Kniffen (1939) made a careful study of the geographical and ecological status of certain selected groups: the Clear Lake area, the Kacha of Russian River, and the Coast Pomo. Steward (1943) reviewed the boundaries and villages of all groups except a few on Clear Lake, using also the ecological approach.
When one attempts to establish what were the Pomo community groups and chief villages, he encounters a great deal of divergence of opinion on detail among these investigators, due largely to differences among informants. Without extensive field work, which might in fact now be impossible, many of the discrepancies cannot be resolved. On the whole, the later students appear to have come closer to the truth and are probably more reliable.
CLEAR LAKE POMO
Gifford said (1937, p. 122) that there were 11 communities on Clear Lake. Kniffen reorganized them to make 12, after which Stewart returned to a count of 11. This last number, therefore, may be accepted as final. Each of them consisted of a single principal village of considerable size. A classical example is Cigom. Other inhabited spots within the community area have usually been recognized but whether they were permanent or shifting villages or camp sites usually is not clear. For this reason the population has been discussed by ethnographers since Barrett simply on the basis of the group, without much reference to the number of sites known to have existed. The single exception I would make to this procedure is to take account of the number (not necessarily the names and location) of the villages known to have possessed assembly houses, since the presence of these implies some degree of permanence. A community with one capital village and several such accessory sites would, other things being equal, create the presumption of a larger aggregate population than a community with a capital village and one or no subsidiaries.
There is a more definite population estimate for the Clear Lake region than we have for many other native groups. L. L. Palmer in his History of Napa and Lake Counties (1881), cites figures for the aboriginal population of the Clear Lake communities which he obtained from an informant who could well remember the days before the advent of the white man. These figures have been subject to some disparaging criticism by more modern students. The chief objection advanced is that the book is one of the many county histories which appeared as commercial ventures in the 1880's and which, on the whole, were very carelessly written. Palmer, however, as his text shows, was much interested in the fate of the natives and took considerable pains to secure informants who could give him data. There is no ground for impugning either his honesty or his competence. Moreover, it is difficult to see why informants seventy years ago should be any less reliable than they are now. Hence I can see no reason for not accepting his figures as they stand, subject to the limitations of his informant's knowledge.
With regard to those limitations it should be noted that the informant was a native of the Kulanapo community on the west side of the lake. He should therefore have had closest acquaintance with his own people and the adjacent group, the Habenapo. His figure for the Kulanapo was 500, a value which Kniffen attacks on the ground that Palmer's informant intentionally exaggerated the importance of his own group. This is a wholly gratuitous assumption and inconsistent with the fact that, since more was known at that time about the west-shore people, his figures could easily have been checked, had they been widely at variance with the facts. In the second place, the figure for the Habenapo was given as 300. Now Barrett (1908, p. 194) quotes even more specifically from Palmer:
The Hoo-la-na-po (Kulanapo) tribe was just below the present site of Lakeport.... At one time there were two hundred and twenty warriors, and five hundred all told in the rancheria. They are now reduced to sixty. Sal-vo-di-no was their chief before the present one, Augustine.
If we are going to discredit the testimony of the chief concerning his own village thirty years previously, we had better throw out along with it the information secured from septuagenarians who have to recount at second hand what their forefathers told them.
Some confirmation of Palmer's figure for the Habenapo is given by Barrett (1908, p. 195), who mentions a statement from the Report of the Commissioner for Indian Affairs in 1858 referring to the Lupillomi. The latter in turn are identified by Barrett as the Habenapo. The Commissioner said: "Upon the Lupillomi ranch, near Clear Lake, there are some three hundred Indians." Although by 1858 there may have been some reduction and mixing of population, the identity is striking.