276 THE NOZI, ETC. 
rather undersized, even for California Indians, and are quite a delicate, 
small limbed, handsome race. With their hazel complexions; smooth, 
polished skins; smallish, ovoid faces; and lithe, well-knit frames, they 
present a race-type different from any other to be seen in California. 
Pwi-es’-si, the present chief, a very polite, innocent little man, who had 
never been away from Oak Run in his life, as he stood in the hay-field at 
the head of his mowers, in his neat, well-fitting garments, leaning in a 
picturesque attitude on his scythe, presented a very pleasing view. His 
eye was soft and gentle, his voice was mild, his manners much more refined 
than is the wont of the hay-field, so that he seemed the farthest possible 
remove from his warlike progenitors whom the pioneers describe. 
As the stature of the Nozi is short at best, so the children are slow in 
attaining it. They often remain mere dwarfs until they are ten or fifteen 
years old, when they start and shoot up suddenly eighteen inches or so. 
They have a reputation for honesty above their neighbors. A ranch- 
man states that he has frequently known them to bring in strayed cattle on 
their own motion. They adapted themselves early to the necessities of 
labor and the usages of civilization. Many years ago—so early in the 
history of the State that they were obliged to content themselves, master 
and man, with the primitive repast of boiled wheat and beef—John Love 
sometimes had a hundred Nozi in his employment at once; and they 
labored faithfully, as they do to-day. 
As the Nozi were so early civilized, and are so nearly extinct, it is not 
easy to learn much concerning’ their aboriginal usages. ‘The principal 
interest attaching to them is the question of their origin. There is an 
ancient tradition, related by themselves to Major Reading many years ago, 
that their ancestors came from a country very far toward the rising sun. 
They journeyed a great many moons, crossing forests, prairies, mountains, 
plains, deserts, and rivers so great, according to their description, that they 
could have been found nowhere except in the interior of the continent. 
At length they came to a delightful land and to a timid’and feeble folk, where 
they conquered for themselves a dwelling-place, and rested therein. The 
narrator of this story states that Major Reading once showed him an old 
flint-lock musket which he had found in possession of the Nozi, and which 
