308 PLANTS USED BY INDIANS OF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CAL. 
renders it unnecessary for the Indians to go through the laborious 
process of collecting the cones and extracting the seeds, but they are 
often collected as a pastime both by natives and whites. The cones 
are obtained from the trees by cutting or beating them away from the 
branches, and the nuts are beaten out of the cones after the pitchy 
exudation has been removed and the scales opened by fire. The pine- 
nut season used to be celebrated by the Numlakis by holding a special 
dance. The fresh inner bark was formerly used for food when other 
rations were short during a prolonged winter. 
The yellow pitchy exudation found in all parts of the tree is called 
hé-wa' by the Little Lakes and is used extensively both by the natives 
and whites as a protective and healing covering for burns and sores, 
and, mixed with corn meal, some white people use it in the form of a 
poultice as a counterirritant for internal troubles. It is also used to 
fasten feathers on arrows, and in former times the Yukis used to smear 
their bodies with it and then cover themselves with feathers in order 
to present a more formidable appearance in times of battle. All kinds 
of soot are used in tattooing, but that from burning pine pitch is 
especially esteemed. The design is pricked into the skin by means of 
a sharpened piece of bone or sometimes by the sharp awl-like leaves 
of the California nutmeg (Zimdon cal/fornicum), and the soot is then 
rubbed in thoroughly. 
The gum which often accompanies the pitch is called ja by the 
Wailakis. It is highly prized for chewing by all except the oldest 
Indians, who have no teeth. White children chew it for pleasure and 
older persons chew the more pitchy material as a cure for rheumatism, 
for which purpose I was assured that it was very efficient. 
The wood is used very little for poles or timber or for firewood. — It 
has, however, two interesting applications. A quarter cylinder taken 
from a log which has been well hollowed out by fire was used, before 
the days of store boxes, as a rude kind of a drum at dances. One end 
was securely buried in the wall of the temescal or sweat house, while 
the other projected freely in a horizontal direction. When a dance 
was in progress, it was some one’s duty to thump upon this with both 
feet and thus assist ina general attempt to insure a proper cadence, 
The more phable wood from the root is the chief source of the 
material used in the construction of the large V-shaped baskets which 
are used by the Little Lake Indians and by other tribes for carrying 
acorns. The root is warmed in hot, damp ashes, and the strands are 
split off before cooling. «They are brittle when dry, but, after being 
soaked in water, they are easily manipulated in the more simply woven 
baskets which are made by passing the strands in and out through the 
numerous vertical withes that make up the skeleton. They are not 
sufficiently phable to be used like thread, as sedge roots are, in wrap- 
ping round and round a horizontal withe. 
