SOUTHEBN CALIFOKNTANS. 5 



tion in the workmanship. I strongly suspect, however, if the Indians possessing' these 

 implements had been closely questioned they would have acknowledged that they found 

 them and did not make them, just as they acknowledge in regard to the superior stone 

 mortars and pestles. That is, they are really indebted to their ancestors for them. 

 Near Freestone, Sonora County, I saw, in possession of its tinder, what was probably 

 a spindle whorl of pottery — the only instance of the kind I know of. In regard to 

 tobacco-pipes the deterioration is not so manifest, for I have seen soapstone pipes of as 

 handsome workmanship as any obtained from the mounds. But I still think there is 

 deterioration shown in the fact that the Indians nowadays use so many wooden pipes 

 of the rudest construction ; though we have no means of showing that their ancestors 

 did not use equally poor ones, since their wooden pipes, if they had any, have perished. 

 * * * I might extend these instances and comparisons, but it is not necessary. The 

 California Indians, like then predecessors, belong unmistakably to the Stone Age; and 

 the fact that they have degenerated from a higher to a lower grade in that age argues 

 strongly that their ancestors, after crossing the sea, might have degenerated from the 

 Bronze Age or the Iron Age of China. 



'•For these reasons I am disposed to believe that the California Indians have sim- 

 ply deteriorated from what we (perhaps erroneously) call a pre-aboriginal race; and 

 ultimately from the Chinese. * * » China itself, with all its vast populations, has 

 stood still for twenty centimes ; and a colony from it wandering into a new land, where 

 the abundance of nature and the genial climate invited them to relax the efforts which 

 a crowded community had necessitated for the maintenance of life, might degenerate 

 to a low point without difficulty. When the Chinese of to-day come to this land of 

 plenty, how poor are the dwellings and implements they, construct for themselves, com- 

 pared with those they used in China. How poor are our own, compared with those we 

 made in the East ! * * * 



"The theory of degeneration above advanced is quite in accord with the climatic 

 changes and the deforestation -which have taken place on this coast, even within the 

 historical period. "We know, from the statements of Viscaino and other early Spanish 

 explorers, that extensive forests were flourishing near San Diego and Monterey three 

 hundred years ago, where now there are none. Viscaino says the natives of Santa 

 Catalina Island had large wooden canoes, capable of sea voyages, whereas that island 

 is now comparatively treeless. * * * 



" Whde there is nothing to show that the present race of California Indians is de- 

 scended from an agricultural people, like the New Mexican Pueblos, there is much to 

 show that their predecessors were superior to them, and that their predecessors were 

 also their ancestors. The California Indians are simply a poor copy of the people 

 whom we usually call pre- aborigines; but the copy follows the original so closely that 

 there can be little doubt that it is a copy made by transmission."* 



"Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, vol. v, p. 392, 1875. 



Just as this introductory chapter leaves my hands I have received the third volume of "Contri- 

 butions to North American Ethnology" (hearing date 1877, but not received in Cambridge until May, 

 1878), published by the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, under 

 charge of J. "W. Powell. This volume contains the important and interesting account of the "Tribes 

 of California," by STEPHEN Powers, and on page 432 is given the substance of what I have quoted 

 above, with some changes. The principal change is the discarding of the Chinese element, and the 

 substitution of the word pre-hhtoric for that of pre-aboriginal in the several instances where the latter 

 expression was used in the former publication. 



