Contributions to North American Ethnology

Abstract

“IT has been the melancholy fate of the Californian Indians to be more vilified and less understood, than any other of the American aborigines. They were once probably the most contented and happy race on the continent, in proportion to their capacities of enjoyment, and they have been more miserably corrupted and destroyed than any other tribes within the union. They were certainly the most populous, and dwelt beneath the most genial heavens and amidst the most abundant natural productions, and they were swept away with the most swift and cruel extermination.” Words such as these are now only too familiar to the ethnologist, and do not refer alone to the Californian Indians. As the ethnographic facts are slowly accumulated upon which general anthropology is founded, there comes the conviction in many cases that we are dealing with customs and beliefs that have already reached the twilight of their existence. The crania in our museums will soon be the only physical relics of many races that can just be said to still exist. The desire has therefore long been expressed for the immediate production of faithful and exhaustive monographs, by competent observers, of many of these fast-fading anthropological shadows. To this demand America is now contributing largely; the present volume relates to the habits, customs, legends, religious beliefs, and geographical distribution of the Californian Indians, information collected by Mr. Powers during three years' residence and travel among those tribes.

Contributions to North American Ethnology.

Vol. iii. Tribes of California. By Stephen Powers. (Washington, 1877.)