132 THE YUKI. 
There is a curious phenomenon among the California Indians called 
by the Yuki the ¢-wa-miisp (man-woman), and by the Pomo dass. I have 
heard of them elsewhere, but never saw one except in this tribe. There 
was a human being in the Yuki village on the reservation who wore a dress 
and was tattooed (which no man is), but he had a man’s (querulous) voice, 
and an unmistakable though very short and sparse whisker. At my in- 
stance the agent exerted his authority and caused this being to be brought 
to headquarters and submitted to a medical examination. This revealed 
the fact that he was a human male without malformation, but apparently 
destitute of desire and virility. He lived with a family, but voluntarily 
performed all the menial tasks imposed upon a squaw, and shirked all func- 
tions appertaining toa man. Agent Burchard informed me that there were 
at one time four of these singular beings on the Round Valley Reservation, 
and Charles Eberle, a pioneer, stated that, in his opinion, there were, in an 
early day, as high as thirty in the Yuki tribe. Why do they do this? 
Quien sabe? When questioned about it the Indians always seek to laugh 
the matter away; but when pressed for an explanation they generally reply 
that they do it because they wish to do it; or else with that mystifying 
circumlocution peculiar to the Indian, they answer with a long rigmarole, 
of which the plain interpretation is, that, as a Quaker would say, the spirit 
moves them to do it, or, as an Indian would say, that he feels a burning in 
his heart which tells him to do it. There are several theories advanced by 
the whites to account for this phenomenon: one, that they are forced to 
dress like women as a penalty for cowardice in battle; another, that it is 
done as a punishment for self-abuse; still another, that they are set apart 
as a kind of order of priests or teachers. This last theory has some ap- 
pearance of confirmation in the fact that one of these men-women once 
went down from Pit River to Sonoma County and “preached” to the Mis- 
sion Indians in Spanish. Others among the Yuki have been known to 
devote themselves to the instruction of the young by the narration of 
legends and moral tales. They have been known to shut themselves up in 
the assembly-hall for the space of a month, with a few brief intermissions, 
living the life of a hermit, and spending the whole time in rehearsing the 
tribal history in a sing-song monotone to all who chose to listen. 
