PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 127 
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not want to know anything”. They both prefer against each other the 
charge that, in old times, the dead who had no friends were dragged away 
into the brush, or hidden in hollow logs, or barely covered with leaves, &e. 
Hence the Yuki had few friends among their neighbors, except the Wailakki, 
and they had more intercourse with them than with any others, although 
they occasionally fought each other with a hearty good-will. They joined 
territories about half-way between Round Valley and North Eel River, and 
they intermarried, giving rise to a progeny called Yuki-Wailakki. The 
Yuki were unrelenting enemies of the Néam-lak-ki (Wintiin), and often 
fought them on the summit east of Round Valley. They would climb 
trees up there and wait for hours for a Ndéam-lak-ki to come along, when 
they would imitate the grouse, the California quail, or some other choice 
game-bird, and so lure them within arrow-shot. They were also especially 
bitter against the whites, and seized an early opportunity to kill any of 
their squaws who went to live with them. 
The Yuki have disproportionately large heads, mounted like cannon- 
balls on smallish, short bodies, with rather protuberant abdomens. Their 
eyes are a trifle under-sized, but keen and restless, and from the execrable 
green-wood smudge in which they live in winter they are not unfrequently 
swollen and horribly protruding. Their noses are stout, short, and straight, 
the nares expanded; and they have heavy shocks of stiff, bristly hair, cut 
short, and hence bushy-looking. They are variously complexioned, with- 
out any perceptible law, from yellowish-buff to brown and almost black. 
They are a truculent, sullen, thievish, revengeful, and every way bad 
but brave race. Two of them from whom I attempted to get their numerals 
chose to consider me bent on some devilish errand, and they lied to me so 
systematically that I did not get a single numeral correct. They have the 
most desperate persistence in pursuit of revenge. I was told of an instance 
where a tribe seemed to have decreed that a certain offending pioneer and 
hunter, formidable with the rifle, must be killed, and more than a dozen of 
them who were sent to do the work, were one after another slain by him 
before they accomplished their purpose. 
On the reservation at the present day the Yuki quarters are on a low 
piece of ground which was once occupied as a burying-ground, hence the 
