36 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 94 



" MELANESIANS " IN NORTH AMERICA 



While very lucid and critical about the Lagoa Santa and other South 

 American remains, so far as then known, Quatrefages in his last 

 major work (1889) has accepted, as significant, references that lacked 

 scientific support or were even grossly erroneous. 



Three separate accounts were used by this author (1889), the first 

 found in the Journal of La Perouse, the second in Stephen Powers, 

 and the third in the account of Padre Francisco Garces."* The first 

 two relate to Indians of California, the last to the Zuiii. 



As to La Perouse (1791), all that this explorer says is as follows : 



In old and new California there are 



about 50,000 wandering Indians These Indians are in general small and 



weak, and discover none of that love of liberty and independence which charac- 

 terizes the northern nations, of whose arts and industry they are also destitute; 

 their colour very nearly approaches that of the negroes whose hair is not 

 woolly ; the hair of these people is strong, and of great length ; they cut it four 

 or five inches from the roots. Several among them have a beard, others, ac- 

 cording to the missionary fathers, have never had any, and this is a question 



which is even undecided in the country We perceived only half the 



adults to have a beard, this, with some of them, was very ample, and would 

 have made a figure of some importance in Turkey, or the vicinity of Moscow. 

 (Vol. 2, pp. 196-198.) 



To this is added the following: At Mission San Carlos, near Mon- 

 terey — " The colour of these Indians, which is that of Negroes " 



(Vol. 2, p. 212.) 



The exact reference to the work of Powers is not given, but it 

 can only be his " Tribes of California " (Contributions to North 

 American Ethnology, vol. 3, Washington, 1877). This is one of the 

 classics in its field. It was not written by an expert, the author having 

 been a journalist, but it gives by far the most comprehensive and gen- 

 erally reliable information on the Indians of California published to 

 that date. In all its 635 pages there is not the slightest suggestion of 

 any race but the Indian. The text must have been badly misunder- 

 stood. What Powers says about the physical characters of the sev- 

 eral tribes mentioned is as follows: 



[The Karok.]— On the Klamath there live three distinct tribes, called the 

 Yu-rok, Ka-rok, and M6-dock, which names are said to mean, respectively, 

 "down the river", "up the river", and "head of the river". (P. 19.) 



The Karok are probably the finest tribe in California. Their stature is 

 only a trifle under the American; they have well-sized bodies, erect and 

 strongly knit together, of an almost feminine roundness and smoothness 



^Said to be recorded by Schoolcraft, but I was not able to locate it in the 

 Schoolcraft archives. 



