318 THE NISHINAM. 
bring along a brace of hare or a ham of grizzly-bear meat, or some fish, or 
a string of ha’-wok. He continues to make these presents for awhile, and 
if he is not acceptable to the girl and her parents they return him an 
equivalent for each present (to return his gifts would be grossly insulting; ) 
but if he finds favor in their eyes they are quietly appropriated; and in 
due course of time he comes and leads her away, or comes to live at her 
house, for both practices prevail. é 
When a Nishinam wife is childless her sympathizing female friends 
sometimes make out of grass a rude image of a baby, and tie it in a minia- 
ture baby-basket, according to the Indian custom. Some day, when the 
woman and her husband are not at home, they carry this grass baby and 
lay it in their wigwam. When she returns and finds it, she takes it up, 
holds it to her breast, pretends to nurse it, and sings it lullaby-songs. 
All this is done as a kind of conjuration, which they hope will have the 
effect of causing the barren woman to become fertile. 
T will relate an incident which shows the despotic and arbitrary power 
that a husband, even before marriage, exercises. A man living on Wolf 
Creek, a tributary of Bear River, had performed the simple acts which 
entitled him to his wife, and the day had arrived when he determined to 
bring her home. But she loathed him, and when she saw him coming she 
fled from her father’s wigwam and sought refuge, trembling and weeping, 
with a motherly old widow who sympathized with her. The widow con- 
cealed her as well as she could, then hastened out to confront her pursuers. 
When they came up she told them the girl had passed that way and escaped 
from the village. They hurried on in pursuit, but returned after a long 
search, baffled and angry, and asked the widow’s little girl if she knew 
where the fugitive was. he child innocently told them she was hidden in 
her mother’s wigwam. As soon as they had dragged her forth, they drew 
their bows and arrows and shot the widow to death in the middle of the 
village. They were not molested, for the general feeling was that the 
bridegroom owned the girl, and that the widow in concealing her was guilty 
of kidnapping, for which the penalty is death. 
The Nishinam are the most nomadic of all the California tribes within 
narrow bounds. They shift their lodges perpetually, if only a rod, prob- 
