Chapter III

THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS

Dr. A. L. Kroeber’s map shows all tribes within the present political boundaries of the State of California. The tribes of the extreme northwest corner and those of the southern tip of the state are not typical of what we generally think of as “California Indians”.

Although it may not be scientifically sound to do so, it is often convenient to refer to the Indian tribes of the California region collectively. The term “Digger Indians” is frequently used for this purpose with a somewhat disparaging connotation. The origin of this name is traceable to white traders and pioneers who observed that local Indians dug extensively for a number of food items, hence the name Digger was applied. However, this is a poor name as digging was but one of many methods the Indians used to secure food. Besides, digging was by no means peculiar to Indians of the California area. It is best, therefore, simply to use the term California Indians, if one wishes to refer to this group of tribes as a whole.

In connection with the nickname Digger Indian, it is of interest to note that the California tribes used the conspicuous pine of the foothills, _Pinus sabiniana_, as a source of edible pine nuts and for other purposes too. Because the so called Digger Indians used these trees so much, the pioneers named the conifers Digger Pines, a name recognized today as the proper common name of that tree.

California tribes are usually not considered high culturally among Indians generally, yet Yurok, Pomo, and Chumash are equal to any tribe in North America in wood, bone, steatite, obsidian, feather, and skin work, while local tribes of the Lassen area made basketry of a variety and quality unsurpassed elsewhere.

Although there were local differences in food habits, the California Indians as a group had a highly diversified diet in contrast to the so-called one-food tribes in surrounding areas. Of course it is an over-simplification to speak of one-food tribes, for all ate quite a variety of foods. Yet, it is true that several cultures had been built upon the great abundance and importance of one particular food item as compared to all other foods eaten. North of California, Indians built their culture largely upon the salmon. To the east were tribes which depended upon the bison for most of their needs, and southeast of California the Southwest Indians built their culture around the all important maize or native corn. In any of these regional groups, if the main food item failed, disaster struck the tribes. In contrast, the Californians, with diversified eating habits, had four major food sources: fish, game, roots, and seeds or nuts. Each was important and the failure of any one caused hardship, but by no means the serious disaster which befell the more specialized groups of Indians if their main food supply item failed. If any one item of the California Indian diet were to be selected as the most important and universal food, one of the nuts, the acorn would have to be named.

TOLOWA YUROK KAROK UPPER LOWER SHASTAN SHASTA OKWANUCHU ACHOMAWI ATSUGEWI KORO MINU NEW RIVER MODOC NORTHERN PAIUTE LASSEN VOL. NAT. PARK PYOT WHILIOUT ATHABASCAN CHILULA HUPA NONGATL SINKYONE LASSIK WAILAKI KATO YUKI YUKI HUCHNOM COAST YUKI POMO N. C. S.W. E. S.E. WAPPO CHIMA RIKO WINTUN NORTHERN CENTRAL SOUTHWESTERN SOUTHEASTERN COSTANOAN SAN FRANCISCAN SANTA CLARA SANTA CRUZ YANA N. CENTRAL SOUTHERN YAHI MAIDU NORTHEASTERN NORTHWESTERN SOUTHERN WASHO MIWOK COAST MIWOK PLAINS NORTHERN CENTRAL SOUTHERN YOKUT NORTH VALLEY

California Indians are often regarded to have been lazy and shiftless. To be sure there were such individuals, but we have that type of person in our midst too, and I dare say in equal or greater percentage. As a matter of fact, Indians generally could not afford to be lazy—there was no beneficent government to coddle them. It was largely a case of sink or swim. They had to provide their own shelter, food, and clothing as well as what amusement and extras—hardly to be called luxuries—they wished to enjoy. These things were all wrought from the wilderness with their own bare hands, using only wood, stone, and fire as tools. These native Americans lived in a stone-age culture. Metals, the wheel, domesticated herd animals, and agriculture were unknown to California Indians. Although there was some seasonal migration, there were no truly nomadic or wandering tribes in California.

In California there were 103 separate tribes each speaking its own language. To be sure, some were mere dialects of others, but there were 21 tongues completely distinct from each other and mutually unintelligible. These belonged to several unrelated language families, as shown on the second map.

As suggested above, Kroeber has shown that we are technically incorrect in referring to the California Indians as a single group of tribes. Within the political boundaries of the State of California there were actually three separate cultures with a number of subcultures, which were as follows: The small area in the northwest corner of the state, the Klamath River drainage, was occupied by the Northwest California Sub-culture, a part of the North Pacific Coast Culture which extended into British Columbia. The California-Great Basin Culture had three representatives in the state: the smallest or Lutuami Sub-culture, represented by the Modoc tribe only, extended down from the north across the east central portion of the northern boundary of California. The next larger was the Great Basin Sub-culture just east of the Cascade-Sierra backbone. The third and largest sub-culture of the California-Great Basin Culture was that of the Central California tribes (the Diggers of the pioneer), extending westward from the Cascade-Sierra crest to the Pacific Ocean across the bulk of the state. The fifth sub-culture is known as the Southern California comprising the area south of the Tehachapi Mountains from the coast east across the Colorado River, being a part of the Southwest Culture.

Lutuamian LUTUAMI Hokan KAROK SHASTAN CHIMARIKO POMO WASHO YANA Shoshonian PAIUTE Penutian WINTUN MAIDU MIWOK YOKUT COSTANOAN Algonkian YUROK Athabascan ATHABASCAN Yukian YUKI

Nevertheless, some generalities hold, and at the risk of the inaccuracy which is typical of generalizations, we might set forth the following customs as being characteristic of California Indians:

Animal flesh bulked a smaller volume of food eaten than did vegetable materials—or, in the case of coastal peoples, than did seafoods. Dog and reptile flesh were considered poisonous or undesirable, but insects and worms were generally eaten. Acorns were the most important single food. All tribes utilized seeds of such plants as buckeye, grass, sedge, and sunflower family plants. All items, but the first, were collected with a basketry seed beater in a conical burden basket, parched, winnowed, ground, and eaten either dry, as unleavened bread, or as boiled mush.

Although the fish hook and line were known throughout the area, most fishing was done by means of nets, weirs, use of poison, and harpoons thrust, but not thrown.

Hunting with bow and arrow was most important. Disguise and dogs were used in the north, but surrounding the game was the common means of hunting in the south.

The northern bow was short, broad, and sinew backed while southern Californians used long narrow bows without reinforcement.

Arrows were usually two-piece and tipped with obsidian points. Three different arrow releases were used among California Indians. Northern arrows were straightened by use of a hole through a piece of wood or similar material, and were polished by use of horsetail stalks while a grooved squarish soapstone (steatite) did both jobs in the south.

Basketry was highly developed, being California’s best art form. The northern quarter of the area did twined basketry; coiled basketry prevailed elsewhere.

Cloth was unknown, but woven rabbit skin strip blankets were universal, especially for bedding. Rush mats were twined and sewn.

Pottery was unknown except for a very crude undecorated form in the San Joaquin Valley, an intrusion from the Southern California Sub-culture where pottery became important.

Music of California was characterized by singing, rattles, whistles, split slap sticks, flute, and musical bow. The last two instruments were the only ones which were able to make real melodies, but amazingly, neither one was used for dances or ceremonies. California Indians were virtually without any drums—the exception being a single headed flat foot drum used in ceremonial sweathouse chambers of the tribes in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.

Dress of California women was a front and a back apron of skin—especially buckskin—or of plant fiber. Men wore nothing or a folded skin about the hips or between the legs. In bad weather both sexes used cape-like or wrap-around (over one arm and under the other) skin robes. In localized areas the brimless dome-shaped basketry cap was worn by women. Hair of both sexes was long (but shorn in mourning) and frequently put up in nets by men. Men removed their beards by pulling with their fingers.

In mountain areas social and religious cults were lacking. In the extreme northwest corner wealth dances were held; in central California the secret society and Kuksu dances, in the south the Jimsonweed initiation system, and in the Colorado River area the dreamsong ceremony flourished.

Houses varied from open enclosures and brush or bark shelters to frame structures more or less completely dug into the ground and covered with bark, brush, and dirt, usually with a roof entrance and or one to the south; this was the earth lodge. In the extreme northwest housing was not the earth lodge, but a structure built on top of the ground; hand-split planks were used in its construction.

Sweat houses were of the earth lodge type, often of daily service and in northern areas, lived in too. Sweat houses of California were not heated by steam, but directly with fire.

Boats generally were of rushes tied into balsa rafts or into boat shapes. In addition one-piece dugout canoes from tree logs were typical of the northern portion of California, becoming progressively more refined in workmanship and in design to the northwest. A unique lashed split board canoe was made by channel island tribes in the Santa Barbara vicinity.

The tribe as a political unit, so common elsewhere in America, did not exist in California. What we call a tribe was actually a number of groups of Indians, each of whom had a chief, spoke the same language dialect, had the same customs, intermarried regularly, and were usually mutually friendly. There was no tribal chief as such.

In the northwest portion of California wealth was so important that real chieftain leadership was lacking. In central and southern California the chief was a powerful local leader on a hereditary basis. Between the two extremes was a zone where tribes struck a compromise; the hereditary local chief had moderate authority and usually was well to do, but not necessarily so. Rich men in smaller political divisions were influential headmen under the local chief.

Warfare was only for revenge and not for plunder or for a desire for distinction. Except for the Northwest Sub-culture, scalps were generally taken and included the victim’s skin down to his eyes or nose, and including the ears. Not infrequently the whole head was taken by a victorious warrior. The weapon was the bow and arrow, with rocks employed in close combat. Such war implements as shields, clubs, spears (throwing), and tomahawks were not used.

Guessing games, usually played by men, were universal, with variations, and heavy gambling was the rule. Shinny in several different forms was widely played.

Shamans were employed for curing diseases which were believed due to the presence in the body of some foreign hostile object. This was removed by sucking accompanied by singing, dancing, and tobacco smoking.

The girls’ adulthood or puberty ceremony and dance was important to all California tribes.

Population figures even on the most scholarly basis, Kroeber states, are at best reasonable guesses. As nearly as can be determined there were originally about one million Indians in North America, three million in Central America, and three million in South America. California probably had about 133,000 Indians or nearly one per square mile. This is a density three or four times greater than for the whole of North America.

Today the North American Indian population (including about 30% half-breeds) is less than 10% of what it was. Over 90% of our Indians have been destroyed by wholesale killing at the hands of the white man, by new diseases, unfavorable changes in diet, clothing, and dwellings plus such Caucasian cultural factors as settlement, concentration, and the like. The decline in Indian population varied directly with the degree of civilized contact the several tribes experienced. It is interesting to note that virtually all of the Indians exposed to the Spanish missions commencing 1769 are gone except for a few in the extreme south who were only partly missionized. Kroeber states:

“It must have caused many of the fathers a severe pang to realize, as they could not but do daily, that they were saving souls only at the inevitable cost of lives. And yet such was the overwhelming fact. The brute upshot of missionization, in spite of its kindly flavor and humanitarian root, was only one thing: death.”

Kroeber also points out that some tribes had much less resistance and hence suffered greater decline in population in response to equal white contact than others did. As in the case of other living things, there were favorable circumstances under which the Indian flourished—where life was relatively easy and secure. Such conditions produced virile stock and a rich culture both materially and spiritually—a condition found in broad valleys drained by the great rivers of California: the Klamath, the Sacramento, and the San Joaquin. As is also the case with specific plants and animals, Indians in less favorable sites lived submarginally—a difficult existence, poor in material and spiritual culture. Under such circumstances it takes just a small amount of additional unfavorable influence to make existence impossible. On this basis Kroeber explains the extinction or near extinction of poor mountain tribes upon contact with the whites while the Indians of the fertile valleys, although suffering more intensive Caucasian contact, were able to survive in reasonable numbers. This is a specific exception to the general observation made above that population decrease varied directly with the degree of contact. There are examples in California; the local one is the survival of valley Maidu and Wintun populations as compared to the surrounding mountain people with poorer cultures: the Yahi, Yana, Okwanuchu, Shasta, New River Shasta, Chimariko, and the Athabascan tribes of the west with survival percentages today of up to only 5% at best.

There is another factor which caused greater devastation of the economically insecure mountain tribes. White settlers were able to use to their own advantage some of the labor, services, and even food which the valley Indians afforded them. Thus it was not to the interest of the whites to wipe out these Indians. On the other hand, the mountain tribes with a poorer economy were prone to steal livestock to supplement their food supplies as they had no means to gain wealth to enable them to buy from the whites. Such depredations were a major cause of retaliation by white man in the form of bloody punitive attacks on Indians from whom the settlers had nothing to gain.