AN INDIAN BARBECUE—AN ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION. 205 
race than the Russian River tribes, being tall and stalwart, often of a noble 
physical mould, weighing not unfrequently 180 to 200 pounds. They have 
a quicker apprehension, readier imitation, and a brighter intelligence than 
their neighbors on the river, and they are as brave as the Wappo. They 
are less dependent on the whites, more frequently cultivate their own 
patches of ground, or hire out for a wage. Not long ago they held a bar- 
becue whereat an ox and several sheep were roasted whole, and white 
spectators affirm that they ate there as fine pastry, puddings, and roast beef, 
all prepared by Indian women, as they ever saw at an American party; and 
that the tables were laid with the cleanest of linen and a full service of 
crockery. Better than all, the leading Indians banished strong drinks from 
the place, and formed a police force from their own numbers to preserve 
order. Whenever a drunken or disorderly fellow intruded on the premises, 
these officials arrested him at once, carried him out bound hand and foot, 
and laid him carefully away behind the bushes to cool off. 
In the spring of 1872, on the occasion of a great festival to be described 
shortly, the Kabinapek dispatched a commission who traveled two or three 
months among the surrounding tribes examining different styles of assem- 
bly-house architecture. On their return they reported voluminously in a 
council, and it was voted to build the new assembly-house on a model 
different from anything previously seen on Clear Lake. Instead of con- 
structing it in the shape of a blunt cone, only three or four feet excavated in 
the ground, they dug a circular cellar ten or twelve feet deep, timbered it up 
around the sides, and roofed it over nearly flat and level with the earth. It 
is common to say that the California Indians never change any of their 
customs except at the instance of the Americans. Whether this style of 
assembly-house was any improvement or not, I do not know; but it was 
wholly novel and of their own contriving. 
They take three kinds of fish, mostly in the creeks in the spawning 
season, for they fish comparatively little in the lake. The lake whitefish 
furnishes by far the greatest proportion of the catch. In the spring they 
ascend the creeks in such vast numbers that the Indians, by simply throw- 
ing in a little brushwood to impede their motion, can literally scoop them 
out. In 1872 there was a remarkable run. I arrived in the valley too late 
