xl ETHNOGRAPHIC SKETCH. 



bury their dead instead of cremating them, and commence to acquire a 

 .smattering- of English. Indian .superstitions, conjurens' practices are not 

 abandoned before the white man's ways have wrought a thorough change 

 in their minds; and n reguhir school attendance by children can not be 

 expected before this stage of jirogress has been reached. 



In his moral aspects the Klamath Indian is more coarse and outspoken 

 than the white man, but in fact he is not better and not worse. He has 

 attacked and enslaved by annual raids the defenseless California Indian 

 simply because he was more aggressive, strong, and cunning than his vic- 

 tim; his family relations would be a disgrace to any cultured people, as 

 would also be the method by which the chiefs rule the community. But 

 the passions are not restrained among savages as they are or ought to be 

 among us, and the force of example exhibited by Indians of other tribes is 

 too strong for them to resist. 



The character of men in the hunter stage depicts itself admirably well 

 in the mythic and legendary stories of both chieftaincies. Low cunning 

 and treacherous disposition manifest themselves side by side with a few 

 traits of magnanimity hardly to be expected of a people formerly merged 

 in a sort of zoolatric fetichism. There is, however, a considerable power 

 of imagination and invention exhibited in these simple stories, and many of 

 the ferocious beasts are 'sketched in a truly humorous vein. 



Man's morals are the product of circumstances, and the white man who 

 judges Indian morals from the Christian standard knows nothing of human 

 nature or of etiinologic science. The moral ideas of every nation differ 

 from those of neigliljoring peoples, and among us the moral system of every 

 century differs from that of the preceding one. The fact that the Modocs 

 showed themselves more aggressive and murderous towards the white ele- 

 ment than the Klamath Lake Indians may thus be explained by the different 

 position of their homes. The latter being more secluded have not molested 

 Americans sensibly, whereas the annals of the Modocs, who lived in an open 

 country, are filled with bloody deeds. They are of a more secretive and 

 churlish disposition, and what Stephen Powers, who saw them shortly after 

 the Modoc war, says of them is, in some respects, true: "On the whole, 



