Viverrida, 351.

Volcano of Kilauea, 16.

Volvox and its Parasite, 276.

Vulpes fulvus, 653. V. Virginianus, 292.

Sciurus Abertii, 355. S. Hudsonius, 53, 659. Vulture, Californian, 114.

Shellheaps in Maine and Massachusetts, 561. White Hawk, 40.

White Winged Cross-bill, 44.
Wild-cat, 653.

Winter Notes of an Ornithologist, 38.
Wolf, 653.

Wolf, Barking, 289.

313, Wolverine, 352.

Woodchuck, 660.
Wood Frogs, 108.
Wood Wasp, 77.

Worms, breathing apparatus of, 74.

[tailed, 361. Xylocopa Virginica, 369.
S. Round-

S. grammu-Yellow Bird, 43.

rus, 360. S. Harrisii, 359. S. tereticauda, York Institute of Saco, Me., 168.

THE name "Digger," which Fremont gave to the Indians that he found on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, a

* Read before the Essex Institute, February 21, 1870. An abstract will be found in the "Bulletin of the Essex Institute" and a vocabulary of such familiar words as Mr. Chever was able to recall. It is but justice to our author to state that his familiarity with the language of the tribes, during five years of friendly personal intercourse, has given him a rare opportunity of forming a correct judgment of what these Indians really were before they were demoralized by contact with the whites, and that he has confined himself to such statements as he remembered clearly and knew to be correct. EDS.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by the PEABODY ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

people who obtained a precarious subsistance in winter by digging through the snow for roots, and searching the rocks for lizards, and who had neither villages or numerical force, has been applied by the readers of Fremont's work to all the Indians of California.*

The name was really applicable to those whom he first met with, but not to the Indians living on the other side of the mountains, who spoke a different language and were more provident than those living on the great plains east of the Rocky Mountains. The latter have been much more destructive to the whites in battle, having procured, at an early date, firearms from Indian traders. The gold excitement, however, settled California so rapidly that the Indians were in a hopeless minority after the first immigration crossed the continent, and excepting where their villages were attacked they had no wish to fight, for they had no surplus population to lose.

That these same Indians were not wanting in courage or spirit I have had repeated proofs.

They would attack the sturgeon when under water and drag him to the shore with their limbs bleeding from the sharp spikes. I have also seen Indians bearing the scars of conflicts with grizzly bears, and the frequent instances of white men scarred with wounds made by their arrows, shows that they contended courageously with the early settlers.

The Indians of California, in 1849, were the more interesting to the ethnologist from the manner in which that country had been settled. The Jesuits, it is true, had been in Lower California for many years, and had established mission schools there, and a few Europeans had a short time before made scattered settlements in the Sacramento Valley, but the whole country was so remote from our frontiers, and inclosed by the intervening barriers of the Rocky Mountains

* The Indian tribes of the section I am describing, called themselves respectively, Sesum, Hocktem, Yubum, Hololipi, Willem, Tankum, and inhabited the valley of northern California, between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range.

and the snows of the Sierra Nevada Range, that it had been but little changed since its discovery by the whites. Many Indian tribes were living in as perfect a state of nature as the elk, deer or antelope, which furnished them with food. A head-dress of feathers with a scanty coat of paint on his face was the full dress of a brave, while a fringe made of grass, or fine strips of bark, from the waist to the knee, was the costume of the girls or women. The Indians had but little beard naturally, and excepting in a few cases where old men had grown careless of appearances the hairs were pulled out; sometimes a pair of muscle shells were used as tweezers, although I have seen a squaw dip her fingers in ashes and pull out her husband's beard, and draw tears at the same time from his eyes. Both sexes wore ornaments in the ears, but not rings. The children had their ears bored when quite young and small sticks inserted; these were exchanged from time to time for larger sticks, until a bone ornament, made from one of the larger bones of a pelican's wing carved in rude style, and decorated at the end with crimson feathers, could be worn permanently. This bone was about five or six inches long and larger in size than my little finger. The back hair of the men was fastened up in a net, and this was made fast by a pin of hard wood pushed through both hair and net, the large end of the pin being ornamented with crimson feathers, obtained from the head of a species of woodpecker, and sometimes also with the tail feathers of an eagle. The women used no nets for their hair, nor wore feathers as ornaments, excepting in the end of the bones used by both sexes for the ears, which I have already described. The children were naturally frank and the girls gentle and confiding, not much more so, perhaps, than young grizzlies, but then I doubt whether the cub's mother threatens to give it to a white man, if it proves disobedient, and a white man was the Bugbear used to frighten papooses into good behavior. They were allowed much freedom, however, in seeking amusement or instruc

tion; the girls acting as nurses to the younger children, and taking them off in the woods or to the river where they bathed, and the babies allowed to crawl in the water before they could walk on land. An Indian could no more remember when he learned to swim than when he first stood on his feet. When the children were disposed to be good natured the girls petted them as kindly as our children tend dolls, but if they were cross, in spite of their caresses, they threw cold water in their faces until their tempers cooled. The girls fully equalled the boys in swimming or diving, and also used the paddle with skill, sometimes even beating the boys in their canoe or foot races. The boys, however, soon took to their bows and arrows, wandering off to hunt, and the girls learned at home the art of weaving baskets and making bread of acorns. Familiar with the points of the compass from infancy, they use their knowledge on all occasions; even in play, if a ball or an arrow is being searched for, the one who saw it fall will guide the seeker thus, "to the east," "a little north," "now three steps north-west," and so on. In the darkest night I have known an Indian go directly to a spring of water from a new camp by following the directions of a companion, who had been there previously, given perhaps as follows: "three hundred steps east and twenty steps north." This early training in woodcraft gives that consummate skill and confidence which are rarely acquired by those who learn them later in life. In tracking game they know the "signs," as our hunters call them, of the various animals and birds as well as they know the kind of game that made them, and experience teaches them when the animals moved away. In tracking white men they cannot make mistakes. The white man's foot is deformed, made so by the shape of his boots or shoes, and even when he is barefooted his toes are turned inwards. The Indian's foot, never having been compressed, has the toes naturally formed and straight as our fingers are, and he can even use them to hold arrows when he is making them. When he walks therefore, each