The irreducible minimum number of villages therefore totals 20. It is quite probable that some of the other sites might be or ought to be counted but, since the evidence concerning them is equivocal, they will not be included. The house counts for seven sites average 6.3 and since we are here dealing with informants' memories of inhabited houses, not house pits, this number need not be reduced. With respect to family number, the Yurok value of 7.5 is probably too high. For the type of culture characteristic of the Coast Yuki the more conservative value of 6.0 is probably better. This yields a population of 756, or approximately 750. It is difficult to see how this estimate could be reduced.
Coast Yuki ... 750
THE YUKI PROPER
Although the Yuki were a populous and important tribe, and although Kroeber, in the Handbook, devoted three chapters to their culture, they have been the subject of but one special study. Quite recently G. M. Foster (1944) resurveyed their ethnography and worked out their village organization in some detail. He utilized informants who were in their seventies during the period of 1935 to 1940 and who thus were born no earlier than 1860. Since the social and political organization of the Yuki was completely disrupted during the 'fifties, particularly at Round Valley, it is remarkable that Foster was able to secure so much apparently quite accurate detail. It is true that certain specific items of information derived by Kroeber from his informants of thirty or thirty-five years earlier are more reliable than the comparable data of Foster, nevertheless the over-all coverage by the latter is more complete. Foster's account will therefore serve here as the basis for a computation of population.
There were eight major subdivisions or subtribes, the spelling of whose names and the precise boundaries of whose territories are slightly differently presented by Kroeber and Foster. Merely for convenience the description of Foster is followed here. Of the eight subtribes the most numerous and most important were the Ukomnom, who inhabited most of Round Valley. Next in importance were the Witukomnom directly to the south. Most of Foster's work was devoted to these two groups.
With respect to village organization Kroeber brought out the basic fact that the tribe was organized by communities, rather than separate and wholly independent villages (1925, pp. 161-162).
The community always might and usually did embrace several settlements.... If designated it was referred to by the name of the principal village. This place name therefore designates at one time a cluster of several little towns and on other occasions one of these towns.
Foster went one step further and clarified the internal organization of the community. He showed that within each cluster there was always a principal village of relatively large size called the nohot with a constellation of small hamlets or, as he usually puts it, "rancherias" immediately adjacent. The former he likens to a host and the latter to a group of parasites. The nohot might contain as many as twenty-five houses and as many as 150 inhabitants. There might be anywhere from "2 to 6 to 8" rancherias per nohot. (See p. 176.) It is therefore possible, for certain subtribes, to obtain some idea concerning population from the list of inhabited places remembered by Foster's informants, particularly since Foster usually specifies what type of village is meant. This list is quite complete for the Witukomnom and the Ukomnom and partially so for the Tanom. Kroeber (1925, pp. 163-164) gives parallel data for a part of the Ukomnom, which can be to some extent brought into concordance with Foster's list.
The question of local population is difficult because in only one instance does Foster mention a specific figure: the largest nohot, which he says contained 25 houses and 150 people. It is of interest that elsewhere he states that the typical Yuki house would hold 4 to 8 persons. Thus he appears to accept without reservation a family number of 6. Now of course the average nohot was smaller and must have been intermediate between the maximum possible with twenty-five houses and the smaller villages which must have contained four or five. The halfway point is fifteen, a number which may be accepted with a fair degree of confidence. The nohot population would then be taken as ninety. The parasitic village or rancheria was definitely smaller. It could not have approached 15 houses yet by far the greater number of rancheria's must have had more than one or two. A reasonable compromise would be 4 houses and 25 inhabitants. With respect to the number of these hamlets per community the indefinite "2 to 6 to 8" may be set at four. Hence the community may be regarded as having on the average 190 inhabitants during pre-invasion times. There is no clear evidence to justify a larger estimate and on the other hand the whole context of both Kroeber's and Foster's discussion gives the impression of a group approaching 200 persons in number. This is somewhat but not materially greater than the mean number for the 22 subtribes of the Wailaki according to Goddard's data. That value was 153 and the subtribe among the Wailaki appears to have been very similar to the community among the Yuki.