HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. ANT 
their lungs is shown by the fact that they would formerly remain under 
water twice as long as an American in diving for mussels. The extraordinary 
treatment their women undergo in childbirth at the hands of the midwives 
shows remarkable endurance. No American could dance as they do, all 
night for days together, sometimes for weeks. Their uniformly sweet 
breath and beautiful white teeth (so long as they continue to live in the 
aboriginal way) are evidences of good health. Smoked fish and jerked 
venison are eaten without further preparation, and there is a considerable 
amount of green stuff consumed raw in the spring; but four-fifths of their 
food is cooked and then eaten cold. An Indian is as irregular in his times 
of eating as a horse or an ox, which may have an injurious effect on his 
health or it may not If an Indian can keep free from disease he lasts a 
long time; but when diseases get hold of him he goes off pretty easy, for 
their medicines amount to nothing. Mr. J. J. Warner, in a communication 
to the Los Angeles Star, gives an account of an appalling pestilence which 
he calls “remittent fever”, which desolated the Sacramento and San Joaquin 
Valleys in 1833, and reduced those great plains from a condition of remark- 
able populousness to one of almost utter silence and solitude. Their treat- 
ment in the shape of a hot-air bath, followed by a plunge into cold water, 
added to its fatality, until there was scarcely a human being left alive. But 
the plains were evidently soon repeopled from the healthier mountain dis- 
tricts, for Captain Sutter and General Fremont, in their day, found tens of 
thousands there to fight or to feed. It is the testimony of the old pioneers 
that they were much subject to fevers and lung complaints even in 
primitive times, especially along the rivers. Being compelled to live near 
the streams to procure a supply of water, they were exposed to malarial 
influences. They sometimes threw up mounds for their villages to stand 
on, but these were rather for a defense against high water than against ma- 
laria. The old Indians protest that the present melancholy prevalence of 
ophthalmia, like some other diseases, is due to American influences, and that 
in old times they had good eyes. All things taken together, I am well con- 
vinced that the California Indians were originally a fruitful and compara- 
tively a healthy and long-lived race. Mr. Claude Cheney, who was among 
them as early as 1846, on Bear River, states that, although they were rather 
PATE Ue 
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