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!
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 19 of 159
Words from 9300 to 9841
of 82482
