A THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE. , 179 
and secreted themselves in the bushes. To this day they do not eat the 
flesh of a horse, though they will ride that noble animal even unto death 
if they can possess themselves of one. There are many old Indians, how- 
ever, especially squaws, whom the younger ones will never succeed to the 
day of their death in inducing to bestride a horse. They will lug all the 
baggage they can possibly go under, and fall far behind in the march, 
coming into camp only after nightfall, or perhaps not arriving until the 
mounted party are ready to start on next morning, rather than mount the 
animal which caused them such a precious fright thirty or forty years ago. 
There is one very curious exhibition—a kind of pantomime or rude 
theatrical performance—which deserves a somewhat minute description, as 
it does not generally prevail among the California Indians. They give it 
no other name but k0o-ha, which signifies simply “dance”, although they 
translate it into Spanish by “fandango”; but I will call it by way of dis- 
tinction, the spear dance. It might also be called the coward’s dance, for 
it seems to be intended as a kind of take-off on the greatest coward in the 
tribe, much on the same principle that a wooden spoon is presented to the 
ugliest man in Yale. 
First they all unite, men and squaws together, in a pleasant dance, 
accompanied by a chant, while a chorister keeps time by beating on his 
hand with a split stick. In addition to their finest deer-skin chemises and 
strings of beads, the squaws wear large puffs of yellow-hammers’ down over 
their eyes. The men have mantles of buzzards’, hawks’, or eagles’ tail- 
feathers, reaching from the arm-pits down to the thighs, and circular head- 
dresses of the same material, besides their usual breech-clouts of rawhide, 
and ave painted in front with terrific splendor. They dance in two circles, 
the squaws in the outside one; the men leaping up and down as usual, and 
the squaws simply swaying their bodies and waving their handkerchiefs in 
a lackadaisical manner. Occasionally an Indian will shoot away through 
the interior of the circle, and caper like a harlequin for a considerable space 
of time, but he always returns to his place in front of his partner. 
After this is over, the coward or clown is provided with a long, sharp 
stick, and he and his prompter take their places in the ring ready for per- 
formances. A woman as nearly nude as barbaric modesty will permit is 
