June 17, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



913 



done in the state. The principal contribu- 

 tion to the subject is Stephen Powers 's 

 'Tribes of California,' published in 1877. 

 Powers 's field work was done in the sum- 

 mers of 1871 and 1872, supplemented by 

 a collecting trip in 1875 or 1876. The time 

 at his disposal was limited, and most of it 

 was given to the Indians of the northern 

 half of the state, those of the southern half 

 receiving very little attention. In discus- 

 sing the distribution and relations of the 

 southern tribes he was several times led 

 into error, and in certain instances even 

 referred to one stock tribes belonging to 

 another. These errors were copied by 

 Powell in his 'Indian Linguistic Families,' 

 1901. 



Powers 's work contains a large map 

 showing the distribution of linguistic 

 stocks in California, though it does not 

 give quite all that are mentioned in the 

 text. In the matter of nomenclature it 

 obviously was worked over by Powell. 



In 1891 appeared the Powell-Henshaw 

 map of the linguistic stocks of North Amer- 

 ica, the California part of which is only 

 slightly modified from Powers 's map of 

 1877, the principal changes being in the 

 names used for the stocks. In 1903 Dixon 

 and Kroeber published a small map of the 

 linguistic families of California, which, 

 though not so credited, is copied from the 

 Powers and Powell-Henshaw maps, with 

 slight alterations on the northwest coast 

 and a few changes in nomenclature. All 

 of these maps are so generalized, particu- 

 larly in the southern half of the state, that 

 they fail to show the real boundaries of 

 the areas and make no attempt to indicate 

 the localities at which Indians actually 

 live. They are misleading in that the 

 areas allotted to the various stocks cover 

 the entire area of the state, leaving no 

 spaces between and no parts unoccupied. 

 It is true that in many cases tribes were 

 so numerous as to press closely upon one 



another, with definite boundaries between; 

 but in other cases they were widely sep- 

 arated and there were large tracts wholly 

 unoccupied. 



The distribution of Indians conforms 

 closely with that of the faunal and floral 

 areas. Zoologists and botanists have found 

 that animals and plants are arranged in 

 definite belts the boundaries of which are 

 determined by climatic conditions. In the 

 northern hemisphere north of the tropics 

 the northern zones are called Boreal, the 

 southern Austral. In North America the 

 Austral zones are called Lower Sonoran, 

 Upper Sonoran and Transition; the Boreal 

 zones, Canadian, Hudsonian and Alpine. 

 In California no Indians live in the Boreal 

 zones, and few if any in the upper half of 

 the Transition zone, though certain tribes 

 claim parts of these as summer hunting 

 grounds. The great majority live in a 

 single life zone— the Upper Sonoran ; many 

 in the Lower Sonoran, and a few in the 

 Transition. The Lower Sonoran comprises 

 the hot San Joaquin-Sacramento plain and 

 certain outlying valleys, the Colorado and 

 Mojave deserts, and small areas in the 

 southern part of the state ; the Upper Son- 

 oran comprises the foothill or Digger pine 

 belt of the Sierra, most of the coast ranges 

 and valleys, most of the desert region of 

 eastern California north of Owens Lake, 

 and the greater part of southern California 

 west of the desert; the Transition com- 

 prises the yellow of Ponderosa pine belt 

 of the Sierra, the corresponding belt of 

 other mountains, and a narrow strip along 

 the humid coast. 



For several years I have been engaged 

 in mapping, for the U. S. Biological Sur- 

 vey, the distribution of plants and animals 

 in California. This work takes me into 

 all parts of the state so that I frequently 

 come across camps of Indians belonging 

 to different tribes. These tribes are so 

 little known, and are disappearing so 



