THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA. 135 
publie servant. The Indian again has a desire to have game 
abundant, and to have the trees preserved for his acorns and 
fuel. It would seem folly to kill game faster than needed 
for food from year to year, and cutting down the oak that 
brought him acorns, would be killing the goose that laid 
the golden egg. An Indian to be judged fairly must be re- 
garded as an Indian. Custom with them, as with civilized 
people, is law, and many of their customs have probably 
been transmitted, with but little change, from remote ages. 
Fig. 35. 
Indian Village.* 
There is every reason to believe that the Indians were very 
numerous in California at some former time. Deserted 
mounds, showing the sites of former villages, are seen along 
the banks of the rivers, and a few tribes, speaking dialects 
of their own and yet living separately as nations, only consist 
of a dozen families each. One of these removed to a large 
tribe while I lived near them and remained as a part of the 
more powerful tribe for a year or more; but they became 
discontented or homesick, and returned to the village con- 
ib the huts, and the poles - un in some 
of them support the decoys used os the Indians in shooting geese. — ED 
