90 TRIBES TRIBUTARY TO THE HUPA. 
which procured for the California Indians the injurious appellation of 
““Digeers”—seems to account partly for the sweet-tooth that every one of 
them has. Let a squaw get together a few dimes by hook or crook, and she 
will hie her to a trading-post and invest every cent of it in sugar, when she 
grievously needs a few breadths of calico. They are as fend of the article 
as the eastern Indians are of whisky, and eat it as they would bread. The 
large quantity of saccharine matter which the California Indians get in the 
roots they eat seems to have somewhat to do with their fatness in youth, 
just as children are always eating candy, and have round cheeks. 
They gather also huckleberries and manzanita-berries, which latter are 
exceptionally large and farinaceous in the Trinity Valley. I have seen 
thickets of them wherein an acre could be selected that would yield more 
nutriment to human life, if the berries were all plucked, than the best acre 
of wheat ever grown in California, after the expenses of cultivation were 
deducted. The agriculture of the Upper Trinity and South Fork—heaven 
save the mark !—will never support a population one-fourth as numerous as 
the Indians were, and I greatly doubt if the placers, even in the haleyon 
years of their yield, supported as many as lived there in the days of 
savagery. 
Before the miners troubled the waters the salmon crowded up so thick 
that all the river was darkened by their black-backed myriads, and they 
sometimes lingered until they perished by hundreds before they could return 
to salt water and rid themselves of the devouring fresh-water parasites. An 
old settler says he has often seen them lying so close that he could go across 
the thin stream in summer-time stepping every step on a dead salmon. 
Extreme democracy prevails among the Kelta, each village having its 
figure-head of a chief, whom they obey or not, as they list. As among the 
Hupa, adultery committed by a married man is punished by the loss of one 
eye, and murder by ransom. 
Like all savages, the Kelta are inveterate gamblers, either with the 
game of “ cuessing the sticks” or with cards; and they have a curious way 
of punishing or mortifying themselves for failure therein. When one has 
been unsuccessful in gaming, he frequently scarifies himself with flints or 
glass on the outside of the leg from the knee down to the ankle, scratching 
Se ee 
