SOCIETY. 305 



ous small and siiiii^Ie kinds of nets are used, and they are 

 knocked down with clubs. Salmon are killed with stones and 

 clubs in shallow water, and are caught with spears. Their 

 most ingenious spear has a head of bone about one inch and a 

 half long and sharp at both ends. To the middle is fastened a 

 string, which is attached to the spear-shaft. One end of the 

 head fits in a socket at the end of the spear-shaft. When the 

 spear is thrown the head comes out of the socket and turns 

 cross-ways in the fish, and then there is no danger that it will 

 tear out. The Indians rarely hunt the grizzly bear. Along 

 the ocean beach they get barnacles. Their method of catching 

 grasshoppers is to dig a hole several feet deep, in a valley 

 where this species of game abounds. A large number of the 

 Indians then arm themselves with bushes, and commence at a 

 distance to drive the grasshoppers from all sides toward the 

 hole, into which the insects finally fall, and from which they 

 cannot escape. The pine-nuts are sought at the tops of the 

 pine-trees, which the " backs" ascend by holding to the rough 

 bark with their hands, and pressing out with their legs, so 

 that they do not touch the body to the trunk of the tree in 

 going up. It is more like walking then climbing. 



The bow and arrow, the spear, the net, the obsidian knife, 

 the mortar, and the basket, are the only tools made by the 

 Indian. The obsidian knife is merely a piece of obsidian as 

 large as a hand and sharp on one side. The baskets are all 

 made of wire-grass, a grass with a round jointless stem, about 

 a sixteenth of an inch thick and a foot long. The basket- 

 work made with this wire-srrass resembles the texture of a 

 coarse Panama hat, and is waterproof. All the basket-work 

 of the Californian Indians is made of this material. The most 

 common shape for the basket is a perpendicular half of a cone, 

 three feet long and eighteen inches wide, open at the top. 

 The basket, carried on the back of the squaws, is used for 

 carrying food, miscellaneous articles, and children. Neither 

 the Californian Indians of the present, nor of any preceding 

 centurv, made such mounds, circumvallations, arrow-heads, or 



