638 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



Nowhere in the world did the basketry maker's art attain such per- 

 fection or show such esthetic feeling in form, color, and decoration. 

 Featherwork, shellwork, and stonework were also superior. 



DWELLING GROUP OF THE DIGGER INDIANS. 



The so-called Digger Indians are of the Pujunan and the Mo- 

 quelumnan family, and occupy an extensive area in eastern Cali- 

 fornia. They received the name of Digger Indians from the use 

 of roots in their arts. Their dwellings are primitive, but modified 

 through influence of the whites. This group includes the communal 

 house, a framework covered with boards and shingles; the mill 

 shelter ; the summer house, where the household arts are carried on ; 

 the storage platform; and the granary. As these people subsist 

 largety on acorns, a great part of the woman's life is spent in gather- 

 ing the nuts, carrying them home in conical baskets suspended from 

 the forehead, drying and hulling them, grinding them in stone 

 mortars, sifting, leaching, cooking, and serving the meal in the form 

 of mush. The men are hunters and fishers. (See pi. 48.) 



FAMILY GROUP OF HUPA INDIANS. 

 Northern California. 



The Hupa Indians of northern California belong to the Athapas- 

 can stock, the principal territory of which lies in northwestern 

 Canada and the interior of Alaska. They subsist on the abundant 

 salmon of the streams, the game of the mountains and the products 

 of native vegetation, especially acorns, which are used for bread. 

 The acorns are crushed with a pestle in basket mortars ; the meal is 

 leached out in sand basins, and cooked into mush in water-tight bas- 

 kets by means of hot stones, or is baked on soapstone dishes over the 

 coals. The men are valiant warriors and great hunters, wearing 

 armor of thick skin and of woven rods in battle and possessing sinew- 

 backed bows of extraordinary strength. The women excel in tan- 

 ning skins, which are used for clothing, and in making baskets, the 

 latter in the absence of pottery serving in a wide range of uses. The 

 artistic inclination of the Hupa, which they possess in a special de- 

 gree, is shown by their beadwork, featherwork, bows and arrows, 

 baskets, the carving of stone pipes, knives, mortars and pestles, and 

 in the shaping of boxes, daggers, and spoons from antler. 



This group represents the family engaged in the varied occupa- 

 tions of the household and includes a woman bringing in from the 

 oak groves a basket of acorns supported by means of a headstrap ; 

 another is pounding acorns into flour in the basket hopper set upon a 

 stone mortar; a third is leaching the acorn meal in a basin of sand 

 preparatory to cooking in a water-tight basket by means of hot stones, 



