6 PREFACE. 
of California which supported more Indians than they ever will of white 
men. But if those who honor this book with a perusal shall lay it aside 
with the conviction that the cause of his extinction does nof “lie within the 
savage himself”, and that the white man does of come to ‘take the place 
which the savage has practically vacated”, I shall be content. Civilization 
is a great deal better than savagery; but in order to demonstrate that fact 
it is not necessary to assert, as Wood does in his work, that savagery was 
accommodatingly destroying itself while yet the white man was afar off. 
Ranker heresy never was uttered, at least so far as the California Indians 
are concerned. It is not well to seek to shift upon the shoulders of the 
Almighty (through the savages whom He made) the burden of the respon- 
sibility which attaches to the vices of our own race. 
Let it not be thought that this book will attempt to gloze or to conceal 
anything in the character or conduct of the aborigines. While they had 
fewer vices than our own race, they committed more frequently the 
blackest crimes. Revenge, treachery, cruelty, assassination—these are the 
dark sides of their lives; but in this category there was nothing ever per- 
petrated by the California Indians which has not been matched by acts of 
individual frontiersmen. As above remarked, the torture of captives was 
not one of their customs. Infanticide was probably more frequent than 
among us; and their occasional parricide, done in cold blood, stands per- 
haps without a parallel. 
In order to study their customs I traveled among them the greater 
part of the summers of 1871 and 1872, and lived many months in sufficient 
proximity to their villages. 
I am indebted to Prof. H. N. Bolander and Mr. R. E. C. Stearns for 
- assistance in the matter of sundry scientific details; and to A. W. Chase, 
Esq., of the United States Coast Survey, for sketches and photographs. 
ne 
SHERIDAN, Pacer County, CaLirornia, 
August 25, 1874. 
