CHAPTER XX. 
THE GUA-LA-LA. 
This tribe is closely related to the Gallinomero, both belonging to the 
ereat Pomo family, and they understand each other with very little difh- 
culty. They are separated, however, by the low coast-mountains, a range 
about twenty-five miles in width, as the Gualala live on the creek called by 
their name, which empties into the Pacific in the northwest corner of Sonoma 
County. Fort Ross, on the coast, is the seat of the old Russian Mission and 
colony for the supply of Sitka; and here to-day within the line of the 
stockade is the quaint old Greek chapel with its bell-tower from which on 
Sunday rang out the imperious summons to prayers, for stern was the rule 
of the Russian commandant. It is pretty well summed up in the saying, 
““Go to church and say your prayers, or stay at home and take your dozen”. 
Though these mongrel Russians have long since hoisted anchor and sailed, 
and sailed, farther up the coast, until they quitted the continent altogether 
a few years ago, and the Aleuts have gone in their baidarkas, and the 
neophytes alone remain, debauched and dwindled by this pseudo-civiliza- 
tion and this religion which was taught to them with the cat-tail and the 
knout, there still remain traces of the Russian occupation among them. 
After the rigorous rule of the Ivans, they are if possible a little more indolent 
and a little more worthless than those who were subject to the Spaniards. 
To this day they use the Russian word for ‘“milk”—malako—which they 
have corrupted into meluko; and they sometimes use the Russian for “gun”, 
which is sooshyo. But the grim Northmen have not left so many traces of 
their physiognomy as did the Spaniards. 
They construct their conical wigwams principally with slabs of red- 
wood bark. I saw in the possession of a Gualala squaw a fancy work-basket, 
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