494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



branches shelters its population rather from sun than cold. In 

 the middle of each tepee smolders a little fire, kindled by twirl- 

 ing a stick quickly about in a piece of rotten wood. The inhab- 

 itants eat bread made from white- oak acorns, from buckeye and 

 laurel nuts, and, best of all, from manzanita berries. From these 

 same nuts and berries they make pinole, a veritable mush, of 

 which the early Spanish explorers constantly speak. They take 

 the bitterness out of the acorns and nuts by soaking them long in 

 water and then allowing them to dry in the sun, spread out on 

 tule mats ; then they grind them in their big stone mortars. To 

 the mush and bread they add clams, fish, ducks, deer, and small 

 game ; they season their food with salt made from a certain root, 

 and sweeten it by the addition of little sugar cakes, which they 

 buy from the tribes of the mountains, who make them from the 

 sap of some tree. Then there are thimbleberries, chokeweed 

 berries, and in their season the madrona berry ; and the tarweed 

 grain made a pleasant variety in their mush and bread. After a 

 feast of clams, tarweed mush, and thimbleberries, they lie about 

 their fires and smoke coyote tobacco from wooden pipes, or dance 

 to the music of their rude bone whistles. 



Their dress is a simple apron or short skirt of buckskin, tule, 

 or rabbit skin, with fringes and feathers for adornment, and 

 longer for women ; but their ornaments are their chief glory 

 bracelets, earrings, and necklaces of abalone shells, long, bone 

 bodkins in their thick hair, to which were attached brilliant 

 feathers ; and Donna Maria's vivid pantomime shows us how 

 their feathers dance above them as they dance, while their aba- 

 lone pendants shake about their wrists and necks. 



Their weapons are bows, arrows, and spears made of wood, and 

 pointed with bone or flint, bound to a wooden shaft by rawhide, 

 or the tough, sinewy fibers of a shrub which grows up in the 

 mountains. 



They made no pottery, but all their grinding, cooking, and 

 carrying was done in stone or basketry ; of the latter Donna 

 Maria gave us for the museum a beautiful ancient specimen from 

 one of these very rancherias. It is made of split roots woven so 

 close as to be water-tight, and ornamented by a simple and even 

 classic pattern. Often these baskets were patterned with lines 

 and groups of little feathers, and then they were precious indeed. 



When an Indian died, he was wrapped up in a blanket obtained 

 from the missions, and buried in the rancheria itself, but not 

 under the tepee. Before he was buried, the other Indians came 

 and gave gifts and mourned. 



A kindly, inoffensive tribe, they lived by hunting, fishing, and 

 the natural nuts and grains of their environment. They ground 

 their food and cooked it, loved music and personal adornment. 



