I9O SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



of a hundred species known to the Indians, I did further work with 

 Imk y anvan (Mrs. Phoebe Maddux) on the customs of the Karuk 

 people of the lower central section of the river, and especially with 

 Mrs. Fannie Orcutt, younger sister of the famous Salmon Billy, the 

 Indian who went around with Stephen Powers when he was collect- 

 ing information for the Smithsonian in the early seventies of the past 

 century, nearly 60 years ago. This sister of Billy's is now more than 

 80 years old, and evidently possesses the knowledge that the deceased 

 Billy had, and along certain lines doubtless more. Mrs. Orcutt was 

 diligently interviewed along the lines of old family history and gossip 

 and in the field of Indian ceremonial doings as well. She has in her 

 possession several old relics, including a black flint blade, to which 

 great importance was attached until I learned that one of her sons 

 had made it and many others, some of which are doubtless now 

 treasured by collectors and museums, with modern tools, whereupon 

 my appreciation only increased at the uniqueness of the situation. 

 Another unique situation in Mrs. Orcutt's family is that this family 

 typifies the great process which is everywhere going on of amalgama- 

 tion of the Indian race into the white. Each successive generation is 

 " twice as white " as the preceding, and Mrs. Orcutt requested that 

 I take her picture holding her little great-grandson (fig. 166), amused 

 at the situation that this normal appearing white child had her blood. 



Field-work attempting to rescue what can still be obtained from the 

 wreck of former Indian custom and language at San Juan Bautista, 

 in central California, not far south of San Francisco near the coast, 

 was accomplished in the very nick of time, for I arrived while Doha 

 Ascension Solorsano, last speaker of the language, was still alive, 

 and although very ill, survived long enough to enable me to put on 

 paper practically all that she knew about her people. In fact, Dona 

 Ascension was the best person who could have been obtained as 

 informant even several years ago, for she had the qualifications of a 

 truthful heart, a vivid memory, and lifelong curiosity about Indian 

 ways and things, many of which had passed out of use even before 

 the lifetime of her mother. The peculiar amount of knowledge which 

 survived in her was due to the fact that her father and mother talked 

 the language together throughout their lives, each having lived more 

 than 80 years. Doha Ascension lived with them practically all her life. 



Doha Ascension was known as a doctora or curandera of the sick, 

 for she treated cases of all kinds during all the latter part of her life 

 at her little home in Gilroy, near San Juan, which was known as her 

 hospital. Indian and Spanish Calif ornian herb remedies were largely 

 employed, and from her and her old nurse, Doha Antonia Sanchez, 



