ANCIENT AND MODERN STON!S IMPLEMENTS. 433 
their predecessors shows forth in the fact that they no longer manufacture 
them, but confine their ambition to keeping them in the family. 
The pre-historics made out of sandstone or other soft stones a small 
and almost perfect sphere as an acorn-sheller; but the squaw nowadays 
simply selects for this purpose a smooth cobble from the creek-bed. 
In the collection of Mr. A. W. Chase, of the United States Coast- 
Survey, there are spindle-whorls of stone, some of them found in mounds 
raised by extinct tribes and others found among the Klamath River Indians 
and the Noamlakki in gravel-mining claims. The Indians of this day use 
no such implement for any purpose whatever. Near Freestone, Sonoma 
County, I saw in possession of the finder what was probably a spindle- 
whorl of pottery; the only instance of the kind I know of. 
In regard to tobacco-pipes the deterioration is not so manifest, for I 
have seen serpentine pipes of as handsome workmanship as any obtained 
from the mounds, though even these may be old heir-looms. But I still | 
think there is deterioration shown in the fact that the Indians nowadays use 
so many wooden pipes of the rudest construction; though we have no 
means of showing that their ancestors did not use equally poor ones, since 
their wooden pipes, if they had any, have perished. 
Then, again, as to the shell-mounds themselves. I am of the opinion 
that they are merely the accumulations of a race of men who dived for 
clams, as the Wintiin of the Upper Sacramento do to this day, to a limited 
extent. In other words, the Wintin and other tribes are descended from a 
people who were more energetic and industrious than themselves. 
Langsdorff and La Perouse both mention that they saw many Indians 
with magnificent beards, but now they are almost totally destitute of beards. 
Whether the ever-increasing drought and desiccation of the Pacific Coast, 
which have swept away the ancient forests, have also destroyed the beards 
of the aborigines, is a question I am not competent to determine 
The legends connected with the Geysers make mention of the fact that 
idolatry existed among the California pre-historic tribes, while if those of 
to-day have any worship at all, it is fetichism. Fetichism is lower than 
idolatry. Regarding this subject of idol-worship, Mr. Chase, in a letter to 
the author, says: “That such has existed among tribes farther northward 
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