ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN CALIFOKNIA. 165 



languages, might still speak twent}' diffei-etit languages after the other 

 activities had been nioditied and remodeled as in a common mold bj^ 

 the local environment. 



VICINITY OF NEVADA CITY, NEVADA COUNTY. 



The first stop of our party in California was at Nevada City, Nevada 

 Count}'. Here archaeological investigations were made and collections 

 of basketry and stone implements were secured from some families of 

 "Hi-eet" Indians (Pujunan stock), whose village is on the table-land 

 about a mile west of the city. A recent tire had deprived these poor 

 people of their wooden houses, and they were lodging in improvised 

 shelters, brooding over their misfortunes. There are hardly more 

 than a dozen individuals, all told. They are not, however, ill favored 

 and debased in appearance, and compare very well with other tril)es 

 of corresponding condition and habits. The men work in the mines 

 or at other occupations when opportunity offers, and the women 

 gather acorns — still a large factor in their domestic life — grind them 

 in the stone mills, and prepare the food; they also continue to make 

 baskets in the usual style of the Sierra tribes. It is not pleasant for 

 the ethnologist to note, however, that the gunnysack is taking the 

 place of the strongly woven carrying basket, that the iron pestle and 

 muUer are superseding those of stone, and that cooking on iron stoves 

 and in tin utensils is being substituted for the old-time stone-boiling 

 in tightly woven baskets. 



Several milling places were found near the dwellings, where con- 

 venient masses of granite happened to be exposed. A dozen conical 

 depressions, some shallow and some deep, were scattered over the rock 

 surfaces, and all about were the mealing stones, some nearly round, 

 others oval, flatfish, or cylindrical, a few well shaped, the others rude. 

 Some were suited for grinding by abrasion, others by pounding, the 

 shape being accommodated to the contour of the depression in which 

 they were to be used. These milling places are usually covered by a 

 rude pole and brush shelter, which serves to protect from sun and 

 rain the women (Plate 1), who spend much of their time at the mills. 

 Besides the fixed mortars, there were seen about the dwellings both 

 round and flatfish mortars and mealing stones, with accompanying 

 pestles and mullers used in the minor pulverizing work of the house- 

 hold. Illustrations of typical forms from neighboring districts are 

 given farther on. The archaeological features of the vicinity are 

 referred to in the paper, alread}' mentioned, devoted to evidences of 

 auriferous gravel man. It was observed that in particular the modern 

 villagers dwelt above the briid<s.of the great mines, and that stray arti- 

 facts necessarilj' found their way into the excavations. Search was 

 made for the mine from which one of the specimens, a mortar, referred 

 to by Josiah D. Whitney in his work on the Auriferous (travels of 



