SIZE OF THE TRIBE—YUROK SIREN. 59 
They fully believe in the transmigration of souls; that they return to 
earth as birds, squirrels, rabbits, or other feeble animals liable to be harried 
and devoured. It is more especially the wicked who are subject to this 
misfortune as a punishment. 
A word as to the size of the Yurok tribe. Henry Ormond, chief clerk 
of the Hupa reservation told me that in 1870, he descended the Lower 
Klamath from Waitspek down in a canoe—forty miles—and carefully 
counted all the Indians living along its banks. He found the number to be 
2700, which would be at the rate of 674 inhabitants to the square mile, 
along the river. This does not include the Yurok living immediately on 
the coast. It must be borne in mind that there are no wild oats growing 
along the Klamath, and few acorns, and that the Yurok are timid and 
infrequent hunters. Furthermore, before the whites had come among them, 
bringing their corruptions and their maladies, the Indians were probably 
twice as numerous as at present, or at the rate of 135 to the riparian square 
mile. 
As to the enormous numbers of salmon which ascended the streams of 
California before the miners roiled them there can be no doubt. Here one 
veteran pioneer says he has seen many an Indian lodge containing a ton of 
dried salmon; another, that he could have walked across the stream and 
stepped every step on a dead salmon; another, that he has seen them so 
crowded in the deep and quiet reaches of the river that he could not thrust 
down a spear without transfixing one or more. From what I have seen on 
the Upper Sacramento, I believe them all; hence the above figures do not 
seem extravagant. 
THE YUROK SIREN. 
There is a certain tract of country on the north side of the river which 
nothing can induce an Indian to enter. They say that there is a beautiful 
squaw living there whose fascinations are fatal. When an Indian sees her 
he straightway falls desperately in love. She decoys him farther and farther 
into the forest, until at last she climbs a tree and the man follows. She now 
changes into a panther and kills him; then, resuming her proper form she cuts 
off his head and places it in a basket. She is now, they say, a thousand years 
