ORIGIN OF LIGHT—THE MISALLA MAGUN. 185 
in darkness, thick and profound. All the animals ran to*and fro in dire 
confusion; the birds of the air flew wildly aloft, then dashed themselves 
with violence upon the ground, not knowing whither to steer their course. 
By an accident of this kind the coyote and the hawk happened to thrust 
their noses together one day, and they took counsel how they might remedy 
this sore evil. The coyote groped his way into a swamp and gathered a 
quantity of dry tules which he rolled into a large ball. This he gave to 
the hawk, with some flints, and sent him up into heaven with it, where he 
touched it off and sent it whirling around the earth. This was the sun. 
The moon was made the same way, only the tules happened to be damp 
and did not burn so well. 
THE MI-SAL’-LA MA-GUN’. 
This branch of the nation was named after a famous chief they once 
had. A Gallinomero told me the name was a corruption of mi-sal'-la-a'-ko, 
which denotes “long snake”. Another form for the name is Mu-sal-la-ktin’. 
Resembling the Gallinomero so closely, they require only a few para- 
graphs. They and the Kai-me’ occupy both banks of Russian River from 
Cloverdale down to the territory of the Rincons (Wappos), about Geyser- 
ville. 
Like all California Indians they are very hospitable and sociable, and 
are continually inventing pretexts for one of their simple dances. When 
their friends of a neighboring village come to visit them, straightway they 
must have a dance of welcome. Men and women form in two circles, the 
women on the outside. The chorister climbs up in a tree or mounts a rude 
kind of rostrum, with a crooked twig in his hand for a baton. Perhaps two 
or three others get up with him, each with two or three or four wooden 
whistles in his mouth, on which they blow intensely monotonous blasts, 
while the dancers leap up and down and chant lively as a grig. 
The Misalla Magiin occasionally commit infanticide to this day, for 
they say they do not wish to rear any more children among the whites. 
There seems to have fallen on them a great and bitter despair, so far as 
their natures are capable of entertaining any profound emotion; they see 
themselves slowly and surely throttled by the white man with his busy 
