44 FISHERMEN OF THE UNITED STATES. 



pleasant, genial, and sociable, though, like other Indians, very sensitive, 'when their pride was 

 wounded. They at first adopted the plan of ordering all white men out of their country, and were 

 the last of the California Indians to yield to the encroachments of civilization. Even now they 

 are not slow to say to the white stranger, 'These are my lands,' and 'These are my salmon'; but 

 tin- stern consequences of conflict with the whites have taught them to abstain from any violent 

 indication of their lights. They still always revenge a wrong inflicted on them by their own 

 people, and deem it a duty to avenge the murder 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 injure any one who does not first injure them. Every one told me, before my arrival and 

 during my stay on the McCloud, 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 McCloud 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 <i white man's settlement, and yet I do not know of a single instance 

 of theft of the smallest thing on their part, during all our 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 which 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 white 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 Indiau 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. xVlmost 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 driftwood and dry logs, which they inhabit pretty comfortably 

 through the winter. In the summer and fall they live mainly on the salmon and trout which tiny 

 spear. In the winter they live on the salmon which they catch and dry in the tall, and on acorns, 

 which they gather in great quantities in the woods. They bnnt 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. 



" 1 have written this long account of the McCloud River Indians partly because their presence 

 here is so singularly connected with the abundance of the salmon in the Sacramento River. Had 

 white men come here, and required the salmon lor food, this main artery of the supply system of 

 the river would have been stopped ; or had white men come and engaged in mining, as they have 

 done on the Yuba and on the Feather and American Rivers, the spawning-beds would have been 

 covered with mud and ruined, as in those rivers, and in less than three years the sabnon supply 

 of the Sacramento woidd have shown a \ ast decrease. The presence of the Indians, therefore, in so 

 far as it implies the absence of the whites, is the great protection of the supply of the Sacramento 

 salmon." 



