194 THE GUALALA. 
ordinary dances there comes rushing upon the scene an ugly apparition in 
the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back reaching from 
the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs 
with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched 
out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutered in 
this harlequin rig he dashes at the squaws, capering, dancing, whooping ; 
and they and the children flee for life, keeping several hundred yards 
between him and themselves. If they are so unfortunate as to touch even 
his stick all their children will perish out of hand. 
The object of this piece of gratuitous foolery seems to be, as among 
most of the Pomo tribes, merely to exhibit to the squaws the power of their 
lords over the infernal regions and its denizens, and thereby remind them 
forcibly of the necessity of obedience. 
Their fashion of the spear dance is different from the Gallinomero. 
The man who is to be slain stands behind a screen of hazel boughs with his 
face visible through an aperture; and the spearman, after the usual pro- 
tracted dashing about and making of feints, strikes him in the face through 
the hole in the screen. He is then carried off, revives, ete. 
The Gualala say the world was made by the Great Man above assisted 
by the Old Owl; here we doubtless have a Russian graft on their aborigi- 
nal belief. The lower animals were created first; man and woman after. 
Around Fort Ross there is a fragment of the tribe called by the Gua- 
lala, E-rus’-si; which name is probably another relic of the Russian occu- 
pation. 
THE E-RI’-0. 
Such is the name given by the Spaniards to the tribe living at the 
mouth of Russian River. Both they and the Gualala have more affinity 
with the Pomo in language than with the Gallinomero, though a Potter 
Valley Pomo must associate with them a few weeks before he can under- 
stand them readily. 
They practice cremation and give a reason for it which I had not heard 
before, that is, if the dead are not burned they will become grizzly bears. 
Probably some such reason prevails everywhere, though they are extremely , 
loth to give any reason. Hence cremation is an act of religion, of redemp- 
tion, of salvation, which it were a heinous impiety to the dead to pretermit. 
