272 THE ACHOMAWI. 
The squaws spend a good deal of time in visiting each other, when the 
conversation runs on their youngest children, on how many strings of shells 
Hal-o’-mai-chi paid Sdem’-el-di for his daughter, on the last dance they, the 
squaws, had around the bloody head of a Modok, &e. 
The language of Pit River is so hopelessly consonantal, harsh, and 
sesquipedalian, so utterly unlike the sweet and simple languages of the Sacra- 
mento, that to reduce it to writing one must linger for weeks, and cause the 
Indians to repeat the words many times. The reader may wonder at this, 
but I have only to say let him make the experiment. . The personal pro- 
nouns show it to be a true Digger Indian tongue. 
A mixed custom prevails as to the disposition of the dead. William 
Burgett affirms that they burn only those bodies which died of an unknown 
disease, as a sanitary measure, burying all others in a sitting posture; but 
this imputes to them more philosophy and more freedom from superstition 
than they are entitled to, I opine. One fact is peculiar: the Ilmawi never 
have burned their dead at any time in their history, though belonging to a 
nation that did. It is probable that in the other tribes cremation prevailed 
almost exclusively before the Americans arrived. They believe that the 
spirits of the departed walk the earth and behold the conduct of the living; 
a belief common in Oregon, but not, as I am aware, in California. The 
good reach the Happy Western Land quickly; the wicked go out on the 
same road, but walk forever and never reach it. To walk forever—per- 
petual motion!—could anything be a fitter painting of hell to the indolent 
California Indian ? 
_ Some years ago an aged chief related to a settler on Fall River an an- 
cient tradition respecting an extraordinary phenomenon which once occurred 
on Pit River. All the atmosphere was filled with ashes so that the heavens 
were darkened and the sun blotted out, and the Indians wept with fear 
and trembling, as they who stand before death. he birds of the air were 
stilled, and all the sweet voices of nature were hushed. This phenomenon 
continued for days, insomuch that some of the Indians attempted to find 
their way out to another country by creeping along the ground, in hope of 
beholding the sun once more. After they had crept on their knees for many 
