168 THE YOKAIA, ETC. 
THE SE-NEL’. 
The Se-nel’, together with three other petty tribes, mere villages, occupy 
that broad expansion of Russian River Valley, on one side of which now 
stands the American village of Sanel. Among them we find unmistakably 
developed that patriarchal system which appears to prevail all along Rus- 
sian River. They construct immense dome-shaped or oblong lodges of 
willow poles an inch or two in diameter, woven in square lattice-work, 
securely lashed and thatched. In each one of these live several families, 
sometimes twenty or thirty persons, including all who are blood relations. 
Each wigwam therefore is a pueblo, a law unto itself. And yet these 
lodges are grouped in villages, some of which formerly contained hundreds 
of inhabitants, and one of which will presently be described. 
During the dry season they abandon these huge wigwams entirely, 
and live in booths close by the river side, in the cool shadows of the willows, 
where they can almost dip up the salmon-trout and the skeggers, as they lie 
on their leafy couches. Here in the damp silt they have nowadays patches 
of maize, with a few squashes, beans, and melons, where they can sling 
water over them from the shrunken river with their hands or baskets, if there 
is need of irrigation. But, like little children, they generally eat the melons 
prematurely, and the squashes unwholesomely green, the latter being roasted 
whole. When the rainy season sets in they return to the wigwams, though 
they generally burn the old ones to destroy the vermin, and construct new 
ones. 
Just opposite the American village of Sanel, on the east side of the 
river, are the ruins of an old Indian town which was once probably more 
populous than its civilized suecessor will ever become. I wandered over it 
one day, traced out its streets and the sites of its barbaric temples (assembly- 
houses), sketched it, and endeavored to form some estimate of its ancient 
population. ‘The streets were quite straight, and each wigwam formed a 
block, the sites of them being plainly discernible by the hollows which 
were rounded: out. Owing to their custom of burning old wigwams occa- 
sionally, it is not easy to determine what the population was, since the 
largest limits of the town may never have been occupied at once, part being 
built upon and part being in ashes. The assembly-houses are the best 
