The Bureau of Ethnology has an interesting paragraph on the manners and customs of these Indians: “They went almost naked; their houses were of bark, sometimes thatched with grass, and covered with earth; the bark was loosened from the trees by repeated blows with stone hatchets, the latter having the head fastened to the handle with deer sinews. Their ordinary weapons were bows and stone-tipped arrows. The women made finely-woven conical baskets of grass, the smaller ones of which held water. Their amusements were chiefly dancing and foot-ball; the dances, however, were in some degree ceremonial. Their principal deity was the sun, and the women had a ceremony which resembled the ‘sun dance’ of the tribes of the upper Missouri. Their dead were buried in graves in the earth. The tribe is now practically extinct.”—(quoted from Rice, in American Anthropology, III, 259, 1890.)
SAN JOAQUÍN
San Joaquín County, famous for its vast fields of wheat, is a part of the great Central Valley, and the river of the same name rises in the Sierras, flows north-northwest through the valley and unites with the Sacramento River near its mouth.
The river was named in honor of St. Joachim, the father of the Virgin. Lieutenant Moraga first gave the name to a rivulet which springs from the Sierra Nevada, and empties into Lake Buena Vista. The river derived its name from this rivulet.
The rich valley of the San Joaquín, two hundred miles long and thirty miles wide, with its wide, treeless expanses where the wild grasses grew rankly, was once a paradise for game. Fremont says: “Descending the valley we traveled among multitudinous herds of elk, antelope, and wild horses. Several of the latter which we killed for food were found to be very fat.” Herds of wild horses still range in California and Nevada, and are sometimes captured for sale, fine specimens bringing high prices.
STANISLAUS
Stanislaus is the name of the county just south of San Joaquín, and of one of the tributaries of the San Joaquín River.
The word Stanislaus is said to be derived from an Indian chief of that region, who became Christianized and was baptized under the Spanish name of Estanislao. He was educated at Mission San José, but became a renegade, and incited his tribe against the Spaniards. In 1826 he was defeated in a fierce battle on the banks of the river now bearing his name.