Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: Indians of California by Edward Chever Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 12 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-09-03 14:15:23 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:21:14 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:21:14

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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122 JOURNAL OF CALIFORNIA AND GREAT BASIN ANT HROPOLOGY as a public servant. The Indian again has a desire to have game abundant, and to have the trees preserved for his acorns and fuel. It would seem folly to kill game faster than needed for food from year to year, and cutting down the oak that brought him acorns, would be killing the goose that laid the golden egg. An Indian to be judged fairly must be regarded as an Indian. Custom with them, as with civilized people, is law, and many of their customs have probably been transmitted, with but little change, from remote ages. There is every reason to believe that the Indians were very numerous in California at some former time. Deserted mounds, showing the sites of former villages, are seen along the banks of the rivers, and a few tribes, speaking dialects of their own and yet living separately as nations, only consist of a dozen families each. One of these removed to a large tribe while I lived near them and remained as a part of the more powerful tribe for a year or more; but they became discontented or homesick, and returned to the village containing the dust of their ancestors. Here they kept up the traditions of their fathers, and related tales of former glory, and prayed to the Great Spirit for success and for abundant blessings. It is worth our time perhaps to consider, while speaking of the mounds that indicate the sites of villages, how much of the elevation is due to natural deposits, and whether it may not in many cases be entirely so. The streets in the city of Chicago have risen from eight to ten feet above the old level during the past twenty-five years from the soil obtained from cellars, ashes, sweepings, etc. Even the villages (so called) of prairie dogs are made higher by their occupation. The ground used as a permanent home by human beings is constantly receiving additions from the wood used as fuel, bones of animals, shells of various kinds, and even the bodies of the California Indians were buried near their houses, with their baskets and implements used in hunting and housekeeping. I am aware that elsewhere mounds seem to have been heaped up by another race of people, but the highest that I have met with in California I think were owing to the gradual accumulations from centuries of occupation. The traditions of the Indians are so fanciful, when they get beyond the history known to the living, that they differ but little from printed fictions. Their religion is probably little changed from that of an earlier age. A Good Spirit is invoked to provide food and give prosperity, and evil spirits are to be propitiated. The oldest chief prays at certain seasons, morning and evening, outside of the council lodge, and sings in a monotone a few sentences only. This is not in words taken from their language, but is supposed to be intelligible to the Great Spirit. When special prayers are made for success in fishing or hunting, the request is made in plain Indian. Although he prays constantly for success, he uses wonderful craft and skill to ensure it. The antelope could not be approached in the short, dry grass on the plains even by crawling, but the Indian whitens the sides of his body with clay, and puts a perfect decoy antelope’s head on top of his own.’ With a short stick in his left hand to give length to the pretended foreleg, and carrying his bow and arrows in his right, he pretends to feed contentedly on the grass until the antelope approaches sufficiently near for him to kneel and shoot. The hunter, when standing or walking, supports himself on the short stick held in the left hand, like an animal standing on three legs [Fig. 2]. I found by adopting this decoy head, and wearing knit clothing, that the antelope would come to me readily if I would remain in one place and hold the head near the ground, as if feeding. It was more difficult to walk far in this way, and the antelopes would come to me at times when if I had attempted to go to them, they would have become alarmed. To illustrate the ease with which an Indian can provide food for himself, I saw one come to the bank of Feather River one afternoon and start a fire. Turning over the sod and searching under the logs and stones he found some grubs. Pulling up some light dry reeds of the last year’s growth he plucked a few hairs from his own head and tied the grubs to the bottom of the reeds, surrounding the bait with a circle of loops. These reeds were now stuck lightly in the mud and shallow water near the edge of the river, and he squatted and watched the tops of his reeds. Not a sound now broke the quiet of the place; the Indian was as motionless as the trees that shaded him. Presently one of the reeds trembled at the top and the Indian quietly placed his thumb and finger on the reed and with a light toss a fish was thrown on the grass. The reed was put back, another reed shook and two