178 REPORT 'of commissioner OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



are my lands," and "Tliese are my salmon; " bnttbe stein consequences 

 of conflict with the whites have taught them to abstain from any vio- 

 lent vindication of their rights. They will still always revenge a wrong- 

 inflicted on them by their own iieople, and deem it a dnty to avenge a 

 miu'der of one of their kindred, but I think they are a well-disposed race 

 by nature, and have no malice naturally in their hearts toward any one, 

 and will not iujiu'e any one who does not first injiu^e them. Every one 

 told me, before my arrival and during my stay on the McClond, that the 

 Indians would steal everything that they could lay their hands on. I 

 am glad that this opportunity is afforded me of bearing testimony to the 

 contrary, which I wish to do very emphatically. I would trust the Mc- 

 Cloud Indians with anything. We used to leave our things every day 

 around the house, and even down on the river-bank, for weeks together, 

 where the Indians could have stolen them with perfect safety, and where 

 they would not have remained ten minutes in a icMte mmi's settlement, 

 and yet I do not know of a single instance of theft of the smallest thing 

 on their part, during all oiu" stay of two months among them. On the 

 contrary, in one instance, an Indian traveled six miles one hot day to 

 return me a watch-guard, which he found in the pocket of a garment 

 v.'hich I sold him, and which he might have kept with perfect impunity. 

 And on another occasion, on the arrival of some gold coin, when I had 

 reason to expect an attack from ivhite men, I gave the gold to one of my 

 Indians, and told him that I depended on him to protect that and me 

 till morning. I slept soundly; and the next morning the faithful Indian 

 handed me the gold just as I gave it to him. I wish on these accounts 

 to be very emphatic in saying that the charges against these Indians of 

 being a race of thieves, are untrue and unjust. 



With all their good traits, however, murder did not seem to have the 

 obnoxious character that it has among more enlightened people. 

 Almost every McCloud Indian we met had killed one or more men, 

 white or red, in the course of his life, but it was usually because they 

 were goaded to it by ungovernable jealousy or revenge. It was not from 

 motives of gain or causeless malice. 



The McCloud Indians live and sleep in the open air in the summer. 

 In the rainy season they build wigwams or huts of drift-wood and dry 

 Jogs, which they inhabit pretty comfortably through the winter. In the 

 summer and fall they live mainly on the salmon and trout which they 

 spear. In the winter they live on the salmon which they catch and dry 

 in the fall, and oh acorns, which they gather in great quantities in the 

 woods. They hunt with bows and arrows, with which they occasionally 

 kill a bear, though a few of the more enterprising have rifles. They 

 trap a very little, but the salmon of the river are so abundant that they 

 are not obliged to resort to hunting and trapping at all, and do not do 

 much of either. 



I have made this long digression about the McCloud Eiver Indians 

 partly because their presence here is so singularly connected with the 



