104 THE VIARD OR WIYOT. 
which prevail at certain seasons about the estuary of Eel River, occasioned 
much ophthalmia among them, and eventually a great deal of blindness. 
Mighty eaters are the Viard upon occasion. Mr. Robinson relates 
that he was once hunting in company with four Indians and a white man, 
when the latter beat up and shot an elk which proved to be not in good 
condition, and which he consequently abandoned. He gave it to the In- 
dians, and they at once kindled a fire hard by to protect them against the 
assaults of grizzly bears, made every preparation for a vigorous campaign 
on the tough and ancient flesh of the animal, and then fell to lively. In 
twenty-four hours they accomplished the whole matter, and picked the 
bones clean. Chancing to pass the place again at the expiration of that 
period of time, he found the Indians lying in a torpid sleep, and nothing 
left but the skeleton. Now the flesh of the elk is very solid and weighty, 
like pork, and a fat and full-grown buck on Humboldt Bay not unfrequently 
weighs 600 or 700 pounds. This one was lean but large-boned, and these 
four Indians, at a low computation, must have devoured 150 pounds of meat 
within twenty-four hours. Perhaps their dogs helped. 
It was often a source of wonder to me how the delicate arrow-heads 
used on war-arrows, with their long, thin points, could be made without 
breaking them to pieces. The Viard proceed in the following manner: 
Taking a piece of jasper, chert, obsidian, or common flint, which breaks 
sharp-cornered and with a conchoidal fracture, they heat it in the fire and then 
cool it slowly, which splits it in flakes. The arrow-maker then takes a flake 
and gives it an approximate rough shape by striking it with a kind of ham- 
mer. He then slips over his left hand a piece of buckskin, with a hole to’ 
fit over the thumb (this buckskin is to prevent the hand from being wounded), 
and in his right hand he takes a pair of buck-horn pincers, tied together at 
the point with a thong. Holding the piece of flint in his left hand he 
breaks off from the edge of it a tiny fragment with the pincers by a twist- 
ing or wrenching motion. The piece is often reversed in the hand, so that 
it may be worked away symmetrically. Arrow-head manufacture is a 
specialty, just as arrow-making, medicine, and other arts. 
Paul Schumacher, in a communication to the Smithsonian Institution, 
ives the following account of a different process in use among the Klamath 
oO 
5 
