GATHERING SEEDS—PREPARING ACORNS. 187 
which evinced in its fabric and ornamentation quite an elegant taste and an 
incredible patience. It was of the shape common for this species of basket— 
that of a flat, round squash, to use a homely comparison—woven water- 
tight of fine willow twigs. All over the outside of it the down of wood- 
peckers’ scalps was woven in, forming a crimson nap which was variegated 
with a great number of hanging loops of strung beads and rude outlines of 
pine trees, webbed with black sprigs into the general texture. Around the 
edge of the rim was an upright row of little black quail’s plumes gayly 
nodding. There were eighty of these plumes, which would have required 
the capture of that number of quails, and it must have taken at least one 
hundred and fifty woodpeckers to furnish the nap on the outside. The 
squaw was engaged three years in making it, working at intervals, and 
valued it at $25. No American would collect the materials and make it for 
four times the money. 
Charles Hopps, a veteran pioneer, told me that such richly-ornamented 
baskets were quite frequent among the California Indians, but the Ameri- 
cans were seldom permitted to see them. 
These Indians make considerable account of the wild oats growing so 
abundantly in California, which they gather and prepare in the following 
manner: The harvester swings a large, deep, conical basket under his left 
arm, and holds in his right hand a smaller one furnished with a suitable 
handle. When the oats are dead ripe they shatter out easily, and he has 
only to sweep the small basket through the heads in a semicircle, bringing it 
around to the larger one, into which he discharges the contents at every stroke. 
When the hamper is full he empties it in a convenient place, and the squaws 
proceed to hull the grain. They place a quantity in a basket, moisten it 
slightly, then churn and stir the mass with sticks which causes the chaff to 
accumulate on the surface, when they burn it off by passing firebrands over 
it. This process is repeated until the grain is tolerably clean. 
They then beat it into flour with stones, and roast it for pinole or man- 
ufacture it into bread ; and the latter article is said by those who have eaten 
it to be quite palatable and nutritious. 
Like all their brethren they are also very fond of acorns, and the old 
Indians still cling tenaciously to them in preference to the finest wheaten 
