234 THE WINTUN. 
he construets a booth out over the water, but it is not nearly so ingenious 
and pretty a structure as those on the Klamath. His spear is very long 
and slender, often fifteen feet in length, with a joint of deer’s bone at the 
end about three inches long, fashioned with a socket to fit on to the main 
spear-shaft, to which it is also fastened by a string tied around its middle. 
The Indian aims to drive this movable joint quite through the fish, where- 
upon it comes loose, turns crossways, and thus holds the fish securely, 
flouncing at the end of the string. The construction of this spear shows a 
good knowledge of the gamy, resolute salmon; the string at the end allows 
him to play and exhaust himself, while a stiff spear would be broken or 
wrenched out of him. <A party of six Indians on McCloud’s Fork speared 
over 500 in one night, which would at a moderate calculation give 500 
pounds to each spearman. In view of this, although an exceptional case, 
who can doubt that the ancient population of California may have been 
very great? 
Vhen the fisherman is done in the morning he lays his fish head to 
tail alternately, from the largest down to the smallest, runs two sharp twigs 
through them, takes them on his back like a great mantle—the longest 
overlapping his shoulders at both sides, the shortest dangling at his heels 
perhaps—bows forward under his heavy burden, and goes off with the 
point of his spear cutting strange hieroglyphies in the sand far behind him. 
To his credit be it recorded he frequently also performs the work of disem- 
boweling the salmon and hanging them on the bushes to dry instead of 
compelling his squaw to do it. I have seen a bushel basketful of salmon 
roe inacamp. This isthe highest luxury the Indian mind can conceive of. 
Manzanita berries are of two kinds. The kind they use are prepared 
in three ways. They are gathered when very dry and floury, and then a 
squaw puts a quantity into a basket, sits down on the ground before it and puts 
her legs on top of the basket to steady it, then beats them with a stone 
pestle. The beaten mass is put on a round mat in small quantities at a 
time and the mat inclined in various directions to allow the seeds to roll off. 
The flour thus obtained is cooked m a basket or a little sand-pool with hot 
stones, and yields a panada which is sweet and nourishing, or a thinner por- 
ridge which is eaten with the shagey knob of a deer’s tail. In the hot 
