WOMAN’S RIGHTS—VENDETTAS. ; 249 
Not only do the women go to war if they will, perform most of the 
labor, and practice medicine, but they own property in certain instances. 
A widow retains all the baskets and trinkets made by herself, and if she 
subsequently acquires a pony or two it is against the traditions of the tribe 
that they should be wrested from her. But money may be taken from her 
by any male relative, and if he has not the manliness to do it openly he 
may steal it, and it is accounted no crime to him. 
One reason why the Shastika have hastened so rapidly toward extinc- 
tion is the murderous ferocity with which feuds have always been prosecuted 
between the Scott and Shasta Valley sections. An assassination never rested 
long in either valley; it was bandied to and fro like a shuttlecock. As 
many as fifteen Indians have been known to be slaughtered in a year as 
the result of a single family vendetta. 
Sweating and cold plunge-baths are less employed as remedial agencies 
than among the California tribes. This is a natural consequence of their 
colder climate and their more cumbrous dress. There is a class of priests 
or rain-makers, who have an occult language not understood by the com- 
mon Indians. 
One thing is especially noticeable of the Shastika, as it is more or less 
throughout California, and that is their strong yearning to live, die, and be 
buried in the home of their fathers. If an Indian is overtaken by sudden 
death away from his native valley, and must needs close his eyes far from 
home and kindred, the prayer which he breathes with his dying breath to 
his comrades is a passionate adjuration to them not to let his body molder 
and his spirit wander houseless, friendless, and_alone in a strange country. 
He conjures them by all that is good and pleasant in this life, by all the 
mournful tenderness which is due to the awed and shuddering soul that is 
going down to the grave, by all the solemn obsequies that are owed to the 
unreturning dead, and as they themselves hope for like consolations when 
growing faint, and weak, and dim-eyed in the shadows of death, and for 
like common humanity at the hands of their tribe when all is ended, not 
to suffer alien hands to bring indignity upon his helpless corpse, and alien 
earth to press upon his stilled and silent lips. This request is religiously 
observed. As they anciently had no efficient means of transportation, so 
