242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



gather at the present time, they ranged in the summer as far east as 

 Mount Lassen, On the upper slopes of this tremendous peak they 

 found plenty of game, and no one to disturb them. When it grew cold 

 they returned to the foothills and passed the winter at Bear's Hiding 

 Place. N"ear the lodges there is to be found a circular pit some three 

 or four feet deep. This pit they were accustomed to pack full of snow. 

 The melting of this snow gave them a supply of water and saved them 

 the trouble and risk of going down to the creek, some five hundred 

 feet below. 



The village site has now been visited by a number of people, scien- 

 tific and otherwise. I think they will all agree that the placing of the 

 lodges was the work of people who were not only desperately anxious 

 to hide themselves, but who knew thoroughly well how to do it. The 

 houses were built where they were invisible from the clilfs on either 

 side. The Indians passed down to the creek, which was very important 

 to them on account of the fish in it, under the shelter of a growth of 

 laurel. Thus they could move about and still remain hidden. More- 

 over, they avoided making visible trails, especially near the water. The 

 little path that leads down from the lodges under and through the 

 thicket, ramifies and disappears as it approaches the stream. In other 

 words, they went down by different ways, to avoid making one conspicu- 

 ous pathway. In making the needful paths through the brush, they 

 bent aside the necessary twigs. Cutting or breaking them would have 

 made the path much more conspicuous. I doul^t if an observer on the 

 cliff would ever have seen the Indians if he had l)een looking directly 

 down upon them. Altogether, the place and its selection showed con- 

 siderable evidence of craft, and to the wandering hunter or rider on the 

 mountains round about, the locality would have looked always like a 

 genuine bear's hiding place, for all the evndence of human habitation 

 to be seen. 



The Breahing Up of the Hiddeti Village 



Such was the life of this group until the year 1908. At that time a 

 party of surveyors, on engineering business, happened by mere luck to 

 encounter them. One evening a naked savage was suddenly observed, 

 standing on a rock by the stream side, armed with a long spear. This 

 resulted, from all accounts, in the equal alarm of all parties. The next 

 morning, those members of the party who had not run all the way to 

 camp, went down to the place, cast about in the brush, and finally came 

 upon the Indian lodges. Two Indians, running for their lives, were 

 actually seen — one of them an old man, helped along by a middle-aged 

 woman. This fieeting glimpse is all that we know of these individuals. 

 They have never been seen again. Their actual fate is still unknown. 

 In camp was found, under some blankets, a partially paralyzed old 

 woman, frightened nearly to death, unable to move. The whites did 

 what they could for this old person, then helped themselves, mainly in 



