CHAPTER XII. 
THE MAT-TOAL. 
The Mat-téal have their main habitat on the creek which bears their 
name (Mattole) and on the still smaller stream dignified with the appella- 
tion of Bear River. From the coast they range across to Kel River, and 
by immemorial Indian usage and prescriptive right they hold the western 
bank of this river from about Eagle Prairie—where they border upon the 
Viard—up southward to the mouth of South Fork, where their domain is 
bounded by that of the Lo-lon’-ktk. 
One thing is notable in regard to the Mattoal, and that is that they 
form the first exception and the termination to the law of supremacy which 
prevails all along the coast above. The Tolowa, in Del Norte County, have 
beaten the Yurok on the Lower Klamath time out of mind. The Yurok 
were always a terror to the Chillula, and the latter to the Patawat and the 
Viard on Humboldt Bay; but here the rule is reversed, and a southern tribe 
masters a northern. Before the whites came to meddle, and for years 
afterward, the Mattoal harried the feeble folk about the bay; and to this 
day, excepting the whites alone, there is no other so terrible bugbear to 
them as the name of the Mattoal. The latter form an exception to this law, 
because living principally in a valley secluded from the cold, raw ocean 
fogs, and subsisting more on a strong meat diet, they are fighting men, suffi- 
ciently well fed to whip mercilessly the tribes on Humboldt Bay, who sub- 
_ sist on fish, eels, and roots to a greater extent. 
And here I would venture most respectfully to suggest that Professor 
Agassiz’s theory of a phosphoric fish-diet being nutritive above all others 
to the human brain, is not corroborated by the facts prevailing among these 
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