THE TALE OF BLOODY ROCK. 137 
STORY OF BLOODY ROCK. 
After the whites became so numerous in the land that the Indians 
began to perceive they were destined to be their greatest foes, the Chumaia 
abandoned their ancient hostility to the Pomo, and sought to enlist them in 
a common crusade against the newly-come and more formidable enemy. 
At one time a band of them passed the boundary-line in the defile, came 
over to the Pomo of Potter Valley, and with presents and many fair words 
and promises of eternal friendship, and with speeches of flaming, barbarian 
eloquence and fierce denunciation of the bloody-minded intruders who 
sacrificed everything to their sordid hankering for gold, tried to kindle 
these ‘‘tame villatic fowl” to the pitch of battle. But the Pomo held their 
peace, and after the Chumaia were gone their ways they hastened to the 
whites and divulged the matter, telling them all that the Chumaia were 
hoping and plotting. So the Americans resolved to nip the sprouting mis- 
chief m the bud, and fitting out a company of choice fighters went over 
on Kel River, feil upon the Chumaia, and hunted them over mountains 
and through canons with sore destruction. The battle everywhere went 
against the savages, though they fought heroically, falling back from vil- 
lage to village, from gloomy gorge to gorge, disputing all the soil with 
their traditional valor, and sealing with ruddy drops of blood the pos- 
sessory title-deeds to it they had received from nature. 
But of course they could not stand against the scientific weapons, 
the fierce and unresting energy, and the dauntless bravery of the whites, 
and with sad and bitter hearts they saw themselves falling one by one, 
by dozens, by scores, fast going out of existence, all their bravest drop- 
ping around them. The smoke of burning villages and forests black- 
ened the sky at noon-day, and at night the flames snapped their yellow 
tongues in the face of the moon, while the wails of dying women and 
helpless babes, brained against a: tree, burdened the air. 
At last a band of thirty or forty—that was as near the number as 
my informant could state—became separated from their comrades, and 
found themselves fiercely pursued. Hemmed in on one side, headed off 
on another, half-crazed by sleepless nights and days of terror, the fleeing 
