390 ESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
The Californian Indian men are about five feet and a half 
high on an average, and the women four feet and ten inches. 
They are very thick in the chest, and have voices of wonderful 
strength. The children are clumsy, and heavy set. The women 
are very wide in the shoulders and hips, and strongly built. 
Men and women are large in thé body, and slim in the legs 
and arms, as compared with Caucasians. When not affected 
by hereditary diseases, caught from the white men, the Cali- 
fornian Indians have healthy constitutions, and formerly they 
lived to a great age. During the last ten years, a number 
have died with the reputation of being more than one hundred 
and twenty years old. It is a common assertion, and one that 
I have never heard contradicted, though I have conversed on 
the subject with men who have seen much of them, that the 
wild Indians never take cold. During the winter of 1849~50, 
I lived near a tribe in the mines, in what is now Shasta coun- 
ty, and I saw that the men never wore any clothing save a 
deerskin thrown over the shoulders; that men, women, and 
children went barefooted through a winter when snow lay on 
the ground for a week at a time, and that their huts were only 
about six feet wide, were open on all sides, and on two sides 
had holes large enough for men to get in and out; and I never, 
saw one troubled with a cold or cough. In the tribes living 
far from the whites, the men usually go naked, and the women 
wear a petticoat made by fastening flags or strips of bark, 
about eighteen inches long, to a girdle. They are very filthy 
in their habits, and their houses are always filled with lice. 
Their form of government is very simple. They have heredi- 
tary chiefs who have very little power. The tribes are small, 
and have no wealth, and no laws. Occasionally a member of 
a tribe gives offence, and some of the leading ones of a tribe 
agree to kill him, and the sentence is carried into effect by way- 
laying him and shooting him with arrows. Their rule is blood 
for blood. They rarely keep men prisoners, but kill them im- 
mediately after capturing them. Women and children are 
held frequently as prisoners; and one of the most common 
