62. Wintoon Indians

C. H. Merriam

(The following brief description of certaain aspects of the life of
the group now known as the Wintu is taken from Dro Merriam's journal,

dated July 19, 1903. The story of the finding of the "Indian maiden't in
Samwel Cave reproduced here was subsequently published in more detail by

Jo C. Merriam in an article titled The Cave of the Magic Pool. Scribner's
Magazine 82:264-272, 1927. Ed.)

Dr. John C. Merriam and I spent the day along McCloud River
collecting many species of brush and talking with the Indians,

from whom I obtained a valuable vocabulary of 350 words, includ-
ing the names of more than 100 animals and plants. The Indians
here belong to the Wintoon tribe. They are drying salmon on

rough frames by the rivere and many Indians from neighboring places
(all Wintoon) have temporary brush shelter camps here by the river.,
in addition to those who live here pernanently.

For 8 or 10 miles above Baird scattered families of Wintoon live
along the rier-but all told theke are only a few of them,

Just now those at Baird are reinforced by several families from
the upper Sacramento (from the villages near Baird Spur) who have
come here to lay in their winter supply of salmon and are tamped.

in rough brush shelters on both sides of the river at the bend be-
low the Fish Hatchery. The largest camp is on the broad pebble

beach on the west side, At all the camps they have erected rough
frames on which the red split bodies of salmon are drying. They
dry also large quantities of salmon eggs, called Poop.

They cook a great many salmon by boiling, lay them in broad
scoop-shape openwork baskets called Qn or ahn, and pick out the
meat, which they place on leaves or cloth on the ground, in the

sun, to dry. While it is drying an old woman usually sits by with
a switch (a branch with leaves at the end) to keep th  flies away.

As it dries it is broken up with the fingers into almost a saw-dust-
like powder. Large quantities of this dry boiled salmon powder are.
stored in baskets for winter, besides the raw dried fish and their
eggso

With the abundance of fish, deer, acorns and pinenuts (P. sabin-
iana) the Wintoon Indians still find food enough without much IY-

ficulty-in which respect they are far better off than the remaining
bands of most of the California tribeso

Along the McCloud River the crop of black aconms (Q. californica)
is a failure this year, but there are some acorns on the white and

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live oaks      aryana and Q. chrysolepis), and plenty on the

scrub oak (    rebwe.iJ, which abounds on the dry slopes between
here and the Sacramentoo  On these same hills garryana in scrub
form and heavily laden with acorns abounds in great profusion.

The Indians make both soup (or mush) and bread of acorns.

Pine nuts they eat raw and roasted, but do not appear to cook.

They used to make skirts for the women of strings of the seeds
of the Digger pine, strung on sinew from a belt of ornamented

buck-skin; breechclouts were made of bark of new growth or ter-
minal branches of maple (Acer macrophyllum)o

On top of a dry hill on the west side of the river about 3/4

of a mile above Baird I found a most interesting old Indian home,
now inhabited by a poor old woman who must be in the neighborhood
of a hundred years old. It occupies a bare place on the top of

the hill and is surrounded by pines and oaks, so it cannot be seen
from across the river or from any direction. At the south foot of
the hill, only a short distance away is a fine cold stream.

The abode consists of a large brush-fence enclosure containing
a. rough slab-and-bark house with flat roof, and a canopy or open
brush-covered sheltero

The ancient dame who presides over this relic of the past is

very thin and skinny and has her chin and cheeks tattooed-as   have
most of the Wintoon womeno In some the tattooing is very elabor-
ate o

This old woman was wonderfully graceful and pathetic as she

tried to tell us of the good olden time when the Wintoon people

held this picturesque and beautiful valley in undisturbed posses-
siono When I first surprised her she was sitting in the shade,
making a rough open-work burden basket (on-kop-py) of twigs of

green aromatic sumac (Rhus trilobata) with the bark left on and
-the lea-ves still adhering to the tips -of the rodso

She had also a number of old baskets, which Dr. JO CO Merriam
and I purchased from her. The one she was most reluctant to part
with was her mortar basket (kow-e) in which (resting on a flat

stone) she pounds her acorns,  I paid her double price for this,

as I wanted it badly. It is a very old one and has a burn on one
side near the top.

The floor of the house at this old camp is one of undisturbed
earth. In the conical huts of slab and bark on the east side of
the river the floor is excavated three or four feet, Besides

these I saw the frame of a small sweat house where water is thrown
on hot stones to convert it into steam. These sweathouses used to
be covered with deer skins; they are now commonly covered with
blankets when in use and left bare between times.

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I saw no ceremonial house near Baird, but found the excavated
oval depression where one once stood, 13 or 14 miles north of
Baird, on the east side of the river.

Most of the Wintoon now live in log cabins in winter and camp
under brush shelters in summer.

The Wintoon do not make coiled baskets-only twined. The
coarse open-work burden basket (Ahn-kop-pe) is made of rods,

peeled or unpeeled, of Rhus trilobata or (Isome other unidentified
plant].

The apoose baskets ('Klul) are made of rods of hazel (Corylus
californi cus)

The cooking baskets and bowls (pul-ok, Kol'-um, tel'-lek and
dow's-up) are made of roots (sek) of Digger and Ponderosa pines

(P. sabiniana and ponderosa) woven over vertical slender rods of
willow (Salix sp.), ornamented with overlaid materials of which
the following are most usual: black stems of maiden hair fern

(Adiantum); white or yellowish white split leaves of Xerophyllum
(which does not grow here but which they get from Indians of

Trinity County); Salmon-red (or orange red), the two parallel

strips from inside the Woodwardia fern, dyed usually by chewed
inner bark of tree alders (the Woodwardia being passed through

the mouth while the chewing is going on); reddash brown, slender
split twigs of red-bud (Cercis) with the bar on (gathered after
the fall rains when the biirTs red). Besides these, quills of

porcupines are used (and used to be in oldern times) particularly
for the finest hats and best bowl baskets (choke-mouth)o   The

quills are dyed yellow with the root of the Oregon grape (Ber-

beris pinnata) and also with a weed common   here (Datisca glom-
erata), called Klup-'tchoos.

They use the red tail feathers of the Flicker (Cola    s cafer
collaris) for headdresses and belts for ceremonial occasions,

and heads of the California woodpecker (Melanep     formicivorous
bairdi) also for choice belts. One was buried -here with a boy
this spring. John C. Merriam saw it last year.

The Wintoon have no superstition about a god or gods, but

speak of a spirit they call Ses or 'Kless, which might be called
the devil, which they say usually does harm, but sometimes does
one a good serviceo

* * * * * * *

John C. Merriam did not return with me from up the river this
morning (July 23) but came back tonight. He stayed to explore a
very deep pit in the cave [Samwel Cave] now being worked by his
assistant Furlong.

The Indians had told us that about 65 years ago two or three
young women entered this cave for the purpose of washing their

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hands and faces in a subterranean stream, which was believed to

bring them good luck9 They were groping about in the dark, hold-
ing hands, when one suddenly fell into a deep pit and disappeared.
The other could not pull her out and she fell. She was heard to

strike once and then to fall heavily on the bottom, from which the
Indians inferred she had struck a shelf on the way down, After

she fell she made no noise and they knew she was dead. Other In-
dians came and lowered a cord and said the hole was about 80 feet
deep. Up to a few days ago this hole was never re-discovered and
Furlong and John Merriam did not believe in its existence, for the
holes or wells in which they were working were not so deep.    But a
day or two ago Furlong sent word down to J. C. Merriam that he had
found the deep hole and wanted a lot more rope and candles, So

yesterday JO C. M. and I took up a lot of candles and 100 feet of
rope. This morning J. C. M. and Furlong went to the cave (after I
had started back, for I could not stay as I had too much to do to
get ready to leave tomorrow) and went down to the bottom of the

deep well. They found it actually 75 feet deep and at the bottom
found the complete skeleton of a woman-so the story is substanti-
ated. On the way down the rope touched a projecting shelf-where
the squaw struck on her way to eternity.

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