250 THE SHASTIKA. 
the scarred and arrow-pierced body of the warrior fallen on the battle-field 
within the enemy’s country, as well as that of the captive maid who had 
yielded up her life heneath some white man’s roof beyond the mountains, 
was first reduced to ashes, which were carefully gathered up and borne 
home to rest in the ancient patrimony of the Shastika. But when one dies 
at home he is buried, generally not in a grave, but upon a hill-top, or on 
some bold promontory overlooking the village, where the body is covered 
with a cairn of stones. This seems to he dictated by the idea so prevalent 
in California that if the body is buried in the earth the soul cannot escape 
from it. 
This tribe have no clover, pine-nut, or acorn dances, and the like 
merry-makings. There is a “doctor dance” held nearly every night, but 
what it is I could not clearly discover; probably a combination of dancing, 
singing, and jugglery. The puberty dance is observed, and the maiden is 
compelled to fast quite rigorously, being obliged to abstain from animal 
food ten or twelve days. 
Their language is a difficult one, many of the words being polysyllabie 
and harsh. A great many of the verbs assume a different radical in forming 
the oblique tenses, and in the imperative. The pronoun is agglutinated to 
the noun, and one substantive to another to form the genitive case. Aggluti- 
nation prevails extensively, complicating the already forbidding language. 
The numerals in Scott Valley are as below: 
| | 
| | 
One. cha-mo. | Six. cho-wé-ta. 
| Two. | hu-ka. | Seven. | ho-ké-da. | 
| Three. | hats’-ki. | Eight. | hats-ki-wé-da. | 
| Four. | id-i-hoi’-a. | Nine. cham-i-dakh’-i-wa. | 
| 1 | / | mon | , 
| Five. | etch’-a. | Ten. etch-¢-weh. 
They speak of a Great Man (Yu-ma-chuh), but his attributes are of a 
negative sort, as usual, for the world was created by the Old Mole (7d’-7-dok), 
a huge animal that heaved creation into existence by burrowing underneath 
somewhere. A long time ago there was a fire-stone in the distant east, 
white and glistening like the purest crystal, and the coyote journeyed east, 
