200 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



kinship terms, ceremonies, ethnozoology, ethnohotany. ethnomineral- 

 ogy, tribenames, placenames, personal names, material culture, daily 

 life, religion, genealogies, and history. All the material has been ob- 

 tained in text, following the strictly scientific method of obtaining 

 ethnological information. 



Without doubt the great triumph of the present field-work has 

 been the complete rescuing of the language and much of the ethnology 

 of the San Juan tribe of California in an almost miraculous way 

 through a very aged and desperately ill informant, Mrs. Ascencion 

 Solorsano, at present living in the environs of Monterey. Having 

 learned the language, which has scarcely been spoken since 1850, 

 through the jieculiar circumstance that lioth her mother and father 

 who were fullblooded Indians talked the language together all their 

 lives while no one else was using it, the mother (see fig. 178) dying at 

 84 years of age and the father at 82, she has retained the knowledge 

 of an extinct language and will live long enough to furnish a complete 

 record of all she knows, thus filling a great blank in California 

 ethnology. 



The San Juan are a key tribe, lying midway between the northern 

 and southern California coast cultures. They exhibit many interest- 

 ing transitory cultural features as exemplified in their basketry, 

 ceremonies, mythology, and other features. We see at one moment 

 similarities to the Pomo ; next we are reminded of the peoples to the 

 south. Mrs. Solorsano during a good jiart of her life has been recog- 

 nized as a " doctora " so' that her knowledge of native doctoring prac- 

 tices and of herbs is unusually complete. In spite of her age and in- 

 firmities her mind remains remarkably clear while her memory is ex- 

 ceptional, recalling in detail numberless incidents of her childhood at 

 old San Juan. No greater piece of good fortune has ever attended 

 ethnological research in California than this eleventh hour rescue of the 

 language and customs of a once important Indian tribe. 



