ABORIGINAL VICES—POPULATION. 415 
evil; but they are weak, and undignified, and absurd; they are as much 
beneath Satan as the “big Indians” who invent them are inferior in imagina- 
tion to John Milton. The true test of a devil is in his usefulness ; and the 
Indians stand much more in awe of theirs than we do of ours. 
In his admirable work, ‘‘Uncivilized Races of Men”, Mr. J. G. Wood 
makes the following remark: ‘I have already shown that we can introduce 
no vice in which the savage is not profoundly versed, and feel sure that 
the cause of extinction lies within the savage himself, and ought not to be 
attributed to the white man who comes to take the place which the savage 
has practically vacated.” Of other savages Iam not prepared to speak, 
but of the California Indians this is untrue. They smoked tobacco only to 
a very limited extent, never chewed it, and were never drunk, because they 
had no artificial beverage except manzanita cider, and that in extremely 
limited quantities unfermented for a brief season of the year. They had 
the vice of gambling much more than we, but, as shown above, it had no 
injurious effect on their health. Great and violent paroxysms of anger were 
almost unknown; they made no such senseless use as we do of ice-water, 
and of hot, heavy, and strongly-seasoned food. They had not even the 
vice of gluttony, except after an enforced fast, which was seldom, because 
their plain and simple food was easily procured and kept in stores. Licen- 
tiousness was universal, but mercenary prostitution was absolutely un- 
known; hence there were none of those appalling maladies which destroyed 
so many thousands on their first acquaintance with Americans. 
Next, as to the second part of his remark, that the white man ‘comes 
to take the place which the savage has practically vacated.” Let us see to 
what extent the Indians had ‘‘vacated” California before the Americans 
came. In Chapter V it was shown that there were sixty-seven and a half 
Indians to the square mile for forty miles along the Lower Klamath in 1870. 
Before the whites came doubtless there were one hundred, but we will take 
the former figure. Let us suppose there were six thousand miles of streams 
in the State yielding salmon ; that would give a population of four hundred 
and five thousand. In the early stages of my investigation I was led to 
believe that wild oats furnished a very large source of supply, but have 
abandoned that idea as erroneous. In all oak-forests, acorns yielded at 
