SOCIETY. 395 
ous small and simple kinds of nets are used, and they are 
knocked down with clubs. Salmon are killed with stones and 
clubs in shallow water, and are caught with spears. Their 
most ingenious spear has a head of bone about one inch and a 
half long and sharp at both ends. To the middle is fastened a 
string, which is attached to the spear-shaft. One end of the 
head fits in a socket at the end of the spear-shaft. When the 
spear is thrown the head comes out of the socket and turns 
cross-ways in the fish, and then there is no danger that it will 
tear out. The Indians rarely hunt the grizzly bear. Along 
the ocean beach they get barnacles. Their method of catching 
grasshoppers is to dig a hole several feet deep, in a valley 
where this species of game abeunds. A large number of the 
Indians then arm themselves with bushes, and commence at a 
distance to drive the grasshoppers from all sides toward the 
hole, into which the insects finally fall, and from which they 
cannot escape. The pine-nuts are sought at the tops of the 
pine-trees, which the ‘‘ bucks” ascend by holding to the rough 
bark with their hands, and pressing out with their legs, so 
that they do not touch the body to the trunk of the tree in 
going up. It is more like walking then climbing. 
The bow and arrow, the spear, the net, the obsidian knife, 
the mortar, and the basket, are the only tools made by the 
Indian. The obsidian knife is merely a piece of obsidian as 
large as a hand and sharp on one side. The baskets are all 
made of wire-grass, a grass with a round jointless stem, about 
a sixteenth of an inch thick and a foot long. The basket- 
work made with this wire-grass resembles the texture of a 
coarse Panama hat, and+is waterproof. All the basket-work 
of the Californian Indians is made of this material. The most 
common shape for the basket is a perpendicular half of a cone, 
three feet long and eighteen inches wide, open at the top. 
The basket, carried on the back of the squaws, is used for 
carrying food, miscellaneous articles, and children. Neither 
the Californian Indians of the present, nor of any preceding 
century, made such mounds, circumvallations, arrow-heads, or 
