402 GENERAL FACTS. 
even the Canton Chinaman, who comes from a hot climate but wants an 
umbrella over his head. The valley Indians are more willing to labor and 
more moral now than the mountain Indians, because the latter have better 
opportunities to hunt game and can pick up small change and old clothes 
about the mining towns. 
There is a common belief among the prejudiced and ignorant that the 
Indian is such an enormous eater as to overbalance his superior value as a 
laborer over-the Chinaman. This is untrue. It is the almost universal 
testimony of men who have employed them and observed their habits to 
any purpose, that when they first come in from the rancheria with their 
stomachs distended from eating the innutritious aboriginal diet, for a day 
or two they eat voraciously until they become sated on our richer food ; 
and after that they consume no more than an American performing the 
same labor. 
I am inclined to attribute something of the mental weakness of the 
California aborigines to the excessive amount of fish which they consumed 
in their native state; also, perhaps, to the quantity of bitter acorns they 
ate. It is generally accounted that fish is rich in brain-food, but it is an 
indisputable fact that the grossest superstitions and lowest intellects in the 
race are found along the sea-coast. 
Another erroneous impression generally prevails among Americans as 
to their physique, because they have seen only the wretched remnants of the 
race, the inferior lowlanders, whereas the nobler and more valorous mount- 
aineers were early cut off. On the Round Valley Reservation the Pit River 
men wear shoes averaging five and six in size, the women two and three. 
The Potter Valley men are, however, a little larger in the feet; their shoes 
run from seven to ten, averaging eight and nine; the women of the same 
tribe range from four to seven, averaging five and six. The men’s hands 
are as small and handsome as their feet, and so are the women’s when 
young, but the hard and unremitting toil of after-life makes their hands 
grow large, coarse, and ugly. 
Old pioneers, especially on the upper waters of the Trinity and the 
higher foot-hills of the Sierra, have frequently spoken with enthusiasm of 
giants they had seen in early days weighing one hundred and eighty, two 
