentary
victuals from hotels and restaurants, instead of furnishing them an opportunity of
turning an honest penny by labor. Consequently, numbers of them are seen about the
streets of most towns in Western Nevada, in a condition of filth and raggedness,
incessantly playing cards -- a nuisance and an eyesore.
Hard by, in the suburbs of the town, they have their wretched habitations,
consisting chiefly of sage-brush piled up in a circle, and from these they come to
town early in the morning, and return at nightfall.
From Pyramid Lake I returned to the railroad, went to Reno, and thence to
Susanville, Lassen County, California, arriving there October 6th. There are only
a few Indians around this town, and all these belong to Big Meadows and Indian Valley,
the aboriginal inhabitants of Honey Lake Valley being now extinct. The line between the
Piutes and the California Indians was near the north end of Honey Lake; nowadays the
Californians range freely wherever they will, but no Piute dares show himself near
Susanville, for, on account of their early atrocities, there are a number of men in
the town who have taken an oath to shoot a Piute on sight. The Indians near Susanville
are nearly related in language and customs to the tribe living on the Sacramento from
Chico to the Cosumnes River, and do not require further description here.
Returning to Reno on the 11th, I remained there and in Carson City three
days, to collect articles from the Washoes, though I did not have good success, for
they are poor in aboriginal objects. There are a lower race in every respect than
the Piutes. They are undoubtedly an offshoot from the California Indians, (being
related to them in language,) and colonized Western Nevada by crossing the Sierra
from California; but were afterward driven back toward the mountains by the Piutes,
who seem to be later arrivals. Their habitat is confined to the Upper Truckee and
Carson Rivers, and Lake Tahoe, Sierra Valley, and a few smaller summit valleys
north of the latter, though these elevated localities were occupied only in the summer.
They were allowed by the Piutes to descend the two rivers for fishing purposes, for a
limited season, to a point below their proper boundaries. Although a race of moun-
taineers, they are darker than the Piutes, shorter in stature, and feebler in a battle.
Even in winter they seldom had anything that could be called a house, as they lived in
a pile of sage-brush, built up hollow and protected on the windward side with skins and
blankets. Along the stream, for fishing purposes, they set willow poles in the ground,
bend them over, and covered the frame with thatch.
As to their relations with the whites, the remarks above made of the Piutes
apply here. They have no reservation, and there are not over 200 of them, a wretched
remnant.
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On the 15th I left Virginia City for Walker River reservation, and reached
it on the afternoon of the next day. There are about as many Indians on this as on
Pyramid Lake reservation, but as it is only a subagency it is under the control of a
farmer, Mr. George Frasier, who reports to Rev. C.A. Bateman quarterly. The
land on this reserve is almost totally incapable of irrigation; at least nothing in that
line is attempted except a small garden, which is cultivated by the post-trader.
Neither are there any cattle belonging to the reservation, though a great part of it is
grazed over by stock belonging to citizens. Notwithstanding these drawbacks the
Indians are in a more satisfactory condition than those at Pyramid Lake; they are less
exposed to corrupting influences, and are less diseased, and more contented. They
are good hunters, and every autumn after the pine-nut harvest is ended they have a
custom of organizing a grand rabbit-hunt or drive, in which nearly the whole tribe
participate, and hundreds of hares are caught or shot; their flesh is dried for winter
consumption, and the pelts are cut into narrow strips and dried to be made into blankets
for winter use. This branch of the Piutes is called "Ahgyweit" or "Ahgy-tecitteh, "
(trout-eaters,) from ahgy. This fish is a very important article of their food. Pine-
nuts rank second in importance. Every tribe has its own pine-nut district, on which
it is unlawful for another to encroach; for instance, the Carson River Piutes are entitled
to all the pine-nuts on Como Hills; those on Lower Walker River to the product of
Pine-nut Valley, &c. They frequently cache their supplies in the gravel of a high knoll
or hill; it rains so little in Nevada that they receive no detriment.
In the winter and spring they dwell on the high gravelly headlands or the
mesas to excape the flooding of the streams and the gnats and mosquitoes; but toward
autumn they are accustomed to remove down to the lowlands and make their rude
wickiups of brushwood among the shading willows and cottonwoods.
As I said above, the Piute women are accounted comparatively virtuous.
Theft also is not so common as among the California Indians. Frontiersmen relate
that if they happened to come upon a white man's camp during his absence they would
sit down and patiently await his return, lest, if anything should chance to be missing,
their tracks might accuse them and bring them to grief, though innocent.
Returning from Walker River to Virginia City and Carson, on the 25th I left
the latter for Lone Pine, in Inyo County, California. On the 27th I reached Independence
and remained two days. All the Indians in Owen's River Valley belong to the Piute
nation distinctly, though there never was any solidarity or community of feeling in
this nation, and the different sections or tribes were sometimes at bitter feud with each
other. They have the same general habits as the Piutes of Walker and Pyramid LakeSB
but are perhaps somewhat lower in the scale of intelligence and morality. In the case
of the Washoes we have a tribe who have crossed the summit of the Sierra Nevada,
migrating eastward; but here we find that the Piutes of Inyo County, locally called MnorSp,
(or by the California Indians Monachees,) have crossed the sierra in the opposite direc
and pushed their invasion of California nearly down to the edge of the great San joaqurn
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plains.
Among the articles composing their food-supply are the edible worms or
larvae found on the shores of Owen's Lake, and which spring from the eggs of a fly
belonging to the genus Ephydra, but whose species does not seem to have been yet
determined. Some are eaten raw, and are of a rank and oleaginous taste; others are
made into soup. Among other things it is said that these Indians formerly ate a kind
of mush or panada made from the seeds of the jimson weed, (Datura meteloides,)
from which the poison was extracted by long steaming under ground. They also ate
snakes of different kinds. The reptile was, while yet alive, impaled lengthwise on a
stick and held writhing over the fire until broiled.
I collected here a few fragments of pottery made by a prehistoric race; and
there are several inscriptions at different points from Bishop Creek to Owen's Lake,
and in the canons east of this lake, reaching within 15 miles of Death Valley, perhaps
half a dozen in number, and some of them scattered along several miles on the canon
walls. I got a copy of one of them, and Dr. 0. Loew, of Lieutenant Wheeler's party,
showed me another, in which he thinks he has detected five Chinese characters. In
my copy, however, there was nothing of this sort. These inscriptions are said to be
largely geographical, depicting rivers, mountains, canons, &c.
After a couple of days in Lone Pine, I left, on the 30th, for Bakersfield,
where I arrived November 1st. After a delay of two days, I proceeded to Tule River
reservation, reaching it November 4th. I found this reserve in charge of Rev. J. B.
Vosburgh, of the Methodist Church, and on it about 300 Indians, classified as Tules,
Tejons, and Manaches, (Monachees.) The two first named, as revealed by their
language, are substantially the same; the third (of whom I believe there are now none
on the reservation) belong to the Piutes. The Tules, living along Tule River, cannot
be said to have any general name. Every village has its special designation. The
Tejons, living at Fort Tejon, have also a number of villages or camps, but are known
as Tinnlinie, (Coyote Holes, the name of the locality). All the Indians from Fresno
River to Fort Tejon speak substantially the same language, and are one nation, so far
as one can use the word among the California Indians; but they have no solidarity
whatever, and, for lack of a comprehensive name, I shall call them "Yokuts" -- a word
which denotes people or Indians.
The tribes on King's River construct a peculiar kind of lodge. It is made of
tule in the shape of a tent, with two sides to the roof and two gable-ends, and a
number of them are set along in a row, side to side, and a continuous awning of
brushwood is built along the front. The captain of the band occupies one end lodge,
and the medicine-man the other. This sort of a village at a distance bears striking
resemblance to a military encampment. This is only where tule is plenty. In the
mountains the conical hut of poles or the thatched willow-pole lodge is found.
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Acorns constitute the principal staple of their vegetable food. They are
gathered in autumn in large quantities and cached on the spot, or in the vicinity of
their dwellings in granaries made of wicker-work about the size and shape of a hogs-
head, and thatched with grass or tule. These are set in the forks of a tree or on
forked stakes planted in the grounds, so as to be above the reach of rodents and other
animals. Salmon are caught in the Fresno and San Joaquin with a number of different
nets, weirs, bone-spears, &c. A booth is sometimes built over the water and closely
roofed in with brushwood so as to be dark, and the fisherman, lying on his face and
peering down through a hole, readily sees the fish passing beneath and transfixes it
with a spear. In King's River, and in the other streams making into Tulare Lake
as well as in the lake, were caught lake-trout, chubs, and suckers. Sometimes in
catching fish in a running stream, the fisherman takes a kind of basket-trap in his
mouth, and silently floating down the current, catches the fish as they ascend. On
the lakes and sloughs, and on lower Kern River, they employed a species of canoe
made of tule, with flat triangular bottom and flat sides, with a sharp prow, and about
10 feet long. Their original clothing is almost totally disused, and specimens of it
are so difficult to obtain; but it was exceedingly scanty, and consisted chiefly of
breech-cloths for both sexes, with hareskin robes for winter-wear or for bedding.
In summer the men and children went quite naked.
These Indians have been subject for many years to the influence of the Spanish
missions on the coast, and they have acquired from the Mexicans all the arts and
tricks of horsemanship, while many of them are skillful vaqueros. The men have
learned to make fancy bridles and whips of horse-hair -- girdles, sashes, and the
like; and the women execute very beautiful embroidery for shirts and feminine garm:antS;
and they look with contempt on some of the coarse annuity goods which are distributed
among them. They are housed far better than the Indians of any other California or
Nevada reservation, in comfortable, though ill-lighted, structures of adobe, and they
have clean-swept floors, clean bedding, with bedsteads to keep them off the grounds
plenty of clothing for the climate, and apparently enough to eat. If the reservation
belonged to the Government (it is leased) so that it could have, as it has not now,
control of the irrigating appliances, these Indians would be very well established; but
as it is, they feel restless and uncertain, and do not make as good "?improvements"
as they would if they felt more sure of their future.
With the industries they have acquired also some of the vices of the
Mexicans, and murders are much too frequent on the reservation; the Indians are
fond of horse-racing, gambling, and drinking; and in this they are encouraged by bad
men in the vicinity, who sell them liquor. Indeed, the sentiment of the whole
community is hostile to the reservation rather than other wise, so that the agent
cannot procure conviction and punishment for this offense.
Leaving this reservation on the 8th of November, I went to San FranciSCO9
where I was unavoidably delayed until the 17th. Thence I went to Ukiah City,
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Mendocino County, anid proceeded on to Round Valley reservation, which is under the
control of Rev. J. L. Burchard, of the Methodist Church. It is at present inhabited
by about 950 Indians. Mr. Burchard, I am happy to state, is a very efficient officer,
has a pretty thorough comprehension of the aboriginal nature, and has accomplished
reforms and improvements which are quite remarkable. I visited this reservation
something like four years ago; and I am consequently enabled to make comparisons
and state progress; and I can say that the latter has been very creditable, especially
in the department of manners and morals. Mr. Burchard has thoroughly eradicated
that most universal and persistent of all savage vices -- gambling; by removal of the
garrison, and by his vigorous measures in forbidding the women from visiting town,
and bad whites from coming on the reservation, he has greatly abated social vice and
the consequent disease; all plural wives have been put away, and most of the Indians
have been married by the forms of the church; no profane language is heard, the
Sabbath is well observed, and stealing is much less frequent. A church is organized,
numbering about 130 members, who are regarded as intelligent and sincere Christians;
there are frequent prayer-meetings and Sunday schools, in which the Indians take an
active part; there are five men licensed to exhort. The whole reservation has been
consolidated into a little confederacy with a form at least of independent government;
the chiefs of the tribes constitute a senate, and two delegates from each tribe make
up a house of representatives -- both together being "the congress of the Round Valley
United States Indian reservation." They meet about once a month, and listen to the
reading of, and vote upon, laws for the regulation of their every-day affairs. There is
an Indian judge, who hears and summarily disposes of all cased brought before him;
also an Indian marshal, who makes arrests and imprisons the culprits according to
the findings and sentence of the judge. The Indians take considerable interest in all
these proceedings; but whether they would long maintain the church, the Sunday-school,
and the "congress," if left to themselves, may well be questioned. Their material
condition is not so good as their moral and spiritual. There are very few lumber
cabins on the reserve, although the Government owns a saw-mill on it. The majority
of them still sleep on the ground, and you will frequently see a good bedstead shoved
aside, and the perverse old aborigine making his bed on the earth, as his ancestors
did before him. They have not been taught to make floors and chimneys to any
considerable extent. Most of the rancherias are built on low ground in the valley, and
one at least on an old Indian burying-ground, so that the exhalations are unhealthy and
productive of disease. In their native state the Indians, though there was a large
population in the valley, always placed their lodges around the edge of it, on the first
little bench of the foot -hills, where the atmosphere is salubrious. They would build
there now, if it were made convenient for them to do so.
The long-standing differences with the settlers in the vicinity, and the
consequent restriction of the area of the reservation, have not a little impaired its
usefulness and unsettled the minds of the Indians. They have long been looking forward
to the time when they should receive land in severalty, whereon they could build their
own houses, cultivate a few acres, keep some stock, and live a somewhat independent
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and assured life like white men. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick." The
Indians are unable to comprehend the intricate and complicated processes of govern-
ment; and they do not understand, when they were promised land so long ago, why the
Great Father does not take it away from the citizens and give it to them; and they are
weary and sick of hearing promises which are never fulfilled. Nothing but the
strong influence of Agent Burchard over them, and the faith and courage of the more
intelligent among them, have succeeded in preventing ourbreaks and collisions between
the Indians and the trespassing settlers.
Leaving this reservation December 6th, I returned to Ukiah City, and
remained until the 11th.
All the Indians of Russian River Valley may be grouped into one nation and
called the Pomos, being closely related in language; but they are, as usual, divided
into a great number of petty bands and villages. For the most part they construct a
lodge of willow poles, set in the ground and bent over, forming an immense round or
elliptical frame, which is covered with thatch. It is often large enough to contain
several families, who dwell together in the patriarchal fashion. These huts are
abandoned in the spring, when the inhabitants betake themselves to open wickiups for
the dry season; in the fall, when they return, they burn down these last year' s structures
and erect new ones on the ashes. This is their way of cleaning house. In the sum-
mer they live right among the willows where the shade is thickest, often with nothing
but a few pieces of brushwood tied overhead. On the coast, where the redwood is
found, a common style of wigwam is conical-shaped, and composed entirely of enor-
mous slabs of redwood bark. They use about the same articles of aboriginal food as
the Tules and Tejons above described, acorns and salmon constituting the staples.
Russian River Valley, the most beautiful and picturesque in the State, once
contained a dense population, as is evinced by the ruins of ancient towns and by the
testimony of the earliest pioneers. The old Indian town of Sanel, situated near the
American town of the same name, once contained, judging by the regular streets laid
out at right angles, and the numerous assembly halls which are indicated by the large
circular embankments, 1, 500 inhabitants. In 1847 it still numbered about 500 souls,
though it had been subjected already several years to the proselyting raids of the
Spaniards. But now they are reduced to a wretched remnant, and some tribes are
nearly or quite extinct. Occasionally a ranchman has twenty or thirty "bound" to hin
under the laws of the State, and they live on his ranch in a state of dependence, doing
occasional small service, forming a reserve force for the neighborhood exigencies in
harvest, and receiving cast-off clothing and remnants of unserviceable or unmarket-
able food from the ranchman's granaries and cellar. He allows them to cultivate a
small patch of land by the side of the stream, where it can easily be irrigated, on which
they produce squashes, watermelons, and a little corn. Two of the staple crops of
Russian River Valley are hops and potatoes, and in the season of harvest of these twO
products hundreds of Indians, old and young, get remunerative employment on the
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ranches. Farmers sometimes send long distances to Round Valley reservation, and
apply to the agent for a score or more of Indians for this purpose; and a short leave
of absence is granted them, if not inconsistent with the interests of the reserve.
Returning to San Francisco, I was again delayed a few days, and left the
city on the 18th of December for Hoopa Valley reservation, via Sacramento and
Redding, at that time the quickest route. I reached the reservation, after some hard-
ships, December 24th, and remained only two days. This reservation contains about
700 Indians, and is in charge of Indians belonging here, but more than one-third of
them were in the mountains, frightened away by the rumor that they were to be re-
moved forcibly from this reservation, and transferred to Round Valley.
The majority of the Indians here are Hoopas; most of the remaining are
called Redwoods, and are closely related to the former in language and customs. Both
of these and the two tribes on the Klamath River, as well as some others in Northern
California, seem to belong to the Athabascan races rather than to the California Indians.
They are a much finer people than the latter, lighter in color, faces more oval, cheek-
bones not so broad and prominent. A very interesting discovery is that the- Hoopa
language is very closely related to the Navajo of New Mexico. There is very little
doubt that the vigorous and warlike tribes of Arizona, Nevada and Oregon migrated
s outhward from some unknown source in the North, and on the great Shasta plains on
the north of Mount Shasta, encountered, centuries ago, tribes belonging properly to
those known to-day as the California Indians, whom they eventually drove out to the
south of the great mountain or else exterminated. This is not the place for giving in
detail the facts which sustain this conjecture. At the time when the gold-hunters
arrived in the country, this southward migration was still going slowly forward, the
mnore vigorous northern race beating back the southern; and the Wylackies, the van-
guard of the migration, had nearly reached the headwaters of Eel River, having, with-
in the American period, displaced a tribe on Mad River, and driven them as homeless
vagabonds over into the Sacramento Valley. Consequently we find among the Hoopas
and the Klamath River tribes evidences of a northern origin. They excavate inside of
their house a cellar or pit four or five feet deep which points to a long occupation by
their progenitors of a much more rigorous climate than the Californian. The sweat-
house (used also as a club-house and assembly-hall) is wholly underground. They
are better hunters and bolder watermen than their southern neighbors; their women
are more virtuous; their men less generous and hospitable, and more avaricious.
The arable land on this reservation (about 700 acres) is barely sufficient in
extent for the maintenance of its present inhabitants, and as it has to be cropped every
Year without intermission, to do this, the soil is steadity deteriorating, and a few years
more must witness its total exhaustion, when the Indians will have to be dispersed.
Ill management by previous agents has dissipated a considerable part of the resources
of the reservation. The herds have been sacrificed, the soil has been depleted, and
the Indians who ever think of the future behold the approach of the time when they must
disperse to the mountains, or submit to eviction, or be exterminated. The first of
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these alternatives would not be wholly unwelcome to them; but a great majority of
them would choose war, and would wage it relentlessly rather than submit to the
second. The citizens of this region know this well, and they are unalterably opposed
to any attempts at removal of the Indians. There is a vast reserve of salmon-fishing
grounds on the Klamath and Trinity Rivers, as well as acorn-bearing forests along
their banks, which will not for years, if ever, be occupied by the whites to anything
near their capacity for sustaining population; which are so useless for civilized dwellers
and so congenial and productive to savages, that it would be a pity ever to remove
either the Klamaths or the Hoopas to any other region. All the Indians in the upper
half of California could be healthfully lodged and bountifully fed along the Klamath
River, and that almost wholly on the aboriginal products.
I returned to San Francisco January 7th, 1876, and was detained there
until the 20th, at which time I was enabled to start for home.
I will conclude this itinerary with a few words on the California Indians in
general. Physically considered, they 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 open market like ours a thing will always eventually bring
what it is worth. Chinamen on the railroad receive $1. a day and board themselves;
Indians working in gangs on public roads receive 75 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. 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. In a fight between the Chinaman and the Indian, the
Indian will always be the victor,
The Valley Indians are more willing to labor and are more moral 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 camps.
An erroneous impression generally prevails as to the physique of the
California Indians, because the Americans have seen only the wretched remnants of
the race, the inferior lowlanders, whereas the noblerandmorevalorous mountaineers
were early cut off. Old pioneers, especially on the upper waters of the Trinity and
the higher foothills of the Sierra, have frequently spoken with enthusiasm of giants
they have seen in early days, weighing 180, 200, and even 250 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 50 pounds, so extraordinarily was he wasted and
shrunken; many others have nearly equaled him. This fact accounts for the repulsively
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wrinkled appearance of the aged, that which has made them so odious in the eye of
superficial writers and fastidious tourists. There is probably no other race so
excessively fat in youth, and so wrinkled in old age.
The California Indians are rapidly wasting away, and all, except perhaps a
few of the Mission Jndians, are practically beggars and vagabonds on the face of the
earth. They are not gypsies at all, for they are attached to the place of their birth,
and never willingly leave it except for a brief period. By a great majority of the
people they are looked upon as cumberers of the ground. They are allowed camping
grounds, it is true, but these are grudgingly given. The great ranchers of the plains
permit them to glean wheat in their harvest-fields; but in the mountains, where the
farmers are poorer, they frequently forbid them even from gathering the acorns which
are their staff of life. The general sentiment toward them is one of pity, mixed with
one of impatient tolerance or open disgust; they are felt to be in the way. They ought
to be all gathered on the reservations, where they could be thoroughly segregated
from the whites and kindly cared for. It does not come within my province to make
recommendations as to the locality of these reservations, or the best manner of
collecting the Indians or providing of them after collected; but if this should be desired,
I could give decided opinions on these question.