CHAPTER XVI. 
THE POMO. 
Under this name are included a great number of tribes or little bands— 
sometimes one in a valley, sometimes more—clustered in the region where 
the head-waters of the Eel and Russian Rivers interlace, along the latter and 
around the estuaries of the coast. Below Calpello they do not call themselves 
Pomo, but their languages include them in this large family. There are 
many dialectic variations as one goes along. An Indian may start from 
Potter Valley, which may be considered the nucleus and starting-point of 
the family, and go over a low range of mountains, ten miles or so, and 
find himself greatly at fault in attempting to converse; ten miles farther, 
and he would find himself still more at sea, so rapidly does the language 
shade away from valley to valley, from dialect to dialect. Yet the vocabu- 
laries printed in the appendix show that they spring from one language, 
as do English and Italian from Sanskrit; and in fact any Indian living on 
Russian River can learn to speak any dialect spoken anywhere along its 
banks much sooner than an American can learn to speak Italian, although, 
in proportion to his whole vocabulary, he may have to learn outright more 
words of a totally different root than the American would. 
In disposition the Pomo are much different from the Yuki and their 
congeners, being simple, friendly, peaceable, and inoffensive. They are 
also much less cunning and avaricious, and less quickly imitative of the 
whites than the lively tribes on the Klamath, to whom they are inferior in 
intellect. As to their physique, there prevails on Russian River essentially 
the same type as that seen in the Sacramento Valley, which will be described 
elsewhere. 
Like all California tribes, they have a certain conception of a Supreme 
Being, whom they call the Great Man or the Great Chief; but I am satis- 
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