Febkuaky 21, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



287 



Santa Barbara coast and archipelago, were 

 etlmologically extinct long before ethnolo- 

 gists visited their territory. We know of 

 them only from brief notices of travelers 

 and through the less perishable artifacts 

 they have left in their village-sites. As a 

 more or less maritime people, their mode of 

 life must have been quite different from 

 that of the other Indians of southern Cali- 

 fornia, and no doubt their institutions and 

 beliefs also showed much that was peculiar 

 but which we can not even speculate upon. 



The people in the fertile and semi-fertile 

 mountain and coast regions of southern 

 California were the most similar, of those 

 in the south, to the central and northern 

 Californians. Their habitat was not essen- 

 tially different from the greater part of 

 California. Their mode of life is, therefore, 

 naturally also similar to that of central 

 California. In religion, however, espe- 

 cially in the matter of beliefs, there is much 

 that is either distinctive or shows relations 

 with the Pueblo culture. Even the arts are 

 not free from resemblances in this direc- 

 tion. 



It is therefore the more surprising that 

 the agricultural Yuman tribes of the Colo- 

 rado river, to the east of the last group of 

 people, and therefore so much nearer the 

 Pueblo region, evidence no great approxi- 

 mation to Pueblo or southwestern life, even 

 though they are in many respects typically 

 un-Californian. Even such of their cul- 

 tural features as they appear to have ac- 

 quired through Pueblo influence, as, for 

 instance, their pottery, have a non-Pueblo 

 character. Their religious life is espe- 

 cially distinct, lacking even certain traits 

 which their Californian neighbors to the 

 west share with the Pueblos and other 

 tribes to the east. In the ceremonies of 

 the Mohave are found no masks, no altars, 

 no painting or carving of ceremonial par- 

 aphernalia, the simplest of regalia, no sea- 

 sonal observances, no societies, and no ini- 



tiation; and all this in spite of the fact 

 that they maintained some degree of in- 

 tercourse with the Hopi. 



In the gi'eat central region of California 

 cultural uniformity is stronger than in the 

 south, not so much through the persistence 

 of certain special positive features, as in a 

 fundamental similarity that is varied only 

 locally. Thus the weaves, the shapes, the 

 patterns and the materials of baskets, 

 differ, but basketry is everywhere the most 

 developed and most important art, nowhere 

 replaced by pottery or working in wood. 

 Creation myths and mourning ceremonies 

 vary in form from district to district, but 

 everywhere dominate mythology and public- 

 religious expression. Too great a uni- 

 formity will not be expected when it is- 

 realized how limited the geographical 

 knowledge and intercourse of most of the 

 California Indians were. It is probable- 

 that the southern Tokuts did not more- 

 than know of the existence of the southern 

 Miwok. These in turn knew no more of 

 the southern Maidu. The southern Maidu 

 may not have been aware that there was 

 such a people as the Shastan Achomawi of 

 Pit River. Again, the Maidu of the 

 higher Sierra did not know more than the 

 easternmost "Wintun. These appear to 

 have come in contact only with the east- 

 ernmost Porno. The eastern Porno had but 

 little to do with their western kinsmen on 

 the coast. Whether one traveled from 

 south to north, or from east to west, 

 through the central province of the state, 

 he would, therefore, encounter, in aborigi- 

 nal times, at least two or three groups of 

 people mutually ignorant of each other's 

 existence ; and this condition was probably 

 more marked in north-central than in 

 south-central California. In this respect 

 central California differed as a culture- 

 area from such much more extensive but 

 better interconnected regions as the Plains, 

 or the district of the Great Lakes and 



