348 THE MIWOK. 
custom of walking single file. These rudely-inquisitive greetings areheard 
only when two Indians meet abroad. At home the stranger is received 
in silence. 
Some of the idioms are curiously characteristic of that peint-no-point 
way of talking which savages have in common with children: Thus, hai’-em 
is “near”, and hai’-et-kem is also “near”, but not quite so near; and kotun 
isa “long way off”, though that may be only on the epposite bank of the 
river. Chu'-tois “good”; chu-to-si-ke’ is “very good”, the only compara- 
tive expression there is. 
While this is undoubtedly the largest, it is also probably the lowest na- 
tion in California, and it presents one of the most hopeless and saddening 
spectacles of heathen races. ‘According to their own confession, in primitive 
times both sexes and all ages went absolutely naked. All of them north of 
the Stanilaus, and probably many south also, not only married cousins, but 
herded together so promiscuously in their wigwams that not a few white 
men believe and assert to this day the monstrous proposition that sisters 
were often taken for wives. But this is unqualifiedly false. The Indians 
all deny it emphatically, and not one of their accusers could produce an in- 
stance, having been deceived into the belief by the general circumstance 
above mentioned. 
They eat all creatures that swim in the waters, all that fly through the 
air, and all that creep, crawl, or walk upon the earth, with a dozen or so 
exceptions. They have the most degraded and superstitious beliefs.in wood- 
spirits, who produce those disastrous conflagrations to which California is 
subject; in water-spirits, who inhabit the rivers, consume the fish ; and in 
fetichistic spirits, who assume the forms of owls and other birds, to render 
their lives a terror by night and by day. 
In oceasional specimens of noble physical stature they were not lack- 
ing, especially in Yosemite and the other mountain valleys; but the utter 
weakness, puerility, and imbecility of their conceptions, and the unspeaka- 
ble obscenity of some of their legends, almost surpass belief. 
But the saddest and gloomiest thing connected with the Miwok is 
the fact that many of them, probably a majority of all who have any 
well-defined ideas whatever.on the subject, believe in the annihilation of 
