Indians of Lassen Volcanic National Park and Vicinity

by Paul E. Schulz

YAHI STONE POINTS

Nearly colorless obsidian south of Sulphur Works; three quarters inch.

Off-white chalcedony point south of Sulphur Works area; one and one half inches.

Black obsidian one and one quarter inches long and a full one half inch thick.

Three inch point of coarse gray lava from Mill Creek Canyon.

Black obsidian. South of Sulphur Works, one and one half inches.

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Yana arrow points one and one half to two inches long. The materials used are mostly black obsidian, also dark grey and buff obsidian. One is of dense black basalt.

A pair of Yana arrow smoother and straightening stones made of porous glassy (pre-Lassen?) dacite pumice, length about two and one half inches

War clubs were not used. Atsugewi claim to have had a stone axe, sharpened by chipping and lashed with sinew to a split oak or mountain-mahogany handle a foot or so long. It was used for chopping roots and small trees on occasion, but the stone axe was certainly not widely used by California Indians, and even among Atsugewi it may have been unknown until the coming of white man, or knowledge of it may have been gained from Plains Indians after the advent of the horse. The tomahawk, so important to Indians of eastern and midwestern North America, was unknown to California Indians. Trees were normally felled and cut by controlled burning.

Four-foot spears, tipped with large flaked stone points for fighting at close quarters, were used by all local tribes on occasion, but were not numerous. Only the Yana are believed to have thrown the weapon; the more common usage seems to have been by energetically thrusting it.

Knives or daggers as fighting implements were made of chipped obsidian but were quite rare. A short, crude, one edged, stone knife was used widely as a general utility implement, but not in combat nor in killing game. Yana Indians also employed a mussel shell knife for light delicate work around camp. Atsugewi and mountain Maidu sometimes affixed wooden handles to their obsidian knives. These two tribes also fashioned knives of sharpened bone and horn.

A wooden arrow straightener from northern California (Yurok)

Atsugewi stone arrow-straightener

Mountain Maidu arrow quiver made of an inside-out small mammal skin.

Atsugewi cased fox skin quiver made by slitting animal’s skin along its hind legs, turning skin inside out, and finally sewing the mouth and eye openings shut.

4½ inches 7 inches
Maidu stone knives of obsidian, one with a wooden and sinew handle (after Dixon)

A warrior in stick armor and fur helmet

Of equipment for warfare, Garth states:

“Defensive armor included rod armor ..., gowns ... of dried elk or bear skins, and skin helmets which came down over the forehead and ears, ‘so a man could just see out of it’. The skin armor extended to the ankles or lower; it was worn over one shoulder so that it protected only the side of the body turned toward the enemy. Rod armor, made of serviceberry withes twined together with buckskin string, was high enough to come up to the neck under the chin and extended two or three inches below the belt. The Plains Indian shield, although found among the Surprise Valley Paiute and other Paiute tribes to the east, was lacking among the Atsugewi,” and all other tribes of the Lassen area.

Chapter XI
BASKETRY AND TEXTILES

The outstanding art of the Indians of California was their basketry. In fact the excellence of California basketry generally is not exceeded elsewhere in North America. Size varies from that of a pea to that of a bushel basket. Both weave and ornamentation were very diversified.

Basketry of the Lassen area, especially that of the Atsugewi and mountain Maidu, was of good quality. Both coiled and twined types of basketry (to be described below) were made by mountain Maidu, but the Atsugewi did not learn the art of coiled basketry from the Maidu until the early 1900’s. Yana and Yahi wove both types but twined baskets were by far the more numerous. This is due to the fact that these tribes were akin to the twining tribes of the north. Close contact with the neighboring Wintun tribes of the Sacramento Valley resulted in the addition of limited amount of coiling technique in their basketry making over the years.

Technique of the three willow rod (or rib) coiled basketry (after Otis T. Mason). Note that the lashing strand anchors the three new ribs “a”, “b”, and “c” to the top rib “d” of the preceding three “d”, “e”, and “f” group

Simple twined basketry technique employs two weft (lashing) strands, but when overlaying with another material is done two or more layers will make up each of the strands “a” and “b” (modified from Otis T. Mason)

Coiled basketry itself had some technical variations with which we shall not concern ourselves. The coiling technique was characteristic of the central and southern part of the California area. Mountain Maidu used three willow rods in a parallel group which ran as a core in a continuous spiral starting at the center of the basket. This was the warp element. The bundle of three willow ribs was lashed to the preceding basketry by a strand or weft (filler) of the inner bark of redbud. This was accomplished by poking an awl through the preceding row, and separating the stitches. In doing so, the awl was passed under the topmost of the core or warp of three coiling willow ribs. A redbud bark strand was then slipped through the awl hole, thus lashing the three loose willow ribs down by passing the strand around them and through the next awl hole in the preceding row. Recent Atsugewi coiled basketry technique is similar in all details, having been learned from the Maidu.

Variations of the simple twined basketry technique: a, method of starting the round root-cleaning basket; b, detail of side wall of basket showing open work weave. (Garth)

Twined basketry consisted of willow ribs radiating from a common center. These twigs were the warp. The weft of filling and binding stitches were split pine root strands. Dixon states that mountain Maidu sometimes dyed pine root black by burying it in mud mixed with charcoal. Pine root was tightly woven in to make the bottom of the basket which was normally undecorated. More and more willow ribs were added as the basket became larger. The willow ribs were curved up when willow rib additions were decreased. As the sides began to be built up on these twined baskets, each pine root stitch, both inside and outside, was covered with a whitish strand of bear-grass or squaw-grass. The tops of baskets were often left unfinished after the unused willow warps were clipped off. The basket did not unravel in use. However, the best baskets were finished by adding a marginal strengthening ring of choke cherry or willow which was bound to the basket body firmly and neatly, usually by wrapping with strands of redbud bark. During weaving willow withes were fastened inside of the basket to help it retain its shape, but these were removed upon completion of the basket.

Side outline shapes of Maidu baskets (after Dixon). The plan of virtually all Maidu baskets was circular. Twined storage baskets are up to three feet in diameter for holding seed, meal, etc. Open twined construction was used for storage of whole acorns, fish, and meat. Flatish circular basketry plaque was for “vibration sifting”.

FOOD BOWL DIPPING GENERAL UTILITY	STORAGE COOKING
FOOD BOWL DIPPER GENERAL UTILITY	STORAGE COOKING
COOKING	STORAGE COOKING
FOOD BOWL DIPPER GENERAL UTILITY	STORAGE COOKING
COOKING	BURDEN
FOOD BOWL DIPPER GENERAL UTILITY	STORAGE COOKING
TRAYS or large BASKET COVER	TRAY or BASKET COVER

Some utility baskets were undecorated, being made merely of pine root and willow, or, if coiled, of redbud and willow. However, most baskets bore some designs. They were all named and were inspired by the objects of nature about these outdoor peoples, and not the product of their imaginations. Nevertheless, the designs are quite stylized, often to the extent that recognition of the inspiration is difficult or impossible.

In the case of twined baskets the designs were made by substituting outer redbud bark for squaw-grass to produce a dull red instead of the white overlaid stitches of the rest of the basket. As a result of the double twining technique the designs were seen equally well on the inside and the outside of each basket. Black designs were of overlaid maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum) stems. However, mountain Maidu also used common bracken fern (Pteris aquilinum) for black designs. Indians to the north of the Atsugewi used roots and stems of certain sedges treated with charcoal and mud or with ashes and water to produce basketry materials of black and of warm henna-brown coloration respectively. These were used on occasion by Atsugewi. The bear-grass, redbud, and maidenhair fern decorative materials were most commonly used by all tribes of this area. Atsugewi are the only local Indians to have used feathers to adorn their baskets. They used the shiny iridescent blue-green feathers from the necks of male mallard ducks. This was not common, however, and by no means used as often nor developed to the fine art and diversity of the famous Pomo feathered basketry of the Clear Lake region of the California Coast Range. Atsugewi are also believed to have occasionally adorned some basketry work with shell beads and porcupine quills, but this must have been quite rare or more examples would have survived to the present day.

Outer bark of redbud almost always decorated coiled baskets.

Concerning Maidu basketry Dixon states that the vast majority of the articles are of the coiled type, twining technique being used only for burden baskets and hopper or grinding baskets. For the radial ribs of the former they used shoots of hazel (Corylus rostrata var. californica) when available. He points out too, the frequent use of the feather, quail-tip, and arrow-point designs not only among the mountain Maidu, but among all Maidu. A characteristic of this group of Indians also, in contrast to other local tribes, is the tendency to confine one design to a basket rather than combining designs. Maidu employed a wide variety of designs. Many of them represent animals and plants. A considerable number of Maidu patterns exhibit a more or less obscure realism which becomes apparent only after one is informed as to what the design means. The Maidu show a tendency also toward arrangement of design elements in spiral or zigzag lines.

Atsugewi basket, twined and overlaid with bear-grass and maiden hair fern.

Maidu hopper, pounding, or milling basket of twined construction on rock mortar slab. Diameter about eighteen inches (after Dixon).

Atsugewi general utility basket of twined construction with lizard foot design. Underside shown to reveal dark (actually tan-colored) area of bare split pine root weft without bear-grass or maiden hair overlay.

Coiled type Atsugewi hopper basket with flying geese design. View shows pounding hole in bottom of basket, in this case bound with buckskin.

Dixon noted that “mussel’s tongue” (the fresh water mussel) is one of the unique and peculiar basketry designs used by the Atsugewi. Representation of intestines and deer excrement are also worthy of special mention for this tribe. Other common Atsugewi designs in basketry decoration are lizard, deer rib, owl’s claw, and flying geese, as well as arrow-point. Two or more different designs are often combined on a single basket. Among Atsugewi and Achomawi there seems to be no restriction of certain patterns to baskets intended for special uses. Like mountain Maidu, zigzag and spiral arrangements are preferred, horizontal bands being rare. Curiously an Atsugewi design is often given different meaning by different individual Indians. This is in contrast to the uniformity of interpretation of a given design by all the Maidu individuals, normally.

Maidu open twined “tray” or plate-like basket about ten inches long (after Dixon)

Yana tribes frequently substituted another material for willow ribs. The identity of this warp is not certain. Reliable students believe it to be hazelnut twigs, but to my knowledge that plant is scarce indeed even in the foothill territory. Yana and Yahi had some other peculiarities in their basketry. Designs were sometimes wrought in a negative way, that is by merely leaving off overlay so that the design was thereby defined in exposed pine root weft. Sapir and Spier found that these tribes also used alder bark for dying basketry decoration materials a red-brown. A reddish color was produced on peeled shield fern stems by passing them through the mouth while chewing dogwood bark. They dyed pine roots, too, on occasion with a red soil or with the powdery filling of spores from the inside of a fungus obtained from certain coniferous trees. These variations of basketry decoration do not seem to have been used by the Atsugewi and mountain Maidu.

Maidu fish-teeth design on coiled basket.

Mountain Maidu geese-flying design on coiled basket.

Atsugewi lizard’s claw or lizard’s foot design.

Mountain Maidu mountains designs on twined baskets. The right hand treatment may be repeated in reverse to the right making a symmetrical pyramid shaped design outline.

An interesting unsymmetrical flower design.

Atsugewi intestines.

The basketry described above was all close-woven. In fact, so closely were the twined baskets made that they held water with little or no leakage even without linings of pitch or any other substance. There was no pottery of any kind in central or northern California.

The art of basketry included also a third type—loose or open weaving, sometimes of tules. The latter were also used extensively for making mats for a variety of purposes. Open weaving at other times was done with willow withes, split juniper twigs, or of another material tentatively identified as hazel. Fish traps, carrying baskets, some storage baskets, and bags were not infrequently of this type of construction.

All basketry materials had to be well soaked in water, as they were brittle when dry. After weaving and upon drying these materials set in place, making the basketry firm, strong, and resistant to unraveling.

Collection of basketry materials was more arduous and required greater know-how than might be suspected. Willow withes were only taken from the particularly strong and supple shoots from Hinds or valley willow (Salix hindsiana) which grows along stream banks up to 3000 foot elevations and also from the similar sandbar, river, or grey willow (Salix fluviatilis variety argyrophylla) which also lines streams, often growing in sandbars. These species are recognized by their long very narrow silvery leaves and a grey bark, furrowed when mature. Willow twigs were collected when the leaves were off of the stems in the spring and in the fall. At other times the twigs were more brittle. Spring picked willow withes “slipped” their bark easily, but those collected in the fall had to be scraped to remove the bark. The willow ribs were further dressed by scraping to uniform size.

Pine roots of either ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) or digger pine (Pinus sabiniana) were usually used. However not all trees had roots of suitable strength and flexibility, so that it was necessary to “shop around” for good roots. This involved digging holes to reach the roots and then testing these by tugging on small strands until suitable roots were located. Roots three or four inches in diameter were then cut off with a small obsidian axe, if the individual were so fortunate as to possess this rarity, or by using a sort of bone pick, or, more commonly, by slowly burning through the green root with a small fire. Root lengths of about four feet were gathered, taken home, and there roasted in hot ashes. This made the pine roots very soft. They were then split into quarters with digging sticks or stone choppers and finally were pulled apart into thin strips using hands and teeth. The resulting half inch wide strips were tied into bundles for storage. In use, these strips were well soaked in water. Pine root strands of proper width were easily split off by hand. The finer and smaller the basketry to be done, naturally, the narrower was the material split for making it.

Atsugewi twined basket, deer-rib and arrow point designs. Both are frequently used.

Pit River (used by Dixon to include Atsugewi) popular mussels’ tongue designs.

Mountain Maidu mountain-and-cloud design on coiled basket.

Atsugewi pine cone design

Atsugewi deer-gut design on twined basket—also a popular pattern.

Another Atsugewi version of deer-gut design on twined basket.

Pit River (applied by Dixon to include also the Atsugewi) deer excrement designs.

Atsugewi flint design

The chief overlay material—already mentioned—was what we call bear-grass or squaw-grass. In truth this is not grass, but the leaf of a lily, the well known bear-grass of Mount Rainier National Park, scientifically known as Xerophylum tenax. This grows only in limited areas in this region, hence Atsugewi had to make long trips on foot to obtain it. In recent years, at least, bear-grass was to be found only in the territory of the Shasta and of the mountain Maidu: a few miles west of Mount Shasta and near Greenville in Plumas County. Bear-grass could be collected only during about two weeks in mid-July. Earlier it was too tender; later it was too brittle “like hay”. Only new central leaves of each plant were plucked. The heavy mid-rib had to be removed from each leaf with an awl before use.

Maidenhair fern frond stems were picked in August.

Redbud twigs collected in the spring would “slip” the red outer bark easily in a thin layer. This was used for overlay pattern making on twined baskets. The white inner bark, or, more properly, sapwood was then stripped off for binding material and as the white lashing weft for coiled baskets. In the case of fall-collected redbud twigs the red outer bark adhered to the sapwood. This was used as the lashing strand or weft where red designs were desired on coiled baskets.

Apwaruge, the eastern division of the Atsugewi, often made baskets of tules. These were more flexible, softer baskets than those made by the westerners, the Atsuge, and so there was considerable exchange of baskets between the two divisions of the Atsugewi.

Atsugewi occasionally made openwork baskets from split juniper too, especially for low scoop-shaped, round, or oval baskets for fishing, root cleaning, et cetera, but as indicated earlier, willow ribs were used for this purpose also.

(Yana) dogs ears

Probably Yana House design

Maidu quail tip design widely used but only on coiled baskets.

(Yana) crane’s leg

(Atsugewi) meadow lark

(Achomawi) flying geese or pine cone
(Yana) pine cone

Maidu earthworm design on a coiled basket.

Maidu bushes design on a coiled basket.

Mountain Maidu duck’s-wing design on a coiled basketry plaque.

(Maidu) diamond
(Yana) wolf’s eye

Mountain Maidu eye design.

(Atsugewi) flint or arrowhead

(Maidu) watersnake (?)
(Yana) bushes

(Yana) bats

Maidu design, probably sugar pine tree.

A continuing zig-zag arrow feather design widely and frequently used by Maidu in coiled basketry, sometimes this was combined with the quail tip pattern.

Single and double arrow point designs—the most commonly used of all Maidu patterns. It was relatively easy to make and very versatile.

(Maidu) big tongues
(Yana) intestines

(Maidu) quail tip
(Yana) root digger

(Maidu) mountain
(Yana) root digger hand

(Maidu) earthworm
(Yana) intestines

(Maidu) earthworm
(Yana) intestines

(Maidu) mountain
(Yana) root digger hand

(Achomawi) mountain or bear’s foot
(Yana) root digger hand

(Maidu) vine
(Yana) geese

(Maidu) rattlesnake
(Yana) geese

(Wintun) sucker tail
(Yana) long worms in rotten wood.

(Yana) wolf’s eye

Basket styles varied little among the several tribes of the Lassen region. Bottle shapes were never made until after the coming of white man. Cooking baskets were bowl-shaped with high, convexly curved sides, sometimes nearly globular in form. Baskets from which food was eaten individually and general utility baskets were similarly shaped but smaller. Boiling baskets were sometimes without decoration; their dimensions of height and width were about equal. Storage baskets also had about the same shape, curving less, sometimes, but were large, being three feet or more in size. Some were of open work, but usually they were of close or tight weaving.

Flattish bowls or somewhat curved trays were used for food platters as well as for winnowing, parching, and cleaning foods by chafing. Some were of open weave made of willow or hazel (?) only while others were closely woven.

Basketry acorn grinding hoppers also called milling baskets or pounding baskets, were usually regular twined baskets of suitable size and shape: wide mouthed bowl or funnel-shaped. Having no central point from which to start the warp, because of the open bottoms, hopper baskets were started by twining three pine root wefts about the bases of many willow warps to make a circle about five inches in diameter. Additional warps were built up on the radiating ribs, proceeding then in the normal manner of twining. Twined hopper baskets were usually reinforced by lashing one or two strong rings of willow or serviceberry withes. They might also be bound with buckskin along the bottom edges for improved strength and durability as well as to decrease loss of acorn meal during the pounding process. In recent years both mountain Maidu and Atsugewi, also used coiling technique in making hopper baskets, for which purpose it is well suited.

A recent innovation among Atsugewi has been the covering of bottles with basketry and also the weaving of oblong shaped closely twined and coiled baskets, as well as goblet shaped creations.

According to Garth, the seed beater “... was a paddle-shaped implement from one and a half to two feet long with a willow warp and open work twining, also of willow (spaced at three quarters of an inch between rows) across the blade. The handle was wrapped either with willow strips or with buckskin.”

Another important use of basketry was in the construction of cradle boards, or more properly, basket cradles. These are generally known to present day Americans by the incorrect term papoose baskets. The cradle basket is discussed under the heading “Birth and Babies”.

(Yurok) flint
(Yana) zigzagging

(Maidu) quail-tip
(Yana) “sitting up in a series”

(Maidu) vine
(Yana) “braided”

(Yana) mussels

(Maidu) earthworm
(Yana) “braided”

(Yana) mountains

(Yurok) “sitting”
(Yana) “zigzagging and turning back”

(Yana) wolf’s eye

(Yana) trout or salmon tails

(Yana) flint

(Yana) guts

(Atsugewi) skunk’s ear

Beautifully made basketry caps for women, finely twined, spreading bowl-shaped affairs were made by all tribes of the Lassen area. These were nicely decorated on the bottoms—or rather tops—as well as on the sides, a feature lacking on all other types of local baskets. Another unique feature of the basketry cap was the fact that the inside of the hat was abraded by rubbing so that none of the pattern remained visible because all of the overlay on the inside had been worn away. It is suspected that this made the inside of the hat less slippery on the hair so that it did not slip off the head so easily. Removal of the decoration from the inside of the basketry cap in no way altered the appearance or permanence of the outside decorative patterns.

Mats were woven of viscid bulrush, more commonly called tule stalks (Scirpus lacustris or acutus). According to Voegelin, Atsugewi sometimes sewed these together by piercing them with bone needles. However the more usual method of manufacture was that of lashing together the ends of parallel tule stalks laid next to each other. This was done with double cords or strands in the regular simple twining manner which shows up well in the sketch of Atsugewi tule leggings. Such mats were extensively used as bed mats or mattresses, as earth wall coverings, as doorway and ventilator hole hangings, and so on by all of the tribes of the Lassen region. Mountain Maidu also employed broad-leaved cat-tail (Typha latifolia) or narrow-leaved cat-tail (Typha angustifolia) for such purposes on occasion. This tribe also appears to have used a string weft in making at least some of the mats.

Chapter XII
TANNING, CORDAGE, AND GLUE

Mountain Maidu buried bear skins in wet ground, but hides generally were soaked about a week in water by local Indians. Mountain Maidu used ashes to help dehair skins other than deer, but this was not a practice common to other tribes. Stone, or more frequently, shaped deer rib or pelvic bones were used as dehairing scraper tools on skins. The hide was draped over an inclined post and was soaked and squeezed occasionally during the process of scraping.

The tanning agent was a cooked soup of animal brains, particularly those of deer. This material might first have been mashed, mixed with dry moss, and then molded into small cakes for drying and storage. The deer brain agent was well rubbed into the cleaned, soaked skin. It was then allowed to soak overnight in the tanning solution. The next day while drying the skin in the sun, the operator stretched and worked the hide with his hands to make it soft and pliable.

Among Atsugewi the skin was then smoked over a fire of moist rotten logs or green juniper boughs burning in a shallow pit. The skin was laid on a domed framework of willow branches arched over the fire. The hide was turned occasionally to insure uniform treatment. Mr. Garth believes that this smoking process was recently learned. It was not generally practiced by neighboring tribes, but produced superior buckskin which resisted stiffening as a result of subsequent wetting. Even Atsugewi did not smoke other skins.

Nets. a, b, stages in net making; c, tule float; d, net shuttle.

Men did all this work as well as the hunting, skinning, and fashioning of garments from hides. Skins were sewn with bone awls and deer sinew thread which was made by rolling fine deer sinew strands on the thigh with the open hand.

Net making shuttle about fourteen inches long (after Dixon)

The usual Maidu knot for nets (after Dixon)

Carrying net

Like other local tribes, the Maidu used many woven skin blankets. These were fashioned from one inch strips of rabbit fur, especially, but also of the skins of wildcat, cougar, geese, or crows. These were not tanned so that upon drying they twisted or curled like the strands of a rope with the fur or feather side out. Ends were tied together to form a long fur or feather covered rope. This was wound about two poles set upright in the ground six feet or so apart to form the warp for the blanket. More of the same material was then woven up and down as weft to produce a soft and very warm skin blanket which was also quite durable. When bird skins were employed a cord core was threaded thru the center of the twisted strands before weaving for greater strength.

Mountain Maidu also did feather work like that of the Atsugewi, however foothill and valley Maidu did so to a greater extent and of a more elaborate nature.

Willow, serviceberry, and redbud withes, and at lower elevations, lengths of wild grape vines were used for tying purposes. However, Indians also had need for strong and more versatile and more durable string, cord, and rope. These were usually made from vegetable fibers. Atsugewi and mountain Maidu used Indian hemp and milkweed but not nettle or iris fibers as did some other tribes. When mature, but before they became old and brittle, the plants were collected and dried, stripped of leaves, and the flesh was scraped and pounded off leaving the free fibers. String was made by placing two small bundles of fibers parallel and close together on the thigh of the leg. These were rolled up into two strands side by side with one stroke of the open hand moving either up or down the thigh. On the return stroke the two separate and now twisted strands were twisted together into one string. Stout cord was made by repeating the process, substituting two strings for the two bundles of loose fibers this time. To make rope the process was repeated several times, successively doubling the cordage product. As the cordage strands were twined together, the product was held in the left hand, the rolling being done by the right hand on the right thigh.

Nets of good quality were fabricated in a variety of mesh sizes, the uniformity of which was controlled by use of squarish wooden blocks. Shuttles to hold the string for net tying were straight pieces of wood notched at each end and into which the strand was wrapped. As has been pointed out, nets were used chiefly for hunting, fishing, and carrying, although small nets were often worn in the hair by men.

Adhesives were important in the economy of the Indians too. Pine pitch and glue made from the skins of fish were used. A solution of the latter was mixed by the mountain Maidu with certain internal organs of fish and boiled vegetable materials to improve the quality of their glue.

Chapter XIII
TRANSPORTATION

It was the lack of transportation rather than the existence of any which was important to the aboriginal Americans. This was responsible for the degree of isolation which was required to produce the variety of customs and languages in most parts of the “New World”. Introduction of the horse in historic times materially changed the habits of Plains Indians. Likewise the somewhat aggressive Modoc tribe to the north of the Pit River, whose conflict with the whites has been memorialized in Lava Beds National Monument today, became mobile, even prior to the gold rush days, through use of the horse. As a result the Modocs made a number of hit and run raids upon Atsugewi and other tribes and were able to carry off slaves. This was not the traditional mode of warfare.

Transportation among Indians was by foot or by water until recent times. California Indians did not use dogs as beasts of burden as Plains Indians did and as the Eskimos still do. Women did general hauling; men, however, did most of the really heavy carrying. Women used the conical burden basket extensively, but the men did not. Both sexes used the buckskin pack strap which in the case of mountain Maidu passed over the top of the head. Atsugewi pack straps went over the forehead and also over the shoulder across the chest. The brimless basketry cap or hat was used with the packstrap especially among the women. Heavy loads were frequently carried by men upon the shoulder; such burdens were often rolled in mats or animal skins.

Carrying nets made of twisted fibers were commonly employed by men and women among local tribes. Atsugewi used a folded buckskin bag sewed at the edges, with a handle on top, and opening at the side. Yana manufactured an open-work carrying basket too.

In this region loads were never carried on the head, but on occasion might be suspended on a pole and carried between two men. The mountain Maidu also used a litter for the sick, but Atsugewi carried sick persons in burden baskets on their backs.

In rough country crude trails were sometimes built, but this was not a common practice. Generally trails as such were not constructed, but where they existed they had developed as the result of long use along logical routes, in much the same manner as deer and other game trails develop.

To cross streams advantage was taken of logs which had fallen of natural causes. On occasion single logs were felled by burning to serve as bridges. Yana at lower elevations frequently had large streams to cross and smaller trees to utilize. Two logs might be felled parallel and cross sticks lashed on with grapevine for better footing.

Boat Types of Native California (not to scale). a, Yurok (northwestern California) river canoe; b, Klamath (northeastern California) canoe; c, tule balsa.

Distribution of Types of Native California Boat.

a, Dugout canoe b, Dugout canoe c, Tule balsa

Atsugewi dug-out canoe on Hat Creek

In swimming most Indians used a pseudo-breast stroke or swam on their backs with a frog style stroke. Atsugewi also did a “dog paddle” keeping arms under water. Mountain Maidu used swimming techniques which embraced principles like those of white man’s side stroke and crawl. They jumped into the water feet first in preference to headfirst diving. When swimming under water to collect crawfish or mussels a rock was often tied loosely to the back.

Water transportation was not of the same degree of importance to the tribes of the Lassen region that it was to Sacramento Valley, Coastal, and Northwestern Indians. Nevertheless Atsugewi used sharp or blunt ended canoes while that of the mountain Maidu had a shovel-like prow and stern. These were made from pine logs, usually windfalls about two feet in diameter and had a capacity of two to four persons. The logs were hollowed out by controlled burning so that the walls were an inch or two thick. Pitch was rubbed onto portions needing more burning. Water or mud were used to check burning and the charred wood was scraped out with rough angular stones. Local dugout canoes were rather crude affairs. Cracking of the wood was prevented by keeping the boats wet. They were propelled by an unadorned poling rod or by a single bladed square-ended paddle about three feet long. A raft, consisting of three or four logs lashed together, was used as well by all local tribes and propelled by poling.

Atsugewi had another type of craft: the tule balsa—a five foot long raised prow affair made of bundles of tules lashed together. It might be poled or else pushed by a swimmer. Often this raft-like boat was towed by a rope of willow. Atsugewi occasionally ferried children or goods in baskets, while among mountain Maidu swimmers carried children on their backs and carried goods in one hand, raised above the water level, swimming with the other hand.

Chapter XIV
DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PETS

We are apt to think of Indians, especially Plains Indians, riding horses as part of the natural prehistoric scene, yet this was not the case. Although fossil remains in the rocks show clearly the development of the horse over a period of several millions of years on this continent, the horse, the camel, and the rhinoceros—to mention but a few of the spectacular mammals—became extinct on the American continents before the advent of prehistoric man. American Indians had never seen a horse until the coming of the Spanish to the New World in 1540. Likewise domestic cattle, sheep, goats, and chickens were unknown to the aborigines.

The dog was widely distributed, however. Some tribes had large as well as small dogs of a variety of colors. In the Lassen area the dogs were all about the size of small coyotes, mostly with fairly short hair, but there are some reports of long haired dogs. Typically the dogs had small rather erect and pointed ears. Coloration was chiefly fawn colored to brown. Amongst Atsugewi, dogs were usually quite numerous, but certain villages seem to have had only a few. In such cases and among the mountain Maidu, who generally had only few dogs, they were borrowed for hunting. Dogs were almost always named.

Dogs served to warn their owners of the approach of strangers to the village or camp. Mountain Maidu taught their dogs not to bark, but to “sniff” conspicuously as a signal of stranger approach.

Tribes of the Lassen area did not normally keep dogs in their dwelling houses. Atsugewi built separate, domed, bark-covered dog houses, and mountain Maidu built two kinds of shelters for their dogs. One was a subterranean earth-covered dog house, and the other a conical affair of bark slab type construction.

Dogs were widely used in hunting. They were efficient in catching rodents and other small mammals such as ground hogs. They were also useful for treeing mountain lions and were adept at bringing down wounded deer by jumping up and seizing the deers’ ears.

Dogs were not often eaten by tribes in this section of California. Upon death, dogs were not buried, but the bodies were merely thrown out.

Upon death of the dog’s owner, among Atsugewi, the dog was retained by the widow, but among mountain Maidu the dog was suspended in a tree because “It makes dog’s spirit glad”! Although not being generally considered in this account, it is curious that among Modoc and eastern Achomawi dogs were burned at the deaths of their owners.

Bear cubs were commonly kept. Atsugewi also kept fawns and other small mammals as pets. Birds of various sorts were kept by certain tribes. Atsugewi plucked or cut wings of birds, especially of eagles whose feathers were prized for arrow making, and for ceremonial and decorative purposes.

Chapter XV
CLOTHING

The members of all tribes, especially the Yana and Yahi, went bareheaded much of the time. However, basketry caps nearly hemispherical in shape and of fine tightly twined weave were worn regularly by Indian women. The caps were probably worn to prevent chafing of the pack straps originally, but Atsugewi women wore them most of the time. Such hats were well decorated with overlaid designs typical of the tribes under consideration. Those of Yana and Yahi were usually of tule with black and white overlay. Mountain Maidu made some coiled basketry caps, not infrequently employing tules or reeds.

Men of all our tribes wore fur headbands on occasion and among Atsugewi, fur or buckskin caps too, especially in winter, when shallow bucket shaped skin hats of coyote, raccoon, mink and the like afforded protection against the rather intense cold.

Eyeshades attached to a band around the head were worn by some Yana women so as not to see their sons-in-law! Atsugewi men and possibly others might wear side blinds when spearing fish at night to keep torch light out of their eyes.

Children up to about six years of age ran about naked, and often the older men and women did likewise, particularly among the Maidu.

Buckskin dresses were worn to some extent by the women of most local tribes. The mountain Maidu dress was tied at both shoulders and tied or belted at the waist. The garment was provided with flaps over the upper arms but lacked sleeves. Buckskin dresses were worn by some Indian women rich in worldly goods, and usually for special occasions. Recent buckskin dresses, of course, are sewn on sewing machines, neatly tailored, and follow the general pattern of the conventional dress, including regular sleeves.

In normal everyday garb Indian women were naked above the waist. A wrap-around skirt, or, more frequently two narrow or wide aprons were worn. Sometimes one apron went around the hips, being tied in back and provided with a buckskin flap which covered the wearer’s buttocks. The Indian women’s aprons were commonly made of shredded incense-cedar, willow, or juniper bark, or of tules. In the case of Yana and Yahi women, frequently grass or shredded, spring-gathered, broad-leaf maple bark were used. The latter was a favorite valley Maidu skirt material. The double aprons might however be made of whole buckskin or of strips or cords of buckskin, and in winter furs might be used for the purpose. The double apron is recognized as the standard garb of California Indian women. That of the Maidu was often very narrow, being not much more than a front and a rear tassel.

A beautiful old Shasta buckskin woman’s wrap-around apron ornamented with tan, black, and red vegetable fiber bound slitting in the manner of coarse modern hemstitching, with strings of olivella shells and shaped abalone pendants, and finished on the bottom with long buckskin fringes. The garment is much like the more pretentious aprons described for Atsugewi.

Detail of ornamentation on the Shasta buckskin apron

Mountain Maidu woman’s tassel-type of shredded bark apron, about twenty two inches long. Some such aprons were considerably wider (after Dixon).

Woman’s basketry cap probably Atsugewi or Shasta. Note the design placed on top as well as on the sides of the basket, in contrast to other types of baskets. The bottoms of which are devoid both of design and overlay materials and so present an unadorned pine-root surface.

Women’s casual aprons and other clothing were not highly ornamented, but “dress-up” clothes might be fairly elaborately trimmed. Fringing of buckskin, spangles of shell money and ornaments, strings of shell beads, pine nuts, deer hoofs, and special white grass fringes commonly decorated their better clothes.

In the summer some men, and particularly old ones wore nothing at all. Most others wore very little clothing besides a sort of loin covering of buckskin or fur which went between the legs and was held in place back and front by a belt about the waist. A crude buckskin shirt without sleeves was sometimes used.

During winter above aprons, skirts, or loin covering other garments were worn. Then men commonly wore the sleeveless buckskin shirt. Both sexes usually wore robes of woven rabbit skins (usually imported by the Atsugewi), or made of deer or bear fur and worn with the hair side inside. Or else the robes were of a patchwork of small mammal skins sewn together. These same robes were frequently used for bedding at night. As a matter of fact almost any sort of skins available might be used as robes. These were tied on in a variety of ways. The wearers must have presented a rather motley appearance. On occasion small poncho style robes with a central hole for the head and neck clothed the upper bodies of local Indians during cold weather.

Atsugewi fringed buckskin dress of pioneer period

An Atsugewi legging made of lashing tules together with a simple twining stitch

Maidu buckskin moccasin about eleven inches long (after Dixon)

Thumbless mittens were made of cased skins of weasels, rats or small cottontail rabbits and tied at the wrist with a thong. Atsugewi also utilized their fur-lined quivers as muffs when hunting.

California Indians spent much of the time barefoot, but wore buckskin moccasins at war, on long hunts or journeys. Different styles were made by each of the local tribes. None, however, were normally decorated. Mountain Maidu also made moccasins of fur with the hair side in, and Atsugewi stuffed pounded grass or grass into their footwear or wore grass or tule slippers inside their moccasins during the winter. Maidu put soft grass or sedges in their moccasins for added warmth. An extra sole of tougher leather such as elkskin was sometimes sewn onto the moccasin, but this was not customary.

Occasionally open sandals held on by three or four thongs were worn by Atsugewi and Yana.

Maidu snowshoe with raw-hide lashings

Snowshoe of about eighteen inches in diameter (after Dixon)

Knee length leggings of various materials were common in winter. These were tied on with buckskin strips at ankle and knee. Yana used hip-length pantleg type leggings held on with waist bands. Atsugewi sometimes employed fur pieces, twined tule, or spiral wrap-around fur strip leggings. Maidu used deerhide leggings with the hair side inside. These went from ankles to above the knees where they were tied, and were held close to the leg by an outside spirally wound thong from top to bottom.

Snowshoes were a necessity too in the rigorous climate of even the lower portions of the areas inhabited by tribes of the Lassen area, particularly in those of the Atsugewi and mountain Maidu. Snowshoes of the former Indians were circular in plan; those of the latter were oval. Snowshoes were fashioned from small green wooden limbs shaped while hot, and then crisscrossed with strips of buckskin or hide with the fur side down for better traction. Atsugewi used green juniper limbs for the purpose. Since the whole foot was bound firmly to this footgear, there was no heel play as in the case of white mans’ snowshoes.

Chapter XVI
BEAUTY AND PERSONAL GROOMING

Of Atsugewi standards of beauty Garth states: “The ideal woman was short but plump and solidly built so that she could do much work. A slim woman was considered too weak, and a very tall woman was made fun of and called lohkata (stick woman). Heavy breasts, a straight slim nose, large eyes, long black hair, and small feet were all admirable qualities. A girl with big feet was likely to be lazy, also a small foot was desirable because it would not take so large a moccasin. A mother pressed her girl child’s foot together to make it slender. The ideal man was of average height and was heavy set. If a child had a flat nose, his mother pinched it and tried to give it a higher bridge. Bow legs, it was said, might be straightened by the mother when the child was young. Also a child’s ears were pressed against his head; if the ears stood out, this was thought to indicate poor hearing. A slim hand indicated a lazy person; a short stubby hand signified a good worker.”

Garth also comments to the effect that evidently the ideals of Indian beauty had a very practical basis. The same general criteria of beauty and desirability of women seem to have prevailed among the other tribes of this region also, but Yana preferred a rather flat and broad faced feminine beauty.

The hair of both men and women among California Indians was generally worn long. The tribes of the Lassen area were no exception. However, bangs on the forehead were known. Boys and girls let their hair hang loosely, except that Atsugewi sometimes cut small boys’ hair short to make it grow better later.

Women usually parted their hair in the middle wearing it in two hanks, one hanging in front of each shoulder. Each was tied with a piece of rawhide. Women of Yana tribes often used strips of otter or mink fur for the purpose as did some Atsugewi. Yana women might add further decoration in the form of a small string of shell beads. Atsugewi women might paint their scalps at the part in the hair with red paint.

The male Indian tied his hair in a bunch which hung down the back. All local tribes, except mountain Maidu, seem also to have frequently used a small mesh hairnet made of plant fibers with a buckskin band to hold a man’s hair in a sort of roll at the back of his head. Maidu called the net wee-kah. In preparation for war or for the hunt Yana men coiled their hair on their heads with well defined top knots. For dances and other special events, male Maidu and Yana, if rich, wore mesh bonnets thickly covered with white eagle down feathers tied in so that the net strands were not visible. Bone hairpins were sometimes used among Yana and mountain Maidu men.

Men’s hair net type of cap worn by adult males of all Lassen area tribes, the wearer’s long hair being piled on top of the head when worn as in upper sketch (after Dixon) with the loose excess net allowed to fall straight down behind.

NET BUCKSKIN DRAWSTRING CORD

Adults cut their hair off with stone knives to show grief and mourning when relatives died. Both men and women cropped their hair closely, but mountain Maidu women sometimes only trimmed it off to shoulder length. Singeing instead of cutting the hair was sometimes resorted to.

For combing the hair, Atsugewi might use a single stick, a pine cone, or a teasle burr. Mountain Maidu might use stiff pine needles, but the item most commonly used by all tribes for the purpose was the porcupine tail. The animal’s tail was skinned out, stuffed with grass, and sewed shut at the open end. Sharp ends of the porcupine quills were blunted with hot stones.

Hair was not dyed in this region. It was, however, rubbed with animal fat or bone marrow to make it look nicer by aboriginal standards. Atsugewi are said to have perfumed their hair on occasion with aromatic plant foliage. Hair and body lice were not uncommon; these were hunted and removed by hand. Maidu washed their hair frequently with common soaproot (Chlorogalum pomeridianum).

Faces of adults were painted for a number of occasions. Black was used to some extent by both sexes to prevent sunburn and snow-blindness if long exposure in the bright sun were expected. Although Yana men and women used red and white paint when dancing, among our other tribes face paint was used chiefly by men for dances and ceremonies.

Porcupine tail comb about ten inches long (after Dixon)

Paint pigments were mixed with animal fat, especially deer grease, or with marrow and applied with the fingers. It was smeared on upper arms, legs, chest, and cheeks. Atsugewi and mountain Maidu blackened their eyebrows. Red pigment was either red soil, usually roasted or burned to make the color brighter, or the spores from a fungus which grows on the bark of fir trees. The fungus material was dried over a slow fire to prepare it for use. Black pigment was universally charcoal. Ashes were not used as white pigment. Students of local tribes state that chalk was employed for white paint. However, chalk is lacking in the Lassen vicinity and it is highly probable that the suitable and readily available white diatomaceous earth deposits were used for this purpose instead. Atsugewi also used blue color which was obtained in rock form by trade with their northern Pit River or Achomawi neighbors.

The light beards which started to grow on male Indians’ faces were universally removed completely by plucking with the fingers.

Earlobe and nose piercing was generally practiced by both sexes. Among Atsugewi rims of their ears as well as the lobes were perforated in some instances.

Tattooing was occasionally done by Yana, but not as commonly as among Atsugewi where women not infrequently wore tattooed vertical lines across their mouths. Both sexes commonly tattooed their cheeks with horizontal lines or with two or three lines radiating from the corners of the mouth. Arms and legs were also tattooed to a certain extent. The mutilation was done by rubbing charcoal into cuts which had been made with stone knives or by rubbing charcoal on the skin and then pricking it with bone awls or porcupine quills. However, even among Atsugewi, tattooing was by no means universal. Mountain Maidu women were sometimes tattooed with three, five, or seven vertical lines on the chin.

Earrings were worn by nearly all men and women. Atsugewi employed bone rings, clamshell beads, feathers and even painted ear ornaments. Mountain Maidu and Yana usually used bone or wooden ones, plain or decorated with feathers or shells. Abalone, like other sea shells, were received only in trade and were fashioned into pendants for ears or noses.

Nose piercing consisted of making a hole through the septum of the nose. This practice was popular among all local tribes. It was done to permit the wearing of jewelry although Yana ascribed a deeper meaning to the custom as well. They believed that no person would go to his equivalent of heaven unless the nose septum was pierced. Hence this was done to the dead and a stick inserted if it had not been done in life. Two-pointed bone nose-pins were popular inserts as were long narrow dentalium shells, or nose pendants of beads. Only among mountain Maidu were nose ornaments highly decorated.

Portion of Atsugewi (probably) necklace of dentalium shells (one and one fourth inches long) and glass trader beads.

Maidu necklaces: bear claw and insect perforated acorn.

Atsugewi necklace of clamshell disks and digger pine nuts which are a full half inch long.

Necklaces were common adornments too, but local tribes did not use bracelets. Items used for necklaces were perhaps bear teeth and bear claws among Atsugewi and Yana. More commonly, certainly, and used by all of our tribes were olivella shells, shaped pieces of abalone shells, small animal and bird bone rings or tubes, clamshell discs, long tooth-shells (dentalia), and Digger Pine nuts which had been parched until blackened. Their ends had then been rubbed off or holes bored through ends or sides and cleaned out. Yana also made mussel shell disks locally, not only for necklaces but as ear pendants. In later years all tribes used glass trader beads, usually interspersed with native items.

Maidu, especially their tribes of the lower elevations, went in for elaborate feather decorations and headdresses. Valley Maidu even had feather cloaks for ceremonial use.

Chapter XVII
WEALTH

Among local tribes wealth was the direct result of skill and industry and was highly regarded by all. A person’s social status in the tribe varied directly with his wealth. Lazy persons not able to properly care for their own needs were considered as bums and looked down upon by all other members of the village. With wealth went a certain amount of power. Chiefs, although empowered by heritage, were always well to do, and the wealthiest men in smaller units acted in the capacity of head-men.

As with modern man, money among Indians was an arbitrary medium of exchange, yet it was of more practical value to the Indians than our own coins are to us. Their money was prized not only for what it would buy in material things, but as possessing important decorative value as well.

The long tooth-shell or dentalium was used whole and unmodified. It was the currency of the northwest California coast. The money of central and southern California was the clamshell disk. This was cut, smoothed into disk shapes about half an inch in diameter, and each was perforated with a central hole by means of which this money could be strung onto cords. In no case did local tribes travel the California coast to obtain these shell coins. Instead, this item found its way to Indians of the interior through progressive or step-by-step trading from coastal tribes through intermediate aboriginal traders.

As we might expect, dentalia, having a northern origin, were secured by Atsugewi not from their neighbors to the south, but from the northern Yana in exchange for buckskins, arrows, wildcat skin quivers, and woodpecker scalps. The mountain Maidu did not have dentalia at all.

Except for the central Yana custom of measuring the length of strings of clamshell disks, amounts of money were determined by counting and not by measuring length on arm tatoos as was so commonly the case in other parts of California. Skins of small mammals which had been skinned by making only one slit in the hind quarters and whose mouth openings had been tied shut, served as purses.

All of our tribes used clamshell money. Among Yana clamshell disks were not as valuable as dentalia, and they were more common also among Atsugewi, the dentalia being used more for decoration than as money. The tribes of the Lassen region generally received the finished clamshell money; almost never did they manufacture this, although they did work traded abalone shell into jewelry pieces.

Material wealth or treasure other than weapons, skins, baskets, and food also consisted largely of imported seashells. Whole olivella shells were commonly used as dress ornaments and also for paying shamans for services. Bone cylinders, columellae of shells, and especially polished cylinders of the mineral magnesite were highly prized. These might be used as the central piece of a necklace in the same manner that we might utilize a precious gem.

Chapter XVIII
CEREMONIAL DRESS

All local tribes used the beautiful salmon colored feathers of the Red-shafted Flicker, a woodpecker also known to us by the name Yellowhammer. A headband of the bird’s feathers—the stiff quills—was worn on the forehead. Mountain Maidu doctors wore this item also as a belt. In addition Atsugewi made a full feather band which was worn in a variety of ways including hanging down the back. This was usually used only by the shamans.

Another ceremonial item was the California or Acorn Woodpecker scalp headband. This usually had a buckskin strap base, however, mountain Maidu glued these gay feathered patches onto fur bands, Yana wore woodpecker scalps on buckskin as belts.

Mountain Maidu made belts of bands on which the showy greenish feathered neck skins of male Mallard Ducks in mating plumage were strung.

For ceremonial use it was generally customary to tuck small tufts of feathers into the top of the hair. Among Atsugewi, chiefs only used eagle feathers for this purpose. This tribe also fastened single feathers into the crown of buckskin caps in a radiating manner, and also onto strips hanging down the back. Sometimes feathers were tipped with small white feathers to make the former even more decorative. Feathers were also fastened to head nets in a number of ways which differed somewhat among our tribes. Among Atsugewi, women wore these on occasion, but generally it was the males who decked themselves with feathers. Feather plumes of various sorts, employing either twisted buckskin or stick bodies, were also in general use.

Chapter XIX
TOBACCO AND SMOKING

The knowledge and use of tobacco are among the important elements which our own culture of today has inherited from the Indians of North America. Of what benefit this has been is a debatable matter, but its effect has been profound, both on our customs and our economy.

Local tribes used simple one piece wooden pipes of tubular design for the most part in smoking tobacco. Atsugewi and mountain Maidu commonly employed elder and other woods with a pithy and easily removed center. Although not otherwise being considered in this account, the Shasta Indian technique of pipe making is mentioned here because of its uniqueness. These folks hollowed pipe stems by soaking the end of a suitable stick in salmon oil. The larvae of the salmon fly were then introduced, and these worm-like creatures, eating the nourishing fishy core, would bore their ways lengthwise through the center of the heartwood where most of the salmon oil was concentrated. The Yana habitually used the wood of ash as pipe stock. Mountain Maidu found but did not manufacture a few simple stone pipe bowls also of tubular design. These had considerable spiritual significance and were treated with great care. Garth states that Atsugewi also had short stone pipes, tubular in shape, to which elder or rose wood extensions up to eleven inches in length were applied. Stone pipes were apparently not common in the Lassen region, however.

Steatite stone pipes were used without wooden stems, each between three and four inches long. The holes in such pipes were made by tapping a deer antler piece in the depression containing some sand, a slow but effective boring process. This was commonly done by Valley tribes.

Yana reddish porous lava (dacite?) pipe, broken half, both sides shown. Note funnel-shaped depression in the bottom of the outside (lower half)

Pipes were used at social gatherings, after sweating, and at bed time. The pipes of the local tribes did not have any bends or curves. These straight tubular pipes were therefore most conveniently smoked when the Indians were reclining on their backs thus keeping the tobacco from falling out. Pipes were normally passed around, and used only by the men. However, women shamans of the mountain Maidu also smoked them. Shamans regularly used pipe smoking in ceremonies, especially when healing the sick.

Tobacco grew wild and burning of brush was performed in certain localities to promote the growth of Nicotiana plants. Tobacco was not cultivated, but mountain Maidu did collect and scatter seeds in favorable areas. Tobacco was prepared merely by collecting the leaves when fully developed but still green, then drying, preferably in the shade, and finally crumbling the cured leaf in the hand. Tobacco was carried in buckskin pouches usually. Atsugewi often added manzanita and deer grease to their smoking tobacco. Indians of this region did not chew tobacco nor did they eat it with lime as was the custom elsewhere in California. Native tobacco is quite strong.

Chapter XX
MUSIC AND ART

Music of local tribes was limited indeed. It was usually made by men. Only Atsugewi among the Lassen tribes possessed the drum, and this is believed to have been of recent introduction. It was a tambourine type: flat, cylindrical, a foot or so across, and with buckskin shrunken over one end.

The shamans of all tribes used cocoon rattles. These were made of large cocoons from which the moth pupae had been removed through a small hole. Pebbles or seeds were then inserted and usually five or six cocoons—among Atsugewi as many as thirty—were tied onto the end of a wooden handle and dried. Cocoon rattles were considered dangerous and were usually kept hidden out of doors, being used by shamans only when doctoring.

A single split stick clapper was employed generally for all types of singing and dancing, not being reserved for any special type of person or ceremony.

Deer-hoof rattles were made from the small hard “dew-claws” from the backs of deer legs. About twenty dew-claws were tied loosely with thongs to a strip of buckskin which was then wrapped about a stick with a plain handle. The deer-hoof rattle was operated by vigorously jerking it lengthwise, in and out. It was used exclusively in the important puberty rites when girls attained womanhood.

Deer-hoof rattle, length about ten inches (after Dixon)

Maidu split-stick clapper, twenty inches long

Maidu cocoon rattle eight inches long

Maidu bird-bone whistles

Atsugewi deer-claw rattle

Universal split-stick dancing rattle

Maidu cocoon rattle

Flute and bull-roarer of local manufacture

Atsugewi and Yana employed hunting bows as musical instruments by holding one end in the mouth and plucking the string with fingers. Mountain Maidu did so too, but like the others only for their own amusement.

Bone, cane, and elder whistles were blown at dances. Flutes, the most tuneful of Indians’ instruments, were not played at ceremonies or at dances, curiously enough, but just for self amusement, or in the case of mountain Maidu also for courting pretty girls. Flute melodies were supposed to tell stories, but words were not sung to help the interpretation. Yana made a six-hole flute; other tribes of the Lassen area used a four hole model. In all cases they were open, reedless instruments blown at an angle across one end. The flute was most frequently made of elder wood—mountain Maidu burned the holes into it with live coals.

Except for basketry designs art as such is virtually non-existent. A few simple designs were painted onto hunting bows, and some nose and ear pendants might be considered jewelry art forms, but of the lowest development. The application of face and body paints and tattooing were also simple examples of Indian art.

There appear to be no cliff or cave paintings in the vicinity of Lassen Peak, but they are abundant in Lava Beds National Monument about 75 miles to the north. A different matter is that of petroglyphs which, in California, usually have been made by striking or pecking smooth rock surfaces with small hard stones. Some of these are to be found in the Atsugewi and central Yana territories at lower elevation. However, these symbolic markings were not executed by the local tribes. Atsugewi believe them to have been made by mythological characters. It appears that the petroglyphs must have been made by the predecessors of the Hat Creek and Nozi Indians, for these people claim no knowledge of even the meaning of the rock writings. Shortly before going to press the first petroglyph known to come from the Lassen vicinity was found in the territory of the Southern Yana. The site is one where numerous obsidian chips and arrowpoints have been found on a gently south sloping, open forested portion of Lassen Volcanic National Park headquarters area at an elevation of almost 5000 feet and situated slightly west of the village of Mineral and just north of the north edge of Battle Creek Meadow.

This find on a 10 inch boulder appears to be of ancient origin. The surface has weathered considerably yet not so much that the character of the carving has been altered. It is apparent that the quarter inch deep grooves have been made by rubbing rather than by pecking with hard rocks. This is all the more interesting since the boulder bearing the carving is of a tough hard and site lava. It is indeed unfortunate that the significance of this Battle Creek Meadows petroglyph is unknown. The authorities venture the opinion that the stone may have been used in puberty ceremonies. If so, whether by the Southern Yana or their predecessors we do not know either.

Battle Creek Meadows petroglyph about nine inches long. The eye-shaped area A is a smooth flat one eighth of an inch below the level of the rest of the rock surface. The grooves bounding it are more than one quarter inch deep and of V-shaped cross-section while the other markings are much shallower troughs with rounded bottoms some being quite vague. B, C, D, and E indicate deeper rounded depressions. F is a smooth and very uniform slightly concave area.

Chapter XXI
GAMES AND SOCIAL GATHERINGS

Heavy betting on games was the rule. Games were commonly played between neighboring villages or even on occasion with neighboring tribes. Gambling was an important element in these contests and large sums were bet. Sometimes nearly all of a person’s or even of a group’s possessions were at stake. Evaluation of the stakes in white man’s terms is difficult, but they are said frequently to have been of the order of several hundred dollars or even as much as a thousand dollars. Important games lasted more than one day—perhaps three or four days. The players caught brief rests only and were completely exhausted by the time the playing was over. Singing was the usual accompaniment and high quality rendition at games was much admired. Cheating was rare, maybe because it was supposed to bring subsequent bad luck.

Most games were guessing games. There was considerable variety in the character and number of gambling stones or wooden sticks used, the manner of shuffling and other details. The sticks were shuffled and then concealed in the hands of one or several players on one side. The opposition had to determine the location of the marked stick or the arrangement of several. There were many spectators and excitement ran high. Women occasionally participated along with the men who were the main contestants. Counting sticks might be supplied to each side in equal number at the beginning. More often, however, the sticks were all placed in a common pile at the outset, the successful side taking a counting stick with each win. These scoring sticks were taken and surrendered as the tide of the game changed until one side had all. The game was won at this point.

Ball games were played too. The ball was of buckskin stuffed with hair. The object was to kick the ball between the other team’s goal posts. Kicking ball races over given courses and back, or around a lake shore, were also indulged in. In some contests the men and youths on opposing sides would engage in restraining each other so that a number of individual or group wrestling bouts developed on the playing field.

Yana gambling bone, four inches long

There were foot races of distances either short or up to fifteen miles or so in length. Also archery contests and wrestling matches were held. In wrestling the object was to throw the opponent to the ground; tripping was not allowed. Contests in which heavy rocks were tossed, somewhat in the manner of today’s shot-put, and heavier rocks carried in competition over a designated line were other games in which the Atsugewi engaged.

Shinny was played by women and children as well as by men, but adult sexes played separately in all of our tribes except Yana. Among them only men participated in this game. Mountain Maidu had three players on a side; Atsugewi had five players. Straight shinny sticks curved at the striking end were used and the puck was a hide affair. Mountain Maidu used a double ball puck. An attempt was made to keep the puck in the air in play. The object, of course, was to get the puck to go between the opponents’ goal posts. The Yana used a puck of two bones linked by a string several inches long. Running with the puck on the stick as well as hitting, and throwing it down the field were permitted.

Children improvised a number of games in the same manner as our own children do today in copying their parents. They played house with limbless but dressed dolls, made and used toy bows and arrows, and made sling shots, too. They commonly tried juggling two stones in one hand, spun acorn tops by hand, and in some instances noise makers such as wooden buzzers and bull roarers were used. In play, loud noise was not condoned, however.

Small feasts might occur at any time and were perhaps the most important social gatherings of Atsugewi. They were usually sparked by a temporary abundance of food. Dancing was not included.

Child’s acorn top

Mr. Garth describes the Atsugewi “... grand occasion ... held only when a large supply of food had been accumulated, was the bagapi or ‘big time’.... The chief called a meeting to decide on the date and then sent his people to various places for deer and other foods. Knotted strings (rokuki) with a knot tied for each intervening day before the festival were sent to other villages. By untying a knot each day other chieftains knew when to start for the host’s village. The host chief stood on the roof of his earth lodge and welcomed the visitor, calling each chief by name: ‘Don’t fall down. Step carefully. I’m glad you have come to see me. Don’t be in a hurry.’... Toward evening the visitors might give a dance, after which the host chief called everyone to eat. Large baskets containing acorn mush, meat, sunflower seeds, and other foods were placed on the ground. The host proffered baskets of food to each visiting chief who in turn then distributed the food to his people. In winter two tribal groups on opposite sides of the sweat house might have a competitive sweat dance, vying to see which could endure the heat longest. In summer the sweating was usually omitted, and games of chance were begun. In the several days that followed, foot racing, archery, weight lifting, and other contests were indulged in. Large bets were made by opposing sides on the outcome of each contest, and the losing side at the end of the week’s festivities often had little property left. Surplus food was divided among the guests before they departed.”

Chapter XXII
DANCES

Mountain Maidu had more dances and more types of dances than other tribes of the Lassen area. Tribes of the Sacramento Valley had many more and more complicated dance ceremonies than ours did.

Mountain Maidu had formalized sweat dances which were performed inside large dwelling lodges at night and were participated in by both sexes. As in the case of Yana, only one man, the leader, sang and hit the central pole rhythmically with a split stick rattle. The dancers performed simultaneously but in one spot until they were exhausted and took a cold swim afterwards.

Of the less ceremonial Atsugewi sweat dance, Garth states:

“... Men danced naked except for circlets ... of twisted grass around the waist, head and upper arm, and occasionally from one shoulder diagonally across the chest.... Three or four lines of black or white paint might be drawn across the chest and upper arm. Women wore a skirt and only a small amount of paint. The dancing took place in the combination sweat, dance, and dwelling house of the chief or head man.... The fire was built high with dry mountain mahogany ..., pine ..., and sometimes with willow ..., all woods which burned without much smoke; the ventilator door was closed and the dance began. The one singer sat in a corner and beat time with a split stick rattle.... Each of ten or twelve dancers might approach close to the fire to show his ability to endure heat, pick up burning brands, one in each hand, and alternately hit one upper arm and then the other with the brands. The heat often became so intense that water had to be thrown on the center post to prevent its catching fire. There was rivalry to see who could stay inside longest, and after a time one man after another emerged and dived into the icy water nearby or rolled in the snow. There might be sweating three or four nights in succession on the occasion of a communal hunt.”

Mountain Maidu held a dance gathering each spring for Black Bear and Grizzly Bear. They believed that this dance had been done by animals in mythical “before Indian times”. This gathering lasted three days and nights, but the actual dance was in progress only one day and night. Only women danced but men participated in the ceremony dressed in bear robes. There was much feasting too.

The pre- and post-war dances are discussed under the chapter on war.

Chapter XXIII
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF TRIBES

Tribes, as we think of them, were non-existent as political units, and hence there were no tribal chiefs, but there were village chiefs, in the California province.

The self governing unit was always a village or a group of small closely adjacent villages. This is the political unit which was governed by the chief. Villages might consist of from four to about twenty-five earth lodges and bark huts with populations of from twenty-five to a hundred or more persons. Influential leaders, usually of much wealth—but not necessarily so—were recognized as head-men, exercising considerable authority over the smaller villages or separated groups of houses near villages. However the head-man’s authority was subservient to that of the chief.

Chieftainship was inherited through the father’s lineage, the oldest son being the first in succession. However, if the son were too young to take over, the deceased chief’s brother was temporarily in charge. The qualities of good character and knowledge were also important qualifications for chieftainship, and a chief could be deposed if he were not a good one. Tenure was normally for life, dependent upon satisfactory behavior and performance of his responsibilities.

The chief’s relatives hunted and fished for him, but he fed visitors and provided most of the food for feasts. The chief always directed community economic activities such as group fishing, deer hunting, and root digging expeditions. For this reason chiefs had to know much about game, fish runs, ripening seasons, et cetera, and had to possess good judgement to insure success of group undertakings. Chiefs also spoke to their people mornings and evenings, and at ceremonies and the like. Chiefs furthermore declared days of rest when chores were done about home. Another function was to arbitrate quarrels among the people.

Mountain Maidu villages had assistant chiefs besides, who were sons or brothers of the chiefs. This assistant advised the chief and substituted for him as the occasion demanded. A specific duty of his was the division of food at ceremonies.

Some chiefs had secondary female chiefs who in the case of the Maidu were daughters, among Atsugewi the chiefs’ wives. A woman in this capacity supervised preparation of food for feasts and in Atsugewi villages might give orders to men.

Atsugewi chiefs appointed clowns at ceremonies who were paid. Appointed messengers were a part of every chief’s staff. They were selected on the basis of both willingness to serve and ability. Maidu had about six messengers per village while the number varied among Atsugewi. Messengers were good speakers, reliable men, and were discharged if they failed in their duties. These included not only message running, but among Atsugewi, tending fires at ceremonies. For Maidu chiefs, messengers welcomed guests and traveled about gathering news and scouting. Special fire tenders were appointed in this tribe.

Atsugewi chiefs seem to have possessed greater prestige and authority than those of the mountain Maidu, the Yana, and the Yahi. The decisions of Atsugewi chiefs were final, but these had to be diplomatic if the chief were to remain popular. If a chief were unpopular some of his people would move to another village leaving the first chief’s community numerically weaker. Chiefs were generally well obeyed by rich and poor alike. In return, chiefs unfailingly had the interests of their people at heart. Atsugewi chiefs, specifically, set examples of industry, behavior, and judgement for their people. No doubt this was generally true of the chiefs of units in other local tribes too.

Because of the greater popularity, prestige, and consequently larger following of some individual chiefs, they were considerably more powerful than other chiefs in the same tribe. Such men were influential to some extent beyond the boundaries of their own territories.

Chapter XXIV
WAR AND PEACE

Wars were commonly small scale encounters and might be either within tribes or between tribes. Atsugewi were not often aggressive. Most tribes at one time or another had differences with neighboring tribes, but friendly relations were usually re-established soon. Certain tribes, however, were repeatedly or traditionally enemies, as for instance, Klamath, Paiute, or Modoc against Atsugewi; Washoe against mountain Maidu; Achomawi or Wintun against the Yana tribes; and mountain Maidu or Wintun against Yahi. Tribes sometimes helped each other in wars, and either payment or reciprocal aid was usually forthcoming.

Causes of hostilities in the Lassen area were usually revenge for murders (if uncompensated), abduction of women and children, or insults to chiefs. Mountain Maidu, Yana, and Yahi also waged wars on account of poaching, rape, alleged witchcraft, and the like. All able bodied men normally went to war, but mountain Maidu left some at home to protect the women.

Chiefs generally did not participate in the fighting although they often went along on the war expedition. Instead of leading the battles themselves, chiefs appointed special warrior leaders who were principal targets of the opposition. Such battle leaders were often head-men, but always were men competent to lead the fight and who had good arrow dodging power.

Shamans habitually went to war, but did not fight actively except on occasion. They were busy singing during battle and urging the warriors on or exhorting supernatural help. The Atsugewi shaman reportedly “stayed behind a tree all the time giving out his power”.

Preparation for war consisted of practicing dodging arrows, shooting arrows, in some cases at effigies, and in dancing. The main purpose of the preparation was to incite enthusiasm for the fight. This was so successful that quite a commotion developed in the community, to the extent that such incidents occurred as warriors with knives chasing women and a man shooting his own dog with an arrow! Preparatory war dances were held outside near the villages. Both men and women participated and shamans sang. Mountain Maidu sustained their dances for several days. Warriors spoke to their arrows addressing them as persons. Atsugewi men painted themselves with white and black stripes on faces, limbs, and bodies. Yana used red and white war paint. Mountain Maidu wore head nets and bands. Dried untanned skins of bear, elk, and such were worn at dances as well as in battle, as were waistcoat armors of strong vertical sticks lashed together. Leather helmets were worn by some warriors.

The enemy was usually attacked just at dawn using the element of surprise to the fullest extent possible. Some battles were pre-arranged in which a number of participants faced each other in well formed lines. Such conflicts were subject to “calling off” if too many men were injured or killed. Serious raids, however, did not give quarter and men, women, and children were killed. Booty was taken and scalps, too, were stripped from fallen victims. Scalps were later burned by Atsugewi, but mountain Maidu dried human scalps on frames. This tribe also took entire heads from bodies on occasion. Prisoners were taken too: Atsugewi not infrequently adopted captured children. Captive women might be mistreated and raped, then killed. Adult prisoners might escape with relative ease because there was no suitable way to confine them permanently, and some were returned voluntarily.

While the war party was away on its expedition, the women at home danced individually in the manner of the war dance. They sang and prayed to help the men at war. Atsugewi women dancers carried feathers, bows, and arrows, but rattles were not used in these morale dances.

Upon return of the war party a victory dance was held in or near the village in the open air. Men and women danced independently, but together at the same time. Atsugewi men painted themselves red and white instead of the black and white used for the pre-war dance. They wore headdresses of all sorts and the warriors carried their bows, arrows, armor, and other fighting gear while dancing. The victory dance took place around a fire. Next to the fire Atsugewi planted a short pole on which the new scalps were displayed while mountain Maidu danced with the scalps secured to hand-carried sticks. It is worth noting that while some readers may consider this gloating over human scalps to be a primitive morbidity, it is true that often white men—the very pioneers we eulogize—took and coveted human scalps themselves.

Warriors, particularly those who had killed adversaries, purified themselves by swimming, rubbing aromatic plants on their bodies, praying for luck. They did not eat meat for from a few to many days, depending on the tribe. Among Atsugewi they also sweated with the same end in view, and women brushed the men’s bodies with plant materials to aid the purification process.

Surprisingly, the eating of hot foods and any form of meat was taboo to wounded warriors. This seems strange, since these are the very foods which we consider beneficial to injured persons.

When an attack appeared likely upon an Atsugewi village, the whole population retired to high ground which was easily defended. Such sites were prepared in advance and might be considered crude forts as they were surrounded by rock walls and provided with shelters for the non-combatants.

In intertribal wars there was usually no compensation as such made where the encounter had been motivated by the satisfaction of securing revenge. In the case of feuds or murders within the tribe payment was made to relatives of the slain. If persons on both sides were slain compensation was made for all the dead. The chief or head-man supervised the peace negotiations. Payment was usually in beads or money, but Atsugewi sometimes paid off in women or in the amount of the usual price of a bride. In this tribe too, the amount of compensation was made according to the wealth of the victim. A poor man’s life was not considered to be worth as much as a rich man’s. Atsugewi had a settlement dance meeting in which both sides were present and wore fighting regalia. These dancers disarmed themselves after the payment had been made.

Chapter XXV
BIRTH AND BABIES

The natural function of birth obviously varied only in details of handling the situation, delivery assistance, disposition of the afterbirth, and methods of cutting and treating the child’s umbilical cord. The baby was born in a separate hut which contained a trench heated with coals. These were covered with grass and pine needles or fir boughs. On this warm green bed the woman lay at least a part of the time during labor and also after delivery.

Children were desired and a barren woman was looked down on socially. Inability to produce children was grounds for divorce. The behavior of both parents during pregnancy was believed to closely affect personality and health of the child.

After giving birth, the mother remained in isolation for from nearly a week to a month or more. Many taboos were imposed upon her. Bathing in streams and sweat baths, eating fresh or dried meat or fish, grease, and often salt were forbidden to her. Most tribes of the Lassen area also prohibited combing of the mother’s hair by herself during the period of isolation. Also taboo was scratching herself with her hands, making baskets, preparing food, or traveling.

Front and side views of Atsugewi cradle basket for a very young baby. (tseh-nay-gow)

Atsugewi young baby carrying basket or teseh-nay-gow

There were restrictions on the father of the newly born child too. Among Atsugewi and Yana he stayed with the mother, but mountain Maidu fathers stayed away for periods of a week or less. Immediately after the birth had taken place, the father ran to the woods to break up and bring home quantities of fire-wood. Hunting and fishing of all kinds and traveling were taboo for several weeks in most cases. Atsugewi and mountain Maidu new fathers were also forbidden to smoke and gamble, and like their wives, were denied eating fresh or dried fish, meat, and grease for varying periods up to a month. Release from taboos occurred with sweating and bathing among Atsugewi and mountain Maidu. Fathers in these tribes also gave away the first kill when they resumed hunting.

The mother generally massaged the infant to improve the shape and proportion of nose, face, limbs, and torso. Shedding of the baby’s umbilical cord was an important event which the Indians wished to occur as soon as possible. A variety of odd practices to this end were employed. The occurrence of the event relieved the parents of some, or in other cases of all, the post birth taboos. Among most of our tribes the dried cord was saved until the child reached manhood or womanhood. It was customarily secured to the cradle basket, but frequently was subsequently lost. Earlobes might be pierced in early infancy especially if the child were prone to cry much.

Atsugewi older baby carrying basket or yah-birr-dee. Note the rounded bottom on A, a modernization. Partial illustration B shows old style construction with a pointed bottom for thrusting into the ground.

Two cradle baskets were used. Mountain Maidu made two of similar oval shape, but the first and smaller one was without a hood. Atsugewi and Yana tribes made two different types, but both with rounded carrying handles and sunshades on top. These were constructed of willow ribs, pine root, and buckskin. The first small basket was called tseh-nay-gow by Atsugewi and was used for several months. It was short and with a distinctly rounded basketry shelf or lip at its lower end. The larger baby basket was called yah-bih-dee and was practically identical to that of the mountain Maidu. This was made of the usual twined basketry materials, but was of different construction. Willow ribs were lashed onto a sturdy one-piece forked branch frame, the joint being at the bottom. The base or stem of this Y-piece stuck out below for several inches being sharpened so that it could be stuck into the ground near the mother in camp or when she was out digging roots in the fields. Boo-noo-koo-ee-menorra tells of an interesting modification of the yah-bih-dee today. Its frame is now simply rounded at the bottom instead of having the pointed end described above. “Most people have cars now a days” she says, “and that point poked a hole through the seat of the car. So now we make the round kind.” Our visitors to Lassen Volcanic National Park are always interested in names of the “papoose basket”. This term and the words moccasin, wampum, and so on are no doubt of Indian origin being the actual words or reasonable facsimiles thereof used by some eastern tribe for the objects concerned. English speaking Americans have adopted these names as meaning those particular articles for all Indian tribes. It may be recalled that earlier in this book, it was pointed out that each tribe had its own distinct language and so, obviously, each tribe would have had its own distinct names for these objects. Hence there is no all inclusive “Indian name” for the cradle basket or anything else.

Maidu baby carrying basket about thirty five inches long.

The baby was wrapped in tanned buckskin or soft furs, normally wildcat by the Atsugewi. A pad of grass or padded bark was placed on the cradle board or basket and then the child was lashed into the tshe-nay-gow with buckskin straps in a sitting position on the sill with its feet hanging down. Most tribes used dry grass, pounded until soft, for diapers, but mountain Maidu used skin material for the purpose. Babies were kept in the cradle baskets until they were able to walk. The cradle frame was carried on the mother’s back with a tump-line passing over her forehead or chest. A series of larger cradle baskets were made as the child grew, usually three before the child was allowed to crawl or walk.

The newborn infant was never fed the colostrum from its mother. The baby was either let go without food or given a cooked meat gruel for nourishment for the first two days or so until bonafide milk was produced in the mother’s breasts. Children were nursed as often as they wished and until they were quite large: even three or four years old.

Names were given to children usually at the age of about a year. Yana waited even longer, however, until ages of four to six years before giving real names which for this tribe were habitually of a hereditary nature. In the meantime, temporary descriptive nicknames were given. Many real Atsugewi names had meanings, while those of mountain Maidu and Yana normally did not. Nevertheless, Yana and to a certain extent other Indians too, might acquire additional nicknames and descriptive names later in life, even in adulthood.

Twins were unwanted among all local tribes, probably because of the double care and feeding responsibilities involved. Mountain Maidu thought that twins were bad luck and actually feared them. It was generally believed that twins were caused by the mother having eaten twinned nutmeats. These, therefore, were carefully avoided.

Killing newborn babies whether illegitimate, twins, crippled, or when the mother died in childbirth, was practiced only on very rare occasions. Certainly infanticide was not the rule among any of the local tribes, but of course was practiced in certain other areas.

Yana baby cradle basket for young baby.

Chapter XXVI
ADULTHOOD RITES

A girl’s attainment of puberty or womanhood was an event of obvious importance and it was recognized as such by all tribes of the Lassen region with extensive formal ritual and ceremony for each individual girl. Only the more important and generally employed taboos and rites are noted below. There was considerable variation in details of such matters even among the four tribes with which we are dealing.

The girl was secluded in a separate hut for from three to six days and sometimes during the nights too. The taboos she observed during this time were much like those imposed on a mother giving birth, but were even more extensive. The young lady must eat from her own special baskets, not cross streams, avoid contacting men—especially hunters, refrain from gazing at the sun or moon, et cetera. Among things she must do were to wear a basketry cap, or special head bands among some tribes, and have her hair put up in two knobs wrapped over her shoulders. This had to be done for her as she was not allowed to touch her own hair. Carrying the deer-hoof rattle she must run races with other girls, and dance much also, scratch her head only with a special scratcher, have her earlobes pierced if this had not already been done, and frequently her nose septum was punctured too, being kept open by insertion of a round stick. Among Wintun tribes of the Sacramento Valley some taboos lasted for from one to three years!

For several nights public dances were held which lasted all night. Since there was no special ritual for anyone but the girl for whom the dances were held, these ceremonies were of a joyous nature and were popular and well attended. In the middle of the night food provided by the girl’s family was served to all present. Singing with deer-hoof rattle accompaniment was carried on all night. Intimate affairs between couples were not unusual during such dances. During the daytime as well dances were held, but these were of short duration and participated in chiefly by the women of the village. At the end of the ordeal the girl bathed and was given new clothes, ending her taboos.

There was no formal ceremony when boys attained manhood except that the youths were generally sent alone into the neighboring mountains for several days to seek special “powers” to give them skill and luck in certain pursuits such as deer hunting, archery, fighting, shamanism, and the like.

During menstruation all women had to observe many taboos too. These included eating alone and living in seclusion. They could eat no meat or fish, fat, or salt, and must not cook. They must avoid sick persons and hunters, and could not scratch themselves except with the scratching stick. At the end of the taboo periods of four or five days, they usually bathed in streams for purification.

Curiously, wives’ menstruations had to be observed by their husbands in a number of ways. Most common was prohibition of smoking, and they must eat lightly. Among mountain Maidu the husband could hunt and fish, but could not eat any flesh; among Atsugewi the reverse was true.

Chapter XXVII
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

Marriage itself was not formalized with any ceremony. It was common practice for parents to arrange marriages when children were young and these arrangements, which involved some exchange of gifts or payment, were usually honored later. Most other marriages were arranged by parents later when the children had reached maturity and generally these recognized the children’s wishes. Both of these types of marriages were the basis for extensive exchange of presents and visits, details of which differed among the several tribes. In addition there was almost universal payment for the girl—about ten strings of clamshell disks was standard. The boy and girl became husband and wife simply upon starting to live together, but the new status was usually marked by a feast participated in by the families concerned. Generally there followed a period of residence of the couple with one or both of the in-laws. On occasion marriages grew from intimacies with no parental negotiations, but such matches were not well regarded by the community.

Indian men frequently married women from other villages and occasionally even women from other tribes.

If a wife died her sister was generally obliged to marry the widower. Likewise, if the husband died it was customary that his brother would marry the widow. A wise institution was the relationship of the husband and wife with their in-laws. Neither could speak to nor hand things directly to the in-law of opposite sex, or in some cases even to the brothers and sisters of the in-laws; such things had to be done by a third party. In some instances the mother-in-law even avoided looking at her son-in-law even though she might like him. Such arrangements no doubt prevented many arguments and quarrels, but as far as their own evaluation of these customs were concerned, the basis lay in the belief that a bear might eat either or both of the violators of the in-law taboos.

The practice of having more than one wife at a time was common. One man might have three or four wives, but rarely had more than two at a time. Rich men or head-men and chiefs were most apt to have more than two wives.

Divorce was simple indeed. The man just sent the girl back home if she were barren, lazy, promiscuous, or the like. If he had good reasons for wanting to get rid of his wife, her purchase price might be refunded by her family, or else the ex-wife’s sister might be sent to him in exchange, or, sometimes, in addition with no additional payment. On the other hand, the wife might leave her husband if she had been badly mistreated, or if the husband did not provide enough meat and clothing for the family or if he were unfaithful. In divorce the children were divided. Usually, but not always, the girls remained with their mother and the boys with their father. However, divorce was not common among Indians of this region.

On the whole, morals were high and sexual deviations were infrequent, although the whole range of such practices were known to the aborigines. It appears beyond argument that divorces, moral laxity, and sexual aberrations increased with the coming of white man.

Chapter XXVIII
DEATH AND BURIAL

Atsugewi and mountain Maidu left the corpse in the house for one day. They prepared it for burial by dressing it well and adding bead necklaces, then wrapping it in a hide. Yana did the same, washing the body first, and although also adorning the corpse with jewelry, they always removed decorative nose ornaments, replacing these with simple sticks. According to Voegelin, Atsugewi removed the body for burial prone and feet first through the wall of the house, but Garth states that the body was removed through the southern ventilator passage or through the regular entrance way in the roof.

The mountain Maidu, Yana, Yahi, and usually the Atsugewi bent the body into a position called flexed. The arms were folded across the chest and the knees were drawn up against the stomach before wrapping the corpse in a robe which was then sewn shut. The mountain Maidu sometimes put the wrapped cadaver into a large basket. Voegelin was of the opinion that Atsugewi buried their dead lying flat on their backs, and if so, always with the head toward the east. It is thought that this prone burial might be a recent innovation learned from white man.

Mourners among all of our local tribes wailed aloud and brought gifts for the dead. Women, especially the older ones, mourned vigorously. To quote Garth again on Atsugewi, of their mourning he states:

“The deceased’s close relatives mourned the hardest, but friends might also mourn——‘to make them feel better.’ Mourners cried and rolled on the ground, throwing dirt and hot ashes in their faces and hair. Some, in their grief, tried to commit suicide, and a close watch had to be kept over them to prevent their doing so. Favorite methods were to swallow small bits of (obsidian) or to eat a certain kind of spider. Mourners were warned not to cry around the house near the body but to go to the hills to cry, and also not to look down when crying or to cry too much. Otherwise they were subject to bad dreams in which spirits would plague them and possibly kill them. A mourner might acquire power at this time. A widow, with possibly a sister to help her, would wail for a time at daybreak and again in the evening. This lasted for two or three months, sometimes longer. A widower seldom cried more than two or three weeks. The widow visited places at which she had camped with her husband, broke up utensils left there, burned down the brush where he was accustomed to cut wood, and piled up rocks where they had slept together. A widower behaved in similar fashion.... If death occurred in a village, no entertainments could be held for a time; otherwise relatives of the deceased had the right to break things up and throw them around. A man would not sing or attend a ‘big time’ gathering until at least a year after death of a close relative.”

If the lodge were to be lived in again, after a person had died in it, Atsugewi brought in juniper boughs, and these were burned to purify the house. Bark huts, however, were always burned down after an occupant had died.

Mountain Maidu children were kept away from the dead and from the funeral proceedings. In that tribe and probably among all local tribes, if the deceased were rich the funeral would be much larger and more pretentious than if the person had been poor. In the former case the ceremony was followed by a feast. Other tribes buried the dead in the evening generally within twenty-four hours after death, but Yana waited three or four days. Mountain Maidu grave diggers put grass in their mouths. Small shallow graves sufficed for poor people, in fact, among Atsugewi, at least, poor people were often buried in small depressions in lava flows and covered over with convenient rocks.

Enroute to Atsugewi burials no one was permitted to look back, and water was sprinkled along the path to prevent the dead person’s spirit from returning to the village. At the grave the dead were asked aloud please not to look back, for if they did other members of their families would die soon.

Cremation, that is, burning of corpses was rare among tribes of the Lassen area. At the battlefield and in other instances of death far from home, especially in the case of mountain Maidu, burning was done occasionally. After this the bones were collected, wrapped in buckskin, and then buried.

The flexed bodies of the dead were always placed in graves facing eastward. Widows customarily attempted to throw themselves into the graves, but were restrained from doing so. A basket of water was invariably placed next to the body, and most personal property of the deceased was broken and also placed in the grave. The amount of property so disposed of varied with the tribe. Mountain Maidu and especially the Yana tribes put practically everything in the grave. The latter even went so far as to include many gifts of a nature not normally associated with the sex. Aprons and baskets, for instance, might be placed in a man’s burial. Among Atsugewi the relatives retained some of the property of the deceased. Atsugewi might place some food on the grave and mark it with a vertical stick, but it was not tended later, and the site was generally soon lost.

In winter a person might be buried shallowly in the floor of a living house. Next spring the house would be torn down and the dirt walls caved in. There was variation not only between, but within tribes as to the final disposition of houses of the deceased. They might be burned down, a common practice, or they were torn down, abandoned, temporarily deserted, or torn down and rebuilt. If to be lived in again, purification of some sort was always practiced, either by burning juniper boughs in the house, smoking tobacco, bringing in aromatic plants, or treating the main beams. Among Yana tribes the family seems to have habitually abandoned the house right after the funeral and to have burned the whole thing including property and food of all the inmates, retaining only the barest necessities of life such as sleeping robes.

Among Atsugewi all mourners had to deny themselves meat and fresh fish for one day; then they sweated and swam after the funeral. Mountain Maidu mourners, including all persons who had had any part in the funeral, had to undergo four or five days taboo on eating all flesh. They also had to eat alone and from separate dishes, do head scratching with special sticks only, were allowed no hunting, gambling, intercourse, or smoking. Purification of those persons contaminated by participation in burial included swimming and washing every day that the taboos were in effect.

Only Atsugewi, of all local tribes, are said to have practiced suicide, though unquestionably it did occur on occasion among all California Indians.

Mentioning the name of the deceased in the presence of his relatives was considered very poor taste, and was actually forbidden in some cases.

It was forbidden that the widow touch the corpse, so that relatives had to prepare the body for burial. After the funeral, the widow always cut her hair off closely. If an Atsugewi, she made a belt out of it, and the hair belt was then often decorated with shells. In all local tribes the widow traditionally covered her whole head and face with pitch and covered this with white diatomaceous earth or black charcoal. Touching her head or face (the whole body for mountain Maidu) with fingers was taboo; she could do this only with the scratching stick which mountain Maidu widows wore around the neck. Raggedy, ill-looking clothes were worn by the survivor, and Atsugewi widows put pitch on old basketry caps to be worn. A mourning necklace was worn at all times, made of lumps of hard pitch strung onto a fiber string. This was worn until remarriage, which was usually two or three years for Atsugewi and one to three years for mountain Maidu. Pitch on the face and head was normally left on until it wore off of its own accord.

The mourning conduct of grieving men who had lost their wives in death was not nearly so lengthy or as rigorous as was that of widows. Widowers cut their hair too, but among Atsugewi the only other observance required was abstinence of flesh eating for a day. Mountain Maidu widowers spent one sleepless night out in the mountains. Widowers did not generally sing at dances and at “big times” for about a year, but this was not compulsory. The Yana are said to have stayed away from dances for two or three years.

Parents mourning the loss of children cut their hair slightly and placed some pitch on hair or faces. The Atsugewi mother observed a three day meat taboo and the Maidu father went to the hills to seek power. However, loss of a baby in birth or before its navel cord dropped off was considered a more serious situation. Such bereaved parents gave all of their belongings away in order to make a fresh start.

Anniversary mourning rites were not conducted in the Lassen region. An exception was the rare instance among Atsugewi when a child was sick at a time just three years after the death of its parent. Under such circumstances a shaman sang over the child and the whole remaining family and relatives mourned, later washing themselves. With respect to the general lack of mourning anniversaries it is of interest that the foothill (northeast) Maidu held elaborate annual burnings for several years after death of relatives. At these great mourning dance ceremonies large quantities of valuable possessions were burned as sacrifices to honor the dead.

Chapter XXIX
COUNTING, TIME, AND PLACE

Counting on the fingers was usual practice. Mountain Maidu started with their thumbs while Atsugewi began on the little finger of one hand and counted across to that on the other hand, and toes were used for the purpose too. To help in counting, tribes also employed sticks to represent groups of numbers: Atsugewi used sticks to represent 1’s, 5’s, 10’s, and hundreds. Yana frequently used a stick to represent the unit 20. This is presumed to be a natural unit because it is the sum of all of a person’s fingers and toes.

Time of day, of course, was not expressed in any unit like our hour, but roughly by the position of the sun in its daily course overhead. Seven to nine positions were referred to descriptively in this respect plus early, mid, and late night.

Phases of the moon were most practical and were universally used as a longer measure of time. The succession of new moon cycles were named and an old man in the village customarily kept track of these by memory. As might be expected from this system, in which there was no recording, arguments ensued over just which moon or “month” was currently in effect. One full course of the moon’s phases takes just about a month, so the names for Indians’ moons corresponded nearly to our month names.

All local tribes recognized four seasons. These were identified by the positions of certain stars among mountain Maidu, but more generally by the positions of the rising sun with respect to a certain peak, tree, or similar fixed object. Some Indians kept track of the seasons by watching the daily progression of a beam of sunlight coming through the smoke hole of a house and falling upon its floor or wall. The shortest day of the year naturally was marked by the most southerly progression of the sun. This was noted by the Indians, no doubt with joy in the realization that longer days and, somewhat later, warmer weather were to be expected. The year started with the beginning of November when Indians of the Lassen area had left the high elevation hunting grounds on the flanks of Lassen Peak, had collected their stores of acorn and salmon, and were warmly settled in their winter quarters. Mountain Maidu seem to have used names for only the nine moons most important to them.

There was no calendar as such, but the number of days until a certain “big time” or other event was kept track of by either cutting off or untying one knot in a knotted cord or thong each day. Years were not recorded either, but were measured within the memory span as so many winters ago, or by relating time to some important event, such as a war which most persons might remember.

Directions were pointed out, or in speech were referred to as sunrise and sunset for east and west respectively. Directions were commonly given with respect to features of the local geography: in the direction of such and such a village or toward a named river, spring, or mountain which was conspicuous or generally known. We must remember that the territories of our local tribes were small and that the terrain was intimately known. Specific names were not only given to the conspicuous features of the topography, but among Atsugewi, at least, virtually every flat, every draw, and every hill was specifically named, and these names were known to all members of the tribe. Names of places in the territories of other tribes were not known by the local names of those tribes. They were either translated or given its own entirely different set of names by the first tribe. In other words, each tribe had different names for all places—a very confusing situation. Dixon reports that Maidu recognized directions as we know them, but that the northeast or mountain Maidu had five: west, northwest (the direction of Lassen Peak), north, east, and south.

Chapter XXX
CONCEPTS OF SUN, MOON, AND STARS

Mountain Maidu and Atsugewi believed the sun to be a female human—the wife—and the moon to be a male human—the husband. This is a reversal of the sex ascribed to these bodies by some other tribes. They believed that the figure of a frog was visible in the moon.

Atsugewi stated that Frog fought Moon and swallowed him and the next time that Moon swallowed Frog who is now in the center of the moon. When Moon and Frog fought, the former was not round, but crescent shaped. Yana stated that in the moon they could see Moon’s wife, Frog. Pine Marten snapped his evil father-in-law Moon into the sky by means of bending a springy tree ’way down and suddenly letting it go. He used the same system to snap Frog and her two daughters into the sky also.

To Atsugewi, as to most tribes, the phases of the moon: new, full, and waning, represented birth, life, and death—repeated every four weeks, although, of course, none of the Indians had the concept of a “week” such as we have. All through the year Atsugewi greeted the new moon. Old persons shook themselves, and their clothes and bedding in its presence. Younger folks ran and jumped toward the moon. If the points or horns of the new moon crescent were vertical it was a bad omen indicating sickness or death. Babies were shown the new moon, and in the case of both Atsugewi and mountain Maidu, babies’ faces and arms were rubbed in the new moonlight to make them grow fast. All local tribes addressed the moon aloud in friendly terms as if it were a personal relative. The Yana prayed to it. In contrast to Atsugewi reaction to vertical position of the two moon points, the Yana and mountain Maidu accepted this as meaning good fortune and good weather ahead. To these tribes horizontal position of the moon crescent in the winter sky denoted that it was full of water and indicated pending rains or storms. At other seasons both horns up foretold of death. Yana thought that both sun and moon were feminine.

After its daily trip across the sky, Atsugewi thought that the sun returned to the east in a blue cloud via the side of the earth. As the sun and the moon passed each other at the side of the earth, they decided on the weather for the following day. The moon supplied the cold and the sun the heat.

Eclipses of sun and moon were believed by Yana to be due to their dogs devouring them. Atsugewi and mountain Maidu felt that the heavenly bodies were dying. The former were of the opinion that Lizard was eating Sun or Moon as the case might be. They shouted loudly, shot arrows into the air toward the eclipse and beat all available female dogs. Mountain Maidu thought that Frog was eating Moon or Sun.

A reddish moon foretold of disaster and was a sign of war for Atsugewi, but to Yana it meant hot weather ahead.

Only a few star groups of the night sky were named.

Yana thought the constellation we call the Belt of Orion was Coyote’s arrow. All local tribes believed the Milky Way to be a road, or river in some cases, which was traveled by departing spirits or souls of the dead. Shooting or Falling stars, (more properly meteorites) presaged good weather to the Atsugewi who thought these were torches carried by spirits from one house to another in the sky. For this tribe too, a single conspicuous star—no doubt a planet—seen near the moon was an evil sign. If the star were on the left someone nearby would die soon; if it lay to the right of the moon someone farther away was doomed.

Atsugewi called the Seven Sisters wir-etisu. These girls were seduced by a little rabbit boy at a puberty dance. They became ashamed and went up in the sky to become stars. The Big Dipper was called Coyote’s Cane. Maidu thought that stars were made of something soft like buckskin.

Chapter XXXI
WEATHER PHENOMENA

As mentioned in the preceding chapter, weather was determined by agreement between sun and moon, but it appears that many things could influence their decisions.

Atsugewi assumed it to be the natural thing that it would sprinkle a little after a funeral. They also felt that rolling rocks down mountain sides or loud shouting in the mountains would cause rain. Furthermore they believed that the occurrence of precipitation could be influenced by shamans, if they felt like it, by smoking tobacco while looking at the sun. The nature of the spirit of a girl, whose ears were pierced at this time, was also thought to either cause it to rain or to stop doing so according to her spirit power.

Rainbows brought good wild crops as far as the Atsugewi were concerned. However, both they and mountain Maidu were of the opinion that pointing with a finger at a rainbow, particularly among children would cause the finger to become crooked or to fall off.

Thunder and lightning were feared by all tribes of the Lassen region. To Atsugewi thunder was the shouting of an old man who wears a rabbit skin and who goes about looking for women whom he kills. Mountain Maidu thought it to be due to an old man who lives up above and who was once a boy on earth, but who had been sent away because he was too fast and ate everything in sight. How he made the noise we do not know.

Also, according to Dixon, “Thunder is thought to be a man or boy of miraculous abilities. He eats trees chiefly. Had it not been for Mosquito, however, Thunder would have preyed on people. Mosquito deceived him, and refused to let Thunder know whence the blood and meat he brought came. Had Thunder found out that Mosquito obtained these from people, they, and not the trees, would have been his prey.” To Yana, thunder was a mythical dog originally: “... a child dug from the ground who accompanied Flint Boy to the west in the guise of a dog. He remained behind in the black storm clouds capping Bally Mountain, a high peak west of Redding, whence his terrific bark could be heard as thunder.”

Atsugewi and mountain Maidu, fearing thunder and lightning, talked to them and told them to go away. Old men in the latter tribe carried burning sticks in a circle to help drive them away. Atsugewi placed skins, preferably raccoon, on sticks held up in the air. They would wave these around and call aloud words to the effect that there are: “Too many rattlesnakes here, go some other place!”. Not only that, but frequently during a thunder storm, especially if violent, they would run into open areas, and sometimes even jump into water. Lightning was thought to be the weapon of the old man, Thunder Person, mentioned above. It came out of his mouth. Apparently Thunder Person was thought to assume the form of a raccoon on occasion. Maidu also believed that it would thunder whenever a person was bitten by a rattlesnake or when a great man died or when a woman had a miscarriage.

Whirlwinds were generally regarded as evil omens which sickened people with bad dreams and captured peoples’ shadows or spirits. Indians tried to dodge or hide from them. They spoke informally to whirlwinds. Mountain Maidu said that they put pains into people. Whenever possible, Maidu smoked tobacco when talking to whirlwinds. Atsugewi threw dirt and water at the dust devils in an effort to destroy them. Yana did likewise, but they did not believe that spirits were inside of whirlwinds.

Chapter XXXII
EARTHQUAKE BELIEFS

Lassen Peak and its vicinity are subject to many local earthquakes today. The geologic nature of the area indicates that this has been so for thousands of years. Lassen Peak was known to the Atsugewi as Wicuhirdiki, which has no meaning. The area was thought to be inhabited by a powerful spirit, but Garth notes that there seemed to be no fear about hunting and fishing there, and the Indians apparently utilized the hot springs medicinally. Garth recorded one pertinent bit of Atsugewi (Apwaruge) myth as follows:

“There once was an earthquake that shook this country up and made those boulders out on the flat shake. It shook so much that it made people sick. There was a very old woman whose hair was almost green. She picked up a rock and pounded it on another rock while she sang. She was praying for the world to stop shaking. Soon she got an answer, and the shaking ceased. Many people were killed. Those who lived in canyons were covered by rocks that were shaken down.”

Yana interpretation of the perplexing and frightening phenomenon of earthquakes is tied in, as we might expect, with mythology as follows, to quote from Sapir and Spier:

“A series of fabulous malignant beings were conceived as dwelling in certain localities. In the Sacramento River were water grizzlies (hat-en-na) which pulled fishermen down to devour (them).... They were spotted black and white, like dogs. Somewhere (not specified) was a serpent (e-k-u) which killed people. Near Terry’s mill were believed to dwell malignant little beings (yo-yautsgi), like little children. They often enticed people and ate them up. At a marshy spot and spring on Round Mountain, called Ha-mupdi (?), dwelled a being called Mo-s-ugi-yauna who caused the ground to shake when he was displeased.

“Once Mo-s-ugi-yauna made a little baby of himself and put himself in the road of two women. One of them took it up and in sport gave it one of her nipples to suck, though she was really without milk. The baby kept sucking until the girl tried to take her breast away, but without success. The baby kept sucking at her, sucked up her flesh, and at last sucked up her whole body.

“This being was displeased if strangers came near and talked anything but Yana. Once some Yreka Indians came and talked Chinook jargon at that place, whereupon the earth began to shake violently. At last the owner of the place cried out to Mo-s-ugi-yauna that it was not he who had thus spoken and begged him ‘in the doctor way’ to stop, whereupon he did.”

Chapter XXXIII
CREATION BELIEFS AND OTHER LEGENDS

All local Indians believed in a mythical age when animals were persons and talked to each other. Both Atsugewi and mountain Maidu thought that floods played a part in the past scheme of things before people were created by gifted animal ancestors.

Garth relates that “Atsugewi mythology tells of the successive creation of two former worlds, the first of which was destroyed by a great flood and the second by a fire which Coyote instigated in an attempt to kill his rival, Grey Fox. After this both Coyote and Grey Fox descended from the heavens on a long rope to the primeval sea below. Here Grey Fox took combings from his fur (in some accounts a piece of sod) and proceeded to make land of it, stretching it to all sides until the present earth was made, in concept a large island floating in the sea. Grey Fox then created trees, animals, and finally people. The sun and moon were two brothers whom Grey Fox told to mount into the sky to light the world, the one during the day and the other at night.... Grey Fox first wanted to create two moons and two suns, but Coyote objected saying that it would be too hot. Grey Fox then made only the sun and one moon.”

In a somewhat different version, Dixon has recorded that the Atsugewi “... recount how, in the beginning, there was only the illimitable sea and the cloudless sky. Slowly in the sky a tiny cloud began to form, and grew till it reached considerable proportions. Then gradually it condensed, and, becoming solid, became the Silver-Gray Fox, the Creator. Then arose immediately a fog; and from this, as it condensed, and coagulated as it were, arose Coyote. By a process of long-continued and intense thought, the Creator created a canoe into which both he and Coyote descended, and for long years floated and drifted aimlessly therein, till, the canoe having become moss-grown and decayed, they had, perforce, to consider the necessity of creating a world whereon they might take refuge.”

The Yana legends quoted below from Gifford and Klimek (first) and from Sapir and Spier are from the northern and central tribes, of that people. These legends are given in lieu of those of southern Yana and Yahi, with which this book should be concerned, because of the similarity of the culture of these four tribes. It is extremely unlikely that there would be very great differences in their legends and beliefs of creation. Obviously each tribe had its own unique details.

North Yana: “Coyote, assistant creator, was marplot (the evil schemer) who brought death into the world as follows: Coyote, his two sons, and other people went down-stream to get clamshells. The people played. Coyote’s sons seized the clamshells and ran off with them. One escaped with the stolen shells, but the other was killed. The Coyote boy who escaped shouted to Old Man Coyote, who sat in his assembly house and observed daily what transpired. Coyote boy told the old man his brother was dead. Old Coyote then mourned for his son. Silver Fox told him not to cry, but to clean the assembly house and bring in the dead boy. They strewed the floor with straw and built fire. Silver Fox told old Coyote to lie down and pretend to sleep. ‘Do not move,’ said Silver Fox. This was to cause dead boy to revive. They started to cut old Coyote’s belly to get back the spirit of his dead son. Old Coyote shouted with pain and said: ‘Let him stay dead. The dead shall remain dead.’ Thus he spoiled Silver Fox’s plan for resurrection.”

Central Yana: “... the creation of people took place at Wama-riwi, a village at the cove north of Battle Creek and several miles west of the present Shingletown, that is, roughly at the center of Yana territory. Here in the beginning were Lizard and Cottontail (in Dixon’s version, Lizard, Gray Squirrel, and Coyote; in Curtin’s, Silkworm) who had no predecessors. Discussing how people shall be made, Lizard lays down sticks which they carry to the four directions to become neighboring Indian tribes. Realizing that they have omitted those at the center, they put down bad (short) sticks there. Hence the Yana are shorter than any of their neighbors: a view held by the Yana and repeated by Powers as fact. In Dixon’s version (from the same informant) Lizard carefully prepares three sticks for Atsugewi, Wintun, and Achomawi, and as an afterthought, short sticks for the Yana. The first three are placed to the east, west, and north; the others are boiled to transform them into humans. Coyote refuses to recognize them until they speak properly, that is, the Yana tongue. Curtin’s version is quite different, although still the Yana are created from sticks: his presumably Northern Yana informant, himself a chief, placed the locale in his own country, at Round Mountain. Here Silkworm puts down three sticks, for the Yana chief, a woman, and an orphan, and a large number around the first for common people; he instructs them how to procure food and admonishes that they obey the chief.

“The origin of sex, or rather its proper attribution rests in the circumstance that in the beginning, women were men; men were women. The women were such poor hunters that people starved. To remedy this, Cottontail placed stones in a fire; when the women were seated, the stones burst, cutting their proper organs, and the women became men. Hands were then webbed like Lizard’s. In order that they might handle bows and pestles, Lizard, experimenting, cut his fingers apart. With this as a model, he separated those of humans. (In Curtin’s version, Water Lizard remedies the defect for himself alone.) In the beginning when people died, they rose from their graves again. Coyote, who objected to these improvements of human affairs, not only proposes that they shall stay dead but stamps down a dead man who would rise. When his own son dies, he changes his mind, but Lizard, Cottontail, and Gray Squirrel will have none of it, so that death and mourning were established forever.”

Again Garth is here quoted on Atsugewi beliefs: “As in most of northern California there are numerous natural phenomena in Atsugewi territory which marked some mythological event. A low cone-like rock in Dixie Valley was said to be a basket belonging to Coyote. About four miles south of Pittville on the old village site of Mawakasui was an oblong rock ten feet or so in length which was said to be the petrified remains of a lizard whom Butterfly had killed. The extremely rough tongue of lava-covered land extending down the center of Hat Creek Valley was created by Porcupine to impede Coyote with whom Porcupine was running a race. Eagle Lake was said to have been formerly in Atsuge territory, but Coyote tired of the manzanita berries and camass roots which the people fed to him here, so he moved the lake to the Apwaruge country. Here the people fed him epos roots and treated him better.”

The Maidu concept of the world according to Dixon is that of “... floating on the surface of a great sea, but anchored by five ropes stretched by the Creator, which hold the island steady, and prevent it from drifting about. Occasionally some being seizes these ropes and shakes them, and this causes earthquakes. The world was flat when first made from the bit of mud brought up from the depths of the primeval sea by the turtle (turtle does not appear in the northeast or mountain Maidu version) or from the robin’s nest floating in the sea. Later the Creator and the Coyote went about over the world, making the rivers and mountains. Coyote was in general responsible for the latter, and for the extreme roughness of the country....” The Creator’s stone canoe is said to be visible today on top of Keddie Peak just north of Indian Valley (Greenville); also his and Coyote’s dance houses may be seen as huge circular depressions at what is now Durham (near Chico).

In his extensive collection of Maidu myths, Dixon observes that “Throughout the myths there is nowhere any suggestion that the Maidu had any knowledge of any other region, that they were immigrants in the land where they live. This complete absence of any migration tradition is a feature which is very characteristic, and serves to differentiate the mythology not only of the Maidu, but of most Californian tribes, from that of the Southwest, and much of the eastern portion of the continent.”

He further states: “here the creation is a real beginning: beyond it, there is nothing. In the beginning was only the great sea, calm and unlimited, to which, down from the clear sky, the Creator came, or on which he and Coyote were floating in a canoe. Of the origin of previous place of abode of either Creator or Coyote, the Maidu know nothing....”

“... the whole series of tales told by the stock ... appeared to follow one another in a more or less regular and recognized order. Beginning with the creation, a rather systematic chain of events leads up to the appearance of the ancestors of the present Indians, with whose coming the mythic cycle came to a close. This mythic era, the be-be-ito, seems to fall into a number of periods, with each of which a group or set of myths has to deal. First, we have the coming of Ko-do-yan-pe (Earth-Namer or Creator) and Coyote, their discovery of this world, and the preparation of it for the ‘first people’; next the creation of these first people, and the making and planting of the germs of the human race, the Indians, who were to come after; third, the long period during which the first people were in conflict, and were in the end changed to the various animals in the present world. In this period Earth-Maker tries to put an end to Coyote, whose evil ways and wishes are in direct contrast to his own.” Creator was always dignified and striving to make life easy, happy, and deathless for mankind, while Coyote, a trickster and amorous knave, worked with continued success to render life difficult for man with the result that man’s lot is to suffer and finally to die. This belief was generally uniform among the tribes of the Lassen area. “... During this period Earth-Maker strives for a last time in vain with Coyote, his defeat, and disappearance toward the East coincident with the appearance of the human race, which bursts forth from the spots where the original pairs had been buried long before.” These potential human beings had been made “... as tiny wooden figures by the Creator, and planted here and there in pairs, that they might grow in secret and safety during the time of monsters and great conflicts....”

In other myths also there is great similarity among the Maidu, Atsugewi, Yana, and Yahi. Dixon says concerning “... The theft of fire, for instance.... In all, the fire is held by a man and his daughters, and is discovered largely through the agency of the Lizard; the fire is watched and guarded by a sentinel bird, is stolen in consequence of his sleeping while on guard, and pursuit by the women is hindered by the strings of their skirts being cut as they sleep. The fire is brought back by a group of animals, among whom the fire is divided for safety; and the pursuers, who are usually Thunder, and his two daughters Rain and Hail, are put to flight.”

Chapter XXXIV
MEDICAL TREATMENT

The bulk of the important doctoring was done by shamans or medicine men. This was all based on supernatural faith and fear. As we know from advances of our modern civilization in the field of psychosomatic medicine, such “in the mind” cures were highly effective in practice. With all due respect to the modern medical profession, it is a foregone conclusion that from 50% to 75% of the patients of today’s general medical doctor are going to get well eventually without any bonafide medical treatment anyway. This percentage favored the shamans too.

Besides shamans there were secondary Indian doctors called herbalists. Among Atsugewi, these persons did not have the power of shamans, and could not cure disease, but only check or weaken it. However, this class of doctor did administer various medicines internally and externally, and gave treatments which may actually have been—in some cases—of benefit beyond mere faith healing. These remedies were handed down, as was all Indian knowledge, by word of mouth from generation to generation. Old men taught the young.

Herbalists were able to make snake bite victims recover; treatment included sucking the wound. Cauterization or burning of affected parts was practiced. Atsugewi treated rheumatism in patients with vapor baths in a trench of hot coals on which pine needles and yerba santa or mountain balm branches were placed, with a robe over all.

Mountain Maidu smoked wild parsnip for headaches, colds, and wounds. Mountain Maidu and Atsugewi believed that toothaches were caused by the presence of worms in the teeth. Corrective poultices were placed on the cheek. Yana did this too, but placed a hot stone on the poultice, and also bit on a mole’s front foot, dried, to relieve the pain. Atsugewi often set the poultice on fire which might leave permanent scars.

The seeds of rosinweed, a member of the sunflower family, were collected, then shelled, cooked, dried, and finally pounded. This medicine was taken for chills. Wild iris roots were chewed raw for coughing.

Decoctions, that is, water in which plants had been boiled to extract their medicinal juices, were drunk. California angelica, a member of the parsley family, was used in this way for colds, diarrhea, headache, et cetera. This medication was popular with all local tribes for treating many ills.

Yana used poultices of roots of bracken fern, pounded and warmed for application to burns. The bulbs of false solomon seal were pounded fine and also hot soap-root poultices were applied to swellings, pains, or boils. Peeled California angelica roots were crushed and laid on aching heads.

Ground squirrel grease was used to soften rough hands and to relieve cracking of the skin from chapping.

Atsugewi employed green leaves of chokecherry, pounded as poultices, for cuts, sores, and bruises. The boiled liquor of pounded chokecherry bark was used for bathing wounds to promote healing.

They employed decoctions of wormwood to prevent blood poisoning and to treat cuts. Decoctions of greenleaf manzanita leaves were good for cuts and burns. Both oak bark and oak gall decoctions were drunk to prevent infection and catching colds and were given to women in childbirth. Atsugewi also chewed raw juniper berries as a treatment for colds.

Obviously there was a host of other treatments as we know of a large variety of other plants, roots, and fruits which were used medicinally.

Broken bones were set as best they could be set, and were bound up in simple but effective splints.

For general good health Garth states that an Atsugewi “... man chewed the top shoot off a young pine tree. Especially was this done by a father after his wife bore a child.”

In Yana sweat houses and probably in those of other tribes too, veins were cut with obsidian chips to “let the bad blood out” if a person felt ill.

Chapter XXXV
SPIRITS AND GHOSTS

Ghosts and spirits were one and the same, and were to local Indians as souls are conceived by white man, yet the Indian conception was more variable. Some spirits were good and others were evil, but all were feared and avoided whenever possible. They were frequently associated with omens and had somewhat the appearance of human beings. Among Atsugewi they were visible only to shamans, but were heard by nearly all persons. Yana commoners both saw and heard spirits, but only very rarely.

The spirit left the body right after death. Mountain Maidu thought that it turned back once before going on. Yana believed that the spirit tarried in the vicinity of the body for a while, going to the south first briefly for a sort of trial or evaluation which included determination as to whether or not the nose septum had been pierced. Then, as all local Indians apparently agreed, the ghost or spirit went to a distant place in the west via the Milky Way. Yana thought that there was some distinction in destination of good and bad persons’ ghosts, but our other tribes conceived only of one place for all spirits finally. We do not today have a very clear understanding of the aboriginal Indian concept of heaven except that people lived in this land of the dead in sweat houses, hunting, eating, loving, and sleeping, but with complete absence of sickness. Concepts of the life of spirits changed with the coming of the whites preceding even the advent of pioneer settler days. All information in that regard which students have been able to gain from informants in this region is decidedly flavored with Christian dogma.

Spirits or ghosts returned to old haunts of the body on occasion or, more often, to the vicinity of the grave. For this reason burial grounds were usually well removed from villages. Bad smells would drive spirits away, while whistling and flowers attracted them. Fiber-wound crossed sticks were hung in sweat houses of Yana tribes to keep spirits out. All tribes of the Lassen area thought that ghosts visited the living in dreams and also considered it feasible that the spirits of people might go to visit those of the dead when the persons were asleep, or more commonly when the living were unconscious.

Mountain Maidu didn’t speak much about ghosts, but if one had been making a nuisance of itself by visiting much in dreams, they fed it by having all members of the family throw small portions of food into the fire before commencing to eat their meals. Besides, a shaman was hired under these circumstances to sing for the dreamer. The same ceremony was observed by the Atsugewi. It was also the practice of the dreamer in this tribe to eat with a dog, spitting out some of the food, saying to the dog, “You better eat for me. Take that spirit away.” Atsugewi were evidently very conscious of ghosts for they spoke to them, spit out chewed epos roots for the spirits, smoked tobacco for them, burned hair and skin to repel them, and tobacco and feather bundles were hung near the house doorways for their benefit. New Atsugewi parents had a unique ritual at the time of their first meat eating after the taboos of childbirth—they chewed small amounts of meat and put this on their toes for the dogs to eat.

Garth says of Atsugewi spirit beliefs: “A man who was about to die, whether he felt sick or not, had a peculiar odor about him. If he went hunting, deer ran from him saying, ‘Phew, that man smells bad.’ Coyotes and dogs would come close to him and bark at him. He would die unless a shaman could remove this aura of death from him.”

There were many omens of a spirit nature which foretold calamity. To Atsugewi upon hearing the cries of certain animals at night, especially if an owl hooted at one, or if one saw a kingsnake, death was supposed to descend upon a relative.

If evil spirits frightened a person and tried to steal his soul, the spirits could be foiled by standing with one’s feet widely spread apart. If followed by a ghost, a person might turn around, retracing his footsteps while the spirit continued in the direction one had been traveling initially.

When a person was asleep his spirit could wander around. If, during these wanderings, a bad spirit caught the person’s spirit before he could awaken, the person was deprived of it.

Also the spirit on occasion left a person voluntarily if it didn’t like the body, as for instance, if it smelled badly. When a person’s spirit or soul were gone, only the heart was left to keep him alive, and he would succumb easily to the first sickness. For this reason, Atsugewi shamans periodically examined all the people to see if any spirits were missing. When anyone was found lacking his spirit, the shaman had to work to bring it back, sucking it into the person’s head. If several spirits were missing at once, it was not easy to get the right spirit back into its own body. They didn’t know what would happen if a person got the wrong soul back into his body—but it wasn’t good.

Chapter XXXVI
SHAMANISM AND DOCTORING

Shamans or doctors, more commonly known to modern Americans by the name medicine men, were important in the lives of all Indians but, among ours, probably to the highest degree among the Maidu. Whether we, with our scientific enlightenment today, are after all happier and of greater peace of mind, than the aborigines were or not, is a philosophical consideration beyond the scope of this book. The fact of the matter is that mankind in the past invariably has resorted to the supernatural to explain things not understood. Indians are a case in point—being totally without scientific explanations, mysticism and the supernatural pervaded their whole culture—their every day activities—to a point which to us today seems fantastic, yet understandable in a way. If you and I had been in the Indian’s place, might not we also have subscribed whole heartedly to these same beliefs with which we would have grown up, and which our loved and trusted elders had taught us in good faith? Shamanism gave to the Indians a feeling of comfort and, shall we say, security?—a sort of foundation of faith which all men must have for the living of reasonably satisfying lives.

Shamans were men of influence in the village, with prestige second only to that of the chief. Women shamans were uncommon and usually possessed less potent power. The life of a shaman was precarious because if he failed to effect a high percentage of cures or if he were “proven” responsible for sending pains which caused death to persons, he might be killed—sometimes even with the advance approval of the chief, and without retaliation by the offending shaman’s relatives. When this was done, he was cut into pieces, not for the morbid reasons, the reader might suspect, but for the practical reason that the parts of his body could in this way be disposed of in widely scattered places. Otherwise there was the danger that he might, with the help of his power, be reassembled and again be able to continue his malpractice and to include his murderers among future victims.

There were several kinds of shamans among the local Indians. Each tribe in the Lassen area had the all important Sucking Shaman. Atsugewi and mountain Maidu also had special Bear, Rattlesnake, and Weather Shamans while only Yana had Singing Shamans in addition.

The power of shamans was much more potent than mere “luck” which came easily to the majority of ordinary mortals in dreams, during puberty ceremonies, and the like. This “luck” was a weak supernatural blessing which was not sought, but came voluntarily and gave the person skill and success in crafts and daily pursuits such as fishing, hunting certain animals or birds, canoe making, et cetera.

It would be impractical in this book to give the complicated and voluminous details of all phases of shamanism as conceived and practiced by each of the four local tribes. The following information has been somewhat generalized in the hope that the reader will get the “feel” of the shaman concept which was essentially the same for all the tribes of the Lassen area.

Power was usually sought by men desiring to be shamans, but all were not successful in such quests. On the other hand shamanistic power came to some voluntarily, and it was dangerous not to accept this power if it came to one. To refuse might cause death. One could tell when one was successful in getting power because one would bleed from the nose or mouth. He would also learn to sing and dance, and would receive instructions and paraphernalia from his guardian spirit.

Shamanistic power could be acquired in a number of ways, not all of which applied to each tribe being considered. A rare means was by inheritance. If an old shaman had power and if this power or guardian spirit liked his son or nephew, it would say “Sometimes I’m going to play with that boy” and so it goes to the boy. At sundown the latter listens to it sing to him and he gets the power. The boy learns about it in the vision and from the old shaman’s instructions.

Small portions of yellow hammer or red-shafted quill headbands.

Another infrequent way to gain power was involuntarily when seriously ill, while in a trance, or when dreaming.

The third and usual method of acquiring the shamanistic power was by vision quest. It was a difficult ordeal. This might be undertaken at various times of life, but most commonly at or near puberty. In questing power there was no assurance of success, no matter how sincere a person might be, or how hard he might try. Successful shamans could quest repeatedly for additional powers.

Youths were prepared for questing by being lectured to by fathers or uncles who also pierced their nose septa. Each youth went alone and unclothed into certain portions of the mountains for several days and nights. He slept little and fasted, eating little or nothing at all; all flesh was taboo. The questing usually included swimming in lakes or special pools and placing the nose piercing stick in an underwater niche, and (Yana) securing certain bird feathers. He built a fire, smoking his body over it, and cut himself deliberately. If successful, the power came to him in a trance or faint producing bleeding from the nose or mouth.

The guardian spirit communicated with the novice, appearing in a vision usually. It gave instructions and taught its special ceremonial song. To shamans of some tribes the guardian spirit looked something like a human; to others it looked like a bug or like a small hair. This was the “pain” or poison object and yet was considered to be a guardian spirit at the same time. This is what the novice acquired in becoming a shaman. This pain or guardian spirit could come from any of many sources. It was alive and could talk, and gave the novice certain resultant powers. Most commonly powers were from animals such as coyote, bear, and the like, but also might come from sun, moon, wind, thunder and lightning, eagle, hawk, small birds, reptiles, frog, or oldman spirit.

The novice then acquired what we might call magic feathers. There were several types including the popular salmon colored flicker feathers. Most important, however, was the feather tuft known as kaku among the Atsugewi. This allegedly was found in finished form and not made. So full of power was the kaku that it could not be kept in a house. It was placed outside securely tied to a willow branch beside a stream or hidden inside a hollow tree trunk. The kaku was able to move by itself so had to be tied down or placed under a rock. When the novice shaman discovered his kaku, the feathers were singing; when he died, blood dripped from its feathers!

Upon his return to the village, the successful seeker stayed out of dwelling houses for a day or two. Among some tribes he was sick for this period. Universally he sweated and swam. Eating habits of the novice shaman varied in different cases, but were always as dictated by the specific instructions given to him by his guardian spirit. Invariably all forms of flesh were shunned. He smoked tobacco and gave his first hunting kill to an old man. During the novice period the new shaman was helped by old shamans at the fireside in the sweat house. He did much dancing, singing, handled hot coals and fire, bled from the mouth, and might fall into a trance.

In contrast to herbalist doctors who gave private treatment, that of shamans was public and usually conducted indoors, preferably in sweat lodges. The shaman needed singing help and the more help and the more persons who attended his doctoring the better. Sucking Shamans were the most important and required official assistants. These included one or more interpreters to communicate with the lay helpers or supporters, while the shaman was doctoring, and an outside speaker to help call the shaman’s spirits. Doctoring could take from one to three days and nights.

To diagnose the patient’s ills the shaman danced about, blowing smoke on him, and singing with the help of the audience. The shamans also drank water, sometimes with a tube, from portable stone mortars with spirit power. They often squirted water from their mouths. A whistle was used in some cases and often the supernatural powerful cocoon rattle. Among mountain Maidu herb medicines might be administered to the patient also.

At length the shaman’s guardian spirit or pain told him the location of the disease object, and then he could see or feel it. Often the shaman learned further from the spirit just who it was who had sent the disease object to plague his patient.

Curing the afflicted was accomplished next by the shaman’s sucking this pain or disease object out of some portion of the person’s body. The evil pain could be any curious small object and this the shaman exhibited to all present. The malignant pain was disposed of in a number of ways. It might be sent back to the owner who sent it, that is, the offending shaman. Or, it might be sent to his children who would be doomed because a shaman could not doctor his own pain. Other times the curing shaman would destroy the disease object by biting it and burning it or dispose of it by taking the pain into his own charmed body.

When a whole community had been affected by a pain sent by an evil shaman, the pain usually hid in the bushes nearby. In such a case, the shaman had to be very powerful to get the best of the situation. First he conducted the ceremony of detection of one victim in the usual sweat house manner. Once the shaman found out where the trouble was, he went outdoors with the villagers to help in corraling the offending pain. Frequently only after a lengthy search was he successful in finding the pain and then capturing it. Upon taking it into his body it might be so powerful as to cause him to go into a trance. In this event his assistants had to support him bodily, and had to sing for him, otherwise the shaman might die. Without wishing to appear facetious or disparaging, it can be said that a good shaman had to be an excellent showman as well.

Sucking Shamans were obligated to accept all cases which they were asked to treat. If they refused any and the afflicted died, then the shamans might be killed themselves by relatives of the persons who succumbed. The thinking was that if a shaman refused a case, he must have had something to do with making the person sick in the first place.

Payment was always made to the shaman. The amount was determined by the patient’s relatives. They would take the offering to the shaman when engaging him, but payment was not made at that time. The shaman looked over the proffered payment and might ask for more or for a different kind of payment. To give himself a foolproof alibi in case of failure to cure, and to increase his prestige if he did cure, he might reply to the effect that “The beads already have the smell of death on them, but I’ll see what I can do about it.” The payment was placed near the patient during healing treatment and was not actually collected by the shaman if the patient died within a few weeks or months. The shaman’s assistants were also paid, but in lesser amounts.

Maidu shaman ceremonial neck pendant knife of obsidian, nine and one half inches long (after Dixon)

Besides the main function of curing, other good powers of the shamans were the ability to foretell future events, to see what was going on at distant places, and to locate lost or stolen articles. Among certain tribes control of weather was also possible by Sucking Shamans—among others there were special shamans with weather power.

Evil powers of Sucking Shamans could cause illness or death. This was done by talking to the pain and sending it to the victim. The shaman might put it on the end of a willow stick and point it at the person while singing and smoking tobacco. This could go on all night. Transmission of the pain to the intended victim was facilitated by contact, such as sneaking up behind him and touching him, or by putting the disease pain in his food or under his doorstep. The bad pain might also be dispatched by blowing it through a pipe or putting it in the victim’s pipe, or by talking to the shaman’s own animal spirit, injecting the pain into it and then sending the animal to the victim. This power animal might just take it to the intended person, or it might actually attack and bite him. If the evil pain had been successfully sent, and the intended dire results occurred, the relatives of the victim had a moral right to kill the offending shaman, without fear of retaliation. It seems that the culprit was usually recognized—obviously often mistakenly. It follows that shamans’ lives were somewhat precarious, not knowing who was going to find damning evidence against them.

By somewhat the same means as described above shamans could steal a person’s spirit or soul, rendering that person liable to quick and sure death from the slightest accident or illness. Shamans could be hired to perform these evil powers.

Singing Shamans were dreamers foretelling the future and telling the living what their dead relatives wanted them to do. The Singing Shaman was always male among mountain Maidu. Our other tribes did not have this specialist, instead such powers were in the repertoire of the Sucking Shaman.

Among Yana and Yahi tribes, apparently, weather doctoring could be done by any shaman, and this was usually the case among Atsugewi. However, mountain Maidu had specialized Weather Shamans. These were men who were capable not only of producing rain, snow, or hail, but also fog and high winds, or ending any of these.

Rattlesnake Shamans were generally women among Atsugewi and men among mountain Maidu. They could protect people from rattlesnakes or cure bites. The latter was accomplished by sucking which removed snakes and snakes’ teeth from the wound.

Bear Shamans did not exist among Yana tribes. Among Atsugewi and mountain Maidu these were not specialists, instead bear power was an additional skill of Sucking Shamans. They were almost always men and pertained not to Black Bear, but only to the California Grizzly. They wore bear skin, hair, teeth, and claws and simulated the bear’s actions in treating patients. Bear Shamans were called primarily to minister to bear wounded persons from whom they sucked out bear blood and teeth.

Chapter XXXVII
MISCELLANEOUS MAGIC

All tribes of the Lassen region exercised miscellaneous more or less supernatural powers which one might term magic.

Examples were: carrying a turtleshell on one’s belt which rendered a person immune to rattlesnake strikes, or, among Maidu the rubbing of the root of Angelica breweri on the legs to keep rattlesnakes away. Poisoning of persons could be done by some skilled people (not shamans) by rubbing an unspecified substance on their hands and then touching the victim’s body; this could drive him crazy or kill him.

To mountain Maidu the number five was sacred and lucky according to Dixon.

Yana charmstones and a fir twig basket container for such charms.

Charm stones, usually in pairs were found by many fortunate Indians. They were smooth and rounded and were especially effective if possessing rings or other special markings on them which were actually surface traces of mineral veins. Quartz crystals, rare in this volcanic region, were also highly prized as charm stones. An ideal storage place for charm stones in their special basketry containers was in a rattlesnake “den” where such snakes tended to hibernate in the winter. At any rate charm stones were kept hidden and the owner would secretly rub them on himself to gain good luck in gambling or in other pursuits which involved much in the way of chance.

Atsugewi charmstones

Prayers for a variety of reasons were offered simply by the individual. It was common practice every few days or so to make token food offerings at mealtime for no specific reason. The bits of food might be thrown to the east or into the fire.

* * * * * * * *

Thus ends this resume of the customs and beliefs of the tribes of the Lassen region—tribes virtually extinct as such today—tribes which once lived here among the scenic beauties of Lassen Volcanic National Park. We, the descendants of the relentless conquerors of these local Indians, come here now to enjoy ourselves and to refresh our bodies and spirits. As we do this on the lands of the vanquished, we owe them not only a moment of thoughtful reverence, but also whatever kindness and aid we are able to give their descendants.