The Indians Of The McCloud River That Have Come Under My Observation
Differ Considerably In Habits And Features From The Diggers And Other
Tribes Of The Foothills And Plains, And Also From The Pah Utes And
Modocs.
They live chiefly on salmon.
They seem to be closely related
to the Tlingits of Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and may readily
have found their way here by passing from stream to stream in which
salmon abound. They have much better features than the Indians of the
plains, and are rather wide awake, speculative and ambitious in their
way, and garrulous, like the natives of the northern coast.
Before the Modoc War they lived in dread of the Modocs, a tribe living
about the Klamath Lake and the Lava Beds, who were in the habit of
crossing the low Sierra divide past the base of Shasta on freebooting
excursions, stealing wives, fish, and weapons from the Pitts and
McClouds. Mothers would hush their children by telling them that the
Modocs would catch them.
During my stay at the Government fish-hatching station on the McCloud
I was accompanied in my walks along the riverbank by a McCloud boy
about ten years of age, a bright, inquisitive fellow, who gave me the
Indian names of the birds and plants that we met. The water-ousel he
knew well and he seemed to like the sweet singer, which he called
"Sussinny." He showed me how strips of the stems of the beautiful
maidenhair fern were used to adorn baskets with handsome brown bands,
and pointed out several plants good to eat, particularly the large
saxifrage growing abundantly along the river margin. Once I rushed
suddenly upon him to see if he would be frightened; but he
unflinchingly held his ground, struck a grand heroic attitude, and
shouted, "Me no fraid; me Modoc!"
Mount Shasta, so far as I have seen, has never been the home of
Indians, not even their hunting ground to any great extent, above the
lower slopes of the base. They are said to be afraid of fire-mountains and geyser basins as being the dwelling places of
dangerously powerful and unmanageable gods. However, it is food and
their relations to other tribes that mainly control the movements of
Indians; and here their food was mostly on the lower slopes, with
nothing except the wild sheep to tempt them higher. Even these were
brought within reach without excessive climbing during the storms of
winter.
On the north side of Shasta, near Sheep Rock, there is a long cavern,
sloping to the northward, nearly a mile in length, thirty or forty
feet wide, and fifty feet or more in height, regular in form and
direction like a railroad tunnel, and probably formed by the flowing
away of a current of lava after the hardening of the surface. At the
mouth of this cave, where the light and shelter is good, I found many
of the heads and horns of the wild sheep, and the remains of
campfires, no doubt those of Indian hunters who in stormy weather had
camped there and feasted after the fatigues of the chase. A wild
picture that must have formed on a dark night - the glow of the fire,
the circle of crouching savages around it seen through the smoke, the
dead game, and the weird darkness and half-darkness of the walls of
the cavern, a picture of cave-dwellers at home in the stone age!
Interest in hunting is almost universal, so deeply is it rooted as an
inherited instinct ever ready to rise and make itself know. Fine
scenery may not stir a fiber of mind or body, but how quick and how
true is the excitement of the pursuit of game! Then up flames the
slumbering volcano of ancient wildness, all that has been done by
church and school through centuries of cultivation is for the moment
destroyed, and the decent gentleman or devout saint becomes a howling,
bloodthirsty, demented savage. It is not long since we all were
cavemen and followed game for food as truly as wildcat or wolf, and
the long repression of civilization seems to make the rebound to
savage love of blood all the more violent. This frenzy, fortunately,
does not last long in its most exaggerated form, and after a season of
wildness refined gentlemen from cities are not more cruel than hunters
and trappers who kill for a living.
Dwelling apart in the depths of the woods are the various kinds of
mountaineers, - hunters, prospectors, and the like, - rare men, "queer
characters," and well worth knowing. Their cabins are located with
reference to game and the ledges to be examined, and are constructed
almost as simply as those of the wood rats made of sticks laid across
each other without compass or square. But they afford good shelter
from storms, and so are "square" with the need of their builders.
These men as a class are singularly fine in manners, though their
faces may be scarred and rough like the bark of trees. On entering
their cabins you will promptly be placed on you good behavior, and,
your wants being perceived with quick insight, complete hospitality
will be offered for body and mind to the extent of the larder.
These men know the mountains far and near, and their thousand voices,
like the leaves of a book. They can tell where the deer may be found
at any time of year or day, and what they are doing; and so of all the
other furred and feathered people they meet in their walks; and they
can send a thought to its mark as well as a bullet. The aims of such
people are not always the highest, yet how brave and manly and clean
are their lives compared with too many in crowded towns mildewed and
dwarfed in disease and crime! How fine a chance is here to begin life
anew in the free fountains and skylands of Shasta, where it is so easy
to live and to die!
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