110 THE MATTOAL. 
memory naturally, and so faithful has been their instruction, that the little 
shavers generally recognize the objects from the descriptions of them pre-. 
viously given by their mothers. If an Indian knows but little of this great 
world more than pertains to boundary bush and bowlder, he knows his own 
small fighting-ground infinitely better than any topographical engineer can 
learn it. 
It is above remarked that no Indian in war-time can cross his own 
proper metes and bounds on penalty of death. There is one exception, that 
of the herald, whose person is inviolable ‘wide as the Indian idiom rings.” 
So far as his dialect is spoken, he can pass with impunity on errands of 
weighty business, and especially with a declaration of war, protected by 
the egis of his sacred function. He simply whispers two mysterious and 
sacred words as a countersign, which no other Indian may utter even under 
his breath. What these words are my informant, Mr. Burleigh, did not 
know; they are taboo to the vulgar herd. 
The Mattoal burn their dead, thus showing their relationship with the 
Upper Eel and Russian River races rather than with the northern. They 
hold that the good depart to a happy region somewhere southward in the 
great ocean, but the soul of a bad Indian transmigrates into a grizzly bear, 
which they consider, of all animals, the cousin-german of sin. 
Creation, according to this tribe, was accomplished in a very expe- 
ditious manner. The Big Man first fashioned the naked ground, without 
form and void, destitute of animal and vegetable life, with the exception of 
one solitary Indian. It was a huge, black world, silent and dark and 
bleak. The one lone aboriginal of humanity roamed over it desolate and 
cheerless, finding nothing to gladden his eyes or appease his hunger. ‘Then, 
upon a-time, suddenly there came a strong and swift whirlwind, which 
sucked up from the ground and filled all heaven with drifting sand and dust 
and smoke, and the Indian fell flat upon his face in an unspeakable terror, 
When the tempest passed away he arose and looked, and Jo! all this pleasant 
world was finished and perfect as it is to-day—the earth swarded with 
green, lush grass, and dappled with sweet flowers, the forests already grown 
and inhabited by beasts, and the great sea teeming with its finny flocks. 
The work of creation having been thus consummated all on a sudden, 
