D6 THE YUROK. 
The Yurok, like their neighbors, are quite acquisitive. Besides the 
money mentioned among the Karok, they value obsidian knives and orna- 
ments and white deer-skins, the two latter having a superstitious as well as 
an intrinsic worth. A good white deer-skin, with head and legs intact is 
worth from $50 to $200 in.gold. An Indian possessing even one is accounted 
rich; at a great dance that was held, a barbaric Astor had four. 
They are monogamists, and as among the Karok, marriage is illegal 
without the prepayment of money. When a young Indian becomes enam- 
ored of a maid, and cannot wait to collect the amount of shell-money 
demanded by her father, he is sometimes allowed to pay half the sum and 
become what is termed “ half-married”. Instead of bringing her to his cabin 
and making her his slave, he goes to live in her cabin and becomes her slave. 
This only occurs in the case of soft, uxorious fellows. 
Divorce is very easily accomplished at the will of the husband, the 
only indispensable formality being that he must receive back from his father- 
in-law the money which he paid for his spouse. For this reason, since the 
advent of the Americans, the honorable state of matrimony has fallen sadly 
into disuse among the young braves, because they seldom have shell-money 
nowadays, and the old Indians prefer that in exchange for their daughters. 
Besides that, if one paid American money for his wife his father-in-law 
would squander it (the old generation dislike the white man’s, the wd-geh 
money, but hoard up shell-money like true misers), and thus, in case of 
divorce he could not recover his gold and silver. 
The Yurok are rather a more lively race than the Karok, and observe 
more social dances. The birth of a child is celebrated with a dance. ‘There 
is adance called v-me-laik (salmon dance), which bears a general resemblance 
to the Propitiation Dance of the Karok. It is held in-doors in early spring, 
when the first salmon of the season appears. We can well understand with 
what great joy the villagers engage in this, when after a long and dreary 
winter of rain during which the wolf has been hardly kept from the door, 
and the house-father has & 
to) 
one down many a time to peer into the Klamath, 
if perchance he might see the black-backed finny rovers of the great deep 
shooting up the river, but in vain, and has then sadly turned on his heel 
and gone back to his diet of pine-bark and buds—when, at last, as the ferns 
