CHAPTER VI. 
THE TOL’-O-WA. 
In Del Norte County there are three tribes or bands of Indians who 
speak the same language, and have the same customs, and yet are often 
arrayed in hostility one against the other. The Hé-nag-gi live along Smith 
River, the Tol’-o-wa on the Lagoon, and ,the Ta-ta-ten’ around Crescent 
City. As the Tolowa are the principal band, they may stand for all. 
The language of these three tribes is more nearly related to the Hupa 
than to any other, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter. Indeed the 
Tolowa resemble the Hupa in character, being a bold and masterly race, 
haughty and aggressive. ‘They have always been a terror to the Yurok of 
the Lower Klamath, and in old times they often marched down the coast, 
through the broad belt of redwoods, then over the fern-grown hills, on the 
slope of which, at the mouth of the Klamath, is the Yurok village of Rikwa, 
and upon this they would swoop down, sweeping everything before them, 
and carry away women and children into captivity. The cold blood in 
which they made these marauding raids merely to raise revenue from the 
.ransom of the captives, is a great stain on their valor, and a remarkable 
instance of their otherwise notable rapacity. 
When I was in Crescent City the Tolowa and the Tataten were at war, 
in consequence of the latter having perpetrated some wanton outrage on 
the former. The Tataten, being only a wretched remnant of thirty or forty 
souls, had fled with terror into Crescent City, and were encamped on the 
broad beach between the town and the ocean, among the enormous drift- 
logs, where they had extemporized for themselves some huts to which sea 
and shore had contributed about equally. By a pleasant fiction of speech, 
they declared themselves to be ‘‘on the war-path”, which is to say, Ta- 
kho-kol’-li, a squalid and tatterdemalion chief, knowing he was perfectly 
65 
ay 40 Co) 
