322 THE NISHINAM. 
sticks thrown into his wigwam, and the creditor does not resort to the meas- 
ure except in case of a hard customer. 
That their treatment of superannuated parents is not remarkable for 
tenderness may be gathered from the following fact: In 1858 there was an 
immense concourse of them at a place called Spenceville, some coming even 
from the Coast Range, the purpose of all being, as was then supposed, a 
concerted attack on the whites. Preparatory to this gathering and what 
should follow it, numbers of them put to death the aged and decrepit 
of their camps who would have been an incumbrance, though it was said 
this was done at the instance of many of the victims themselves. 
Being so nomadic in their habits, they have brought the savage field- 
commissary to perfection. They discovered the substantial principle of the 
famous Prussian pea-sausage long before the Pickelhauben did. When 
about to go on a journey the squaws pack in their deep, conical baskets a 
quantity of acorn-mush, made by processes heretofore described, which is 
food in as condensed a form as they could make it without scientific ap- 
pliances. They generally start from camp late in the morning, an hour or 
two by sun (the Californians are poor travelers), and rest once or twice 
during the forenoon, always by a spring. Taking out some of this panada 
they dilute it with large additions of water, making a cool, thick, rich 
porridge, which they drink from small baskets. In this manner a squaw 
will carry enough to last two persons nearly or quite a fortnight, and that 
while they are dancing—the hardest work an Indian does—nor will her 
burden exceed thirty pounds. About 11 o’clock they call a halt for the 
heat of the day, then they do not break camp again until 2, 3, or even 4 
o'clock, but when started march until night-fall or long after. 
As it was from the Nishinam that Captain John A. Sutter procured 
most of his laborers, I wish here to make mention of a matter which falls 
properly within the scope of this narrative. It is related by several men 
who came here in 1849 and subsequently (there is to this day frequently a 
slight pique between the ante forty-niners and the forty-niners, the land 
pioneers and the gold pioneers) that the captain was accustomed in clover- 
time to compel his “slaves”, as they call them, to go out into the clover- 
field for their rations. In view of the amount of labor they performed for 
