160 ' THE POMO. 
A rattlesnake was captured some days beforehand, its fangs were plucked 
out, and it was handled, stroked, fed, and tamed, so that it could be dis- 
played with safety. The venerable, white-haired peace-chief now takes his 
station before the multitude, within the great assembly-house, with the rattle- 
snake before him as the visible incarnation of the dreadful Yukukula. 
Slowly and sonorously he begins, speaking to them of morality and femi- 
nine obedience. Then warming with his subject, and brandishing the horrid 
reptile in his hand full in the faces and over the heads of his shuddering 
auditors, with solemn and awful voice he warns them to beware, and 
threatens them with the dire wrath of Yukukula if they do not live lives of 
chastity, industry, and obedience, until some of the terrified squaws shriek 
aloud and fall swooning upon the ground. 
Having sucha pother as they do with their own women to keep them 
in a proper mood of humbleness, the Pomo make it a special point to 
slaughter those of their enemies when the chances of battle give them an 
opportunity. They do this because, as they argue with the greatest sin- 
cerity, one woman destroyed is tantamount to five men killed. How dif- 
ferent this from the treatment of their women by the old German barba- 
rians, as deseribed by Tacitus. 
In another direction however, the women exercise some authority. 
When an Indian becomes too infirm to serve any longer as a warrior or . 
hunter, he is thenceforth condemned to the life of a menial and a scullion. 
He is compelled to assist the squaws in all their labors—in picking acorns 
and berries, in threshing out seeds and wild oats, making bread, drying 
salmon, ete. As the women have entire control of these matters without in- 
terference from their lords, these superannuated warriors come entirely under 
their authority as much as children, and are obliged to obey their com- 
mands implicitly. We may well imagine that the squaws, in revenge for 
the ignoble and terrorizing surveillance to which they are subjected by the 
braves, not unfrequently domineer over these poor old nonagenarians with 
hardness, and make them feel their humiliation keenly. 
Cronise, in his “Natural Wealth of California ”, makes mention of an 
ancient tradition to the effect that when the Spaniards first arrived in Cali- 
fornia, they found a tribe in what is now Mendocino county, in which the 
