An Account of the Indiana of the Santa Barbara Islands in California. 19 



eat also much cockles. They use rafts made of rushes, which they 

 manage dexterously with a paddle or oar of two blades. Their harpoons 

 are some varas (one vara is 337* inches) in length ; the point is of 

 bone, very much sharpened, inserted in a shaft of wood. They are 

 so dexterous in hurling this that they rarely miss their airn. „Of 

 the Indians encountered during the expédition towards the north, Cos- 

 tanso tells us that : „ail are peopled with a multitude of Indians, who 

 came out to meet them and in some parts accompanied them from one 

 stage of the journey to the next: „a people very docile and tractable, 

 chiefly from San Diego onvarď (up the coast)". "The Indians in whom 

 was recognized more vivacity and industry, are those that inhabit 

 the Islands and the coast of the Santa Barbara Channel. They live 

 in villages with houses of spherical form, in the fashion of a half 

 orange, covered with rushes (probably Juncus and Scirpus). They are 

 up to twenty varas (55 feet) in diameter. Each house contains three 

 or four families. The hearth is in the midle, and in the top ofthe 

 house they leave a vent to gïve exit for the smoke. In nothing did 

 the natives give the lie to the affability and good treatment which 

 were experienced by their hands in other times (1602) by the Spaniards, 

 wlio landed upon those coasts with the gênerai Sebastian Viscayno. 

 They are of good figure and aspect, men, vomen and children; very 

 much given to painting their faces and bodies with red ochre. They 

 use headdresses of feathers, and some small darts which they bind 

 up in their hair, with various trinkets and beads of cor al of différent 

 colors. The men go entirely naked, but in time of cold they use long 

 capes of tanned skins of sea - otters, and some mantles of the same 

 skins eut in long strips, which they twist in such manner that all 

 the fur remains on the outside ; then they weave these Strands one 

 with the other, forming a weft, and give it the pattern referred to. 



The women go with more decency, girt about the waist with 

 tanned skins of deer which cover them in front and behind more 

 than half down the leg, and with a cloak of otter skins over the body. 

 There are some of them with good features. These are the indián 

 women who make trays and baskets of rushes, to which they give 

 a thousand différent foruis and graceful pattern s ; according to the 

 uses to which they are destined, whether it be for eating, drinking, 

 guarding their seeds, or other ends, for these peoples do not know. 

 the use of earthenwares as those of San Diego use it. 



The men work handsome trays of wood, with firm inlays of 

 coral or of bone ; and some vases of much capacity, closing at the 



