MORGAN. ] FORM OF HOUSE AMONG TRIBES OF CALIFORNIA. 107 
scent being made by a ladder, The “immense aboriginal population” of 
California, claimed by Mr. Powers, is too strong a statement. 
“This wigwam is in the shape of the capital letter L, made up of slats 
leaning up to a ridge-pole and heavily thatched. All along the middle of 
it the different families or generations have their fires, while they sleep next 
the walls, lying on the ground, underneath rabbit-skins and other less ele- 
gant robes, and amid a filthy cluster of baskets, dogs, and all the wretched 
trumpery dear to the aboriginal heart. There are three narrow holes for 
dens, one at either end and one at the elbow.”’ This is Mr. Powers’ fifth 
variety of the lodge. 
“Tn the very highest region of Sierra, where the snow falls to such an 
enormous depth that the fire would be blotted out and the whole open side 
snowed up, the dwelling retains substantially the same form and materials, 
but the fire is taken into the middle of it, and one side of it (generally the 
east one) slopes down more nearly horizontal than the other, and terminates 
in a curved way about three feet high and twice as long.”* Half a dozen 
such houses make an Indian village, with the addition of a “dome-shaped 
assembly or dance house” in the middle space. “One or more acorn-gran- 
aries of wicker-work stand around each lodge, much like hogsheads in shape 
and size, either on the ground or mounted on posts as high as one’s head, 
full of acorns and capped with thatch.”’ 
In Southern California, where the climate is both dry and hot, the 
natives constructed a wigwam entirely different from those found in other 
parts of the State. ‘In the Yokut nation,” Mr. Powers remarks, ‘‘there 
appears to be more political solidarity, more capacity in the petty tribes of 
being grouped into large and coherent masses than is common in the State. 
This is particularly true of those living on the plains, who display in their 
encampments a military precision and regularity which are remarkable. 
Every village consists of a single row of wigwams, conical or wedge- 
shaped, generally made of tule, and just enough hollowed out within so 
that the inmates may sleep with the head higher than the feet, all in perfect 
alignment, and with a continuous awning of brushwood stretching along in 
front. In one end-wigwam lives the village captain; on the other the 
3 s } ; 
1 Powers’ Tribes of Cal., p. 284. 
