HOUSES AND HOUSE-BUILDING 35 



hills, piled with huge granite boulders of exfoliation, covered below 

 with thickets of chaparral and higher up dotted with juniper trees and 

 other conifers. After twenty-five miles of tortuous climbing a narrow 

 canon leads one out into the mountain Coahuilla valley (usually writ 

 ten Cahuilla), where is a reservation eight miles in length, the home of 

 the majority of the mountain Indians. The elevation is about 4,000 

 feet above the sea level or the plain of the desert ; frost occurs at night 

 almost every month in the year and the cold climate is in marked con 

 trast to the heat of the desert. There is little wooded vegetation, the 

 valley being below the pine level. Great boulders are piled every 

 where over the surface of the ridges that divide the whole valley into 

 little retreats. There are, however, numerous springs, and the valley is 

 rich with grass. It is in easy communication with the valleys and towns 

 to the eastward, and Pechanga, the nearest village of the Luisenos, is 

 distant perhaps forty miles, but only the rough and dim trails connect 

 this valley with the Coyote, San Ignacio, Santa Rosa, Torres, and Palm 

 Valley, routes almost unknown to the whites. 



CHAPTER III. 



HOUSES AND HOUSE-BUILDING. 



17. The houses of a Coahuilla mountain rancheria are not grouped 

 in a village, but are scattered about as widely as the habitable portions 

 of the reservation allow. Each family occupies a cluster of little 

 dwellings by itself and near it are usually some attempts at cultivation 

 of the soil. The sites chosen are small eminences or gentle slopes 

 bordering the valley; water is, of course, a consideration, but the 

 spring may be at some distance, from which the needed supply will be 

 brought daily in an olla by a woman. There is a strange quietness 

 surrounding these homes, a quietness frequently saddened by the 

 absence of little children. No loud voices are heard; the ordinary 

 work of the household goes forward awaking but little sound. There is 

 little social intercourse except at times of the feasts, and a strange and 

 sombre loneliness hangs over an Indian village, especially at nightfall. 

 Yet these primitive Indian homes have a charm and picturesqueness 

 all their own. In the desert villages, where the inhabitants are drawn 

 more closely together about the most available source of water, the 

 homes are clustered within a narrower area with a corresponding gain 

 in social advantages. 



