BARRETT— POMO BUILDINGS 



season when the tule was not sufficiently ripe for the purpose, grass 

 was used instead. An ordinary fire was taken with resignation, but 

 a person guilty of incendiarism was severely dealt with by the rest 

 of the people of the burned village. 



Men of means, such as chiefs, good hunters, lucky gamblers, medi- 

 cine-men and others, often had semi-subterranean, earth-covered 

 lodges 1 similar in every respect to the sweat and dance houses shortly 

 to be described, except that the pit was only about a foot and a half 

 deep and the tunnel only about four feet long. These lodges were 

 called ga'hmarak (E) and ma' cane (C). Frequently a small room was 

 built out on either side of the tunnel as a storage place for wood. 

 The roof was constructed with much care. Its frame of poles was 

 covered with brush, grass, and matting, and finally with a layer of 

 three or four inches of earth. Over this was plastered a layer of clay, 

 any kind except white or blue being used. It was mixed in baskets 

 and poured on from the top downward, being spread and patted into 

 place by means of flat, wooden paddles, finally being smoothed very 

 carefully with water. At last a thin layer of sand was applied to 

 prevent cracking. 2 A man wealthy enough to afford one of these 

 houses engaged others to build it, and custom prescribed that he pay 

 liberally for the service. 



If a house of any kind became infested with vermin, it was simply 

 abandoned, but not destroyed, and a new house was built at a short 

 distance from it. 



The houses of a village were usually not arranged in any regular 

 order. Often four or five houses were ranged in a row governed by 

 the contour of the village-site, but there was no regularity in the 

 relative positions of the rows. 



THE ACORN CACHE 



Another structure which resembled a dwelling was the cache, 

 built of tule, for storing acorns and seeds. It appears never to have 

 been used by the Porno outside of the lake region, though a cache of 

 different type was used in other parts of the Porno country. It was 

 somewhat circular or elliptical in ground-plan, though square or rect- 



1 Professor Holmes, in his "Anthropological Studies in California" {Rep. U. S. Nat. Mus., iqoo), 

 shows three drawings (plate 17, figs. 3-5) of what he terms an "hibernia for women", which is 

 quite different from the earth lodge here described. This was not mentioned by informants, though 

 no specific inquiries were made concerning such a structure. 



2 This reversed the method of making the roof of the dance or sweat house, where the layer 

 of clay was directly applied to the thatch and was then covered with a heavy layer of ordinary 

 earth. Possibly the informant's memory may have failed in this particular, though he was very 

 specific in his statement that the clay layer was applied over the ordinary earth in this instance. 



[7] 



