388 THE YOKUTS. 
had toiled for months, perhaps for years, circled and furred with hundreds 
of little quail-plumes, bespangled, scalloped, festooned, and embroidered 
with beadery until there was scarcely place for the handling; plumes, 
shawls, ete. Kolomusnim had a pretty plume of metallic-glistening ravens’ 
feathers in his hand. But the most remarkable article was a great plume, 
nearly six feet long, shaped like a parasol slightly opened, mostly of ravens’ 
feathers, but containing rare and brilliant plumage from many birds of the 
forest, topped with a smaller plume or kind of coronet, and lavishly bedecked 
through all its length with bulbs, shell-clusters, cirelets of feathers, dangling 
festoons—a magnificent bauble, towering far above all, with its glittering 
spangles and nodding plume 6n plume contrasting so strangely with the 
tattered and howling savages over whom it gorgeously swayed and flaunted. 
Another woman had an image, rudely constructed of shawls and clothing, 
to represent the dead woman, sister to Kolomusnim. 
The beholding of all these things, some of which had belonged to the 
departed, and the strong contagion of human sorrow, wrought the Indians 
into a frenzy. Wildly they leaped and wailed; some flung themselves upon 
the earth and beat their breasts. There were constant exhortations to grief. 
Sloknich, sitting on the ground, poured forth burning and piercing words: 
“We have all one heart. All our hearts bleed with yours. Our eyes weep 
tears like a living spring. O, think of the poor, dead woman in the grave.” 
Kolomusnim, a savage of a majestic presence, bating his garb, though a 
hesitating orator, was so broken with grief that his few sobbing words 
moved the listeners like a funeral knell. Beholding now and then a special 
friend in the circle, he would run and fall upon his knees before him, bow 
down his head to the earth, and give way to uncontrollable sorrow. Others 
of the mourners would do the same, presenting to the friend’s gaze some 
object which had belonged to the lamented woman. ‘The friend, if a man, 
would pour forth long condolences; if a woman, she would receive the 
mourner’s head in her hands, tenderly stroke down her hair, and unite her 
tears and lamentations with her’s. Many an eye, both of men and women, 
both of mourners and strangers, glistened in the flickering fire-light with 
copious and genuine tears. 
