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REGULAR MEETING, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1870. 



The President introduced Mr. EC WARD E. CHEVER of Chicago, 111., 

 a native of Salem, who gave an interesting account of the Indians of 

 California, an abstract of which is here annexed. 



The Indians of California.* 



THE name " Digger," which Fremont gave to the Indians that he 

 found on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, has been applied by 

 the readers of Fremont's work to all the Indians in California.! 



The name was really applicable to those whom he first met with, 

 but not to the Indians living on the other side of the mountains, who 

 spoke a different language and were more provident than those living 

 on the great plains east of the Rocky Mountains. 



The Indians of California, in 1849, were the more interesting to the 

 ethnologist from the manner in which that country had been settled. 

 The Jesuits, it is true, had been in Lower California for many years, 

 and had established mission schools there, and a few Europeans had 

 a short time before .made scattered settlements in the Sacramento 

 Valley, but the whole country was so remote from our frontiers, and in- 

 closed by the intervening barriers of the Rocky Mountains and the 

 snows of the Sierra Nevada Range, that it had been but little changed 

 from its first discovery by the whites. Many Indian tribes were liv- 

 ing in a perfect state of nature as the elk, deer or antelope that fur- 

 nished them food. The children had their ears bored when quite 

 young and small sticks inserted ; these were exchanged from time to 

 time for larger sticks, until a bone ornament, made from one of the 

 larger bones of a pelican's wings carved in rude style, and decorated 

 at the end with crimson feathers, could be worn permanently. This 

 bone was about five or six inches long and larger in size than my lit- 

 tle finger. The back hair of the men was fastened up in a net, and 

 this was made fast by a pin of hard wood pushed through both hair 

 and net, the large end of the pin being ornamented with crimson 

 feathers, obtained from the head of a species of woodpecker, and 

 sometimes also with the tail feathers of an eagle. The women used 

 no nets for their hair, nor wore feathers as ornaments, excepting in 

 the end of the bones used by both sexes for the ears, which I have 

 already described. 



An Indian could no more remember when he learned to swim than 

 when he first stood on his^eet. When the children were disposed to 

 be good natured the girl* petted them as kindly as our children tend 

 dolls, but if they were cross, in spite of their caresses, they threw 

 cold water in their faces until their tempers cooled. The girls fully 



*It is but justice to our author to state that his familiarity with the language of 

 the tribes during five years of friendly personal intercourse has given him a rare 

 opportunity of forming a correct judgment of what these Indians really were be- 

 fore they were demoralized by contact with the whites. The author's remarks will 

 be found published in full in the American Naturalist for May, 1870, with several 

 illustrations. EDS. 



fThe Indian tribes of the section I am describing, called themselves respectively, 

 Sesum, Hocktem, Vubum, Hololipi, Willem, Tankum, and inhabited the valley of 

 northern California, between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range. 



