FANDANGOES—MOURNING THE DEAD. SDD 
men and women together—a position of equality not often accorded to the 
weaker sex. They generally have to dance by themselves in an outside 
circle, each woman behind her lord. _ Besides this fixed anniversary there 
are many occasional fandangoes, for feasting and amusement. They resem- 
ble a civilized ball somewhat, inasmuch as the young men of the village 
giving the entertainment contribute a sum of money wherewith to procure 
a great quantity of hare, wild-fowl, acorns, sweet roots, and other deli- 
cacies (nowadays generally a bullock, sheep, flour, fruit, ete.). Then they 
select a sunny glade, far within some sequestered forest where they will not 
be disturbed by intruders, and plant green branches in the ground, forming 
a large circle. Grass and pine-straw are scattered within to form at once 
a divan and a dancing-floor. _Here the invited villagers collect and spend 
frequently a week; gambling, feasting, and sleeping in the breezy shade by 
day, and by night dancing to lively tunes, with execrable and most indus- 
trious music, and wild, dithyrambic crooning of chants, and indescribable 
dances, now sweeping around in a ring beneath the overhanging pine- 
boughs, and now stationary, with plumes nodding and beadery jingling. 
It is wonderful what a world of riotous enjoyment the California Indians 
will compress into the space of a week. 
They observe no puberty dance, neither does any other tribe south of 
Chico. 
There is no observance of the dance for the dead, but an annual 
mourning (nit'-yw) instead; and occasionally, in the case of a high per- 
sonage, a special mourning, set by appointment a few months after his 
death. One or more villages assemble together in the evening, seat them- 
selves on the ground in a circle, and engage in loud and demonstrative 
wailing, beating themselves and tearing their hair. The squaws wander 
off into the forest wringing their arms piteously, beating the air, with eyes 
upturned, and adjuring the departed one, whom they tenderly call ‘‘dear 
child”, or ‘dear cousin” (whether a relative or not), to return. Sometimes, 
during a kind of trance or frenzy of sorrow, a squaw will dance three or 
four hours in the same place without cessation, crooning all the while, until 
she falls in a dead faint. Others, with arms interlocked, pace to and fro in 
