Almost every living thing that they can lay their hands on serves as food. Coyotes, skunks, wild cats, rats, mice, crows, hawks, owls, lizards, frogs, snakes, excepting him of the rattle, grasshoppers and other insects, all are devoured by the inland tribes. Stranded whales, animals of the seal genus, fish, and shell-fish, form the main support of those inhabiting the coast. Venison they are of course glad to eat when they can get it, but as they are poor hunters, it is a rare luxury. When they did hunt the deer they resorted to the same artifice as their northern neighbors, placing a deer's head and horns on their own head, and thus disguised approaching within bow-shot. Bear-meat the majority refuse to eat from superstitious motives.577 Grasshoppers are eaten roasted. Acorns are shelled, dried, and pounded in stone mortars into flour, which is washed and rewashed in hot and cold water until the bitterness is removed, when it is made into gruel with cold water, or baked into bread. Various kinds of grass-seeds, herbs, berries, and roots, are also eaten, both roasted and raw. Wild fowl are caught in nets made of tules, spread over channels cut through the rushes in places frequented by the fowl, at a sufficient height above the water to allow the birds to swim easily beneath them. The game is gently driven or decoyed under the nets, when at a given signal, a great noise is made, and the terrified fowl, rising suddenly, become hopelessly entangled in the meshes, and fall an easy prey. Or selecting a spot containing clear water about two feet deep, they fasten a net midway between the surface and the bottom, and strewing the place with berries, which sink to the bottom under the net, they retire. The fowl approach and dive for the berries. The meshes of the net readily admit the head, but hold the prisoner tight upon attempting to withdraw it. And what is more, their position prevents them from making a noise, and they serve also as a decoy for others. Fish are taken in seines made from the tough bark of the tioñe-tree. They are also killed with spears having a movable bone head, attached to a long line, so that when a fish is struck the barb becomes loosened; line is then paid out until the fish is exhausted with running, when it is drawn in. Many of the inland tribes come down to the coast in the fishing season, and remain there until the shoals leave, when they return to the interior. Food is either boiled by dropping hot stones into water-baskets, or, more frequently, in vessels made of soap-stone.578
In their cooking, as in other respects, they are excessively unclean. They bathe frequently, it is true, but when not in the water they are wallowing in filth. Their dwellings are full of offal and other impurities, and vermin abound on their persons.
WEAPONS AND WAR.
Bows and arrows, and clubs, are as usual the weapons most in use. Sabres of hard wood, with edges that cut like steel, are mentioned by Father Junípero Serra.579 War is a mere pretext for plunder; the slightest wrong, real or imaginary, being sufficient cause for a strong tribe to attack a weaker one. The smaller bands form temporary alliances; the women and children accompanying the men on a raid, carrying provisions for the march, and during an engagement they pick up the fallen arrows of the enemy and so keep their own warriors supplied. Boscana says that no male prisoners are taken, and no quarter given; and Hugo Reid affirms of the natives of Los Angeles County that all prisoners of war, after being tormented in the most cruel manner, are invariably put to death. The dead are decapitated and scalped. Female prisoners are either sold or retained as slaves. Scalps, highly prized as trophies, and publicly exhibited at feasts, may be ransomed, but no consideration would induce them to part with their living captives.580
Among the few articles they manufacture are fish-hooks, needles, and awls, made of bone or shell; mortars and pestles of granite, and soap-stone cooking vessels, and water-tight baskets.581 The clay vessels which are frequently found among them now, were not made by them before the arrival of the Spaniards. The stone implements, however, are of aboriginal manufacture, and are well made. The former are said to have been procured mostly by the tribes of the mainland from the Santa Rosa islanders.582 The instruments which they used in their manufactures were flint knives and awls; the latter Fages describes as being made from the small bone of a deer's fore-foot. The knife is double-edged, made of a flint, and has a wooden haft, inlaid with mother of pearl.583
On this coast we again meet with wooden canoes, although the balsa, or tule raft, is also in use. These boats are made of planks neatly fastened together and paid with bitumen;584 prow and stern, both equally sharp, are elevated above the centre, which made them appear to Vizcaino "como barquillos" when seen beside his own junk-like craft. The paddles were long and double-bladed, and their boats, though generally manned by three or four men, were sometimes large enough to carry twenty. Canoes dug out of a single log, scraped smooth on the outside, with both ends shaped alike, were sometimes, though more rarely, used.585 The circulating medium consisted of small round pieces of the white mussel-shell. These were perforated and arranged on strings, the value of which depended upon their length.586 I have said before that this money is supposed to have been manufactured for the most part on Santa Rosa Island. Hence it was distributed among the coast tribes, who bought with it deer-skins, seeds, etc., from the people of the interior.
GOVERNMENT AND PUNISHMENTS.
Each tribe acknowledged one head, whose province it was to settle disputes,587 levy war, make peace, appoint feasts, and give good advice. Beyond this he had little power.588 He was assisted in his duties by a council of elders. The office of chief was hereditary, and in the absence of a male heir devolved upon the female nearest of kin. She could marry whom she pleased, but her husband obtained no authority through the alliance, all the power remaining in his wife's hands until their eldest boy attained his majority, when the latter at once assumed the command.
A murderer's life was taken by the relatives of his victim, unless he should gain refuge in the temple, in which case his punishment was left to their god. Vengeance was, however, only deferred; the children of the murdered man invariably avenged his death, sooner or later, upon the murderer or his descendants. When a chief grew too old to govern he abdicated in favor of his son, on which occasion a great feast was given. When all the people had been called together by criers, "the crown was placed upon the head of the chief elect, and he was enrobed with the imperial vestments," as Father Boscana has it; that is to say, he was dressed in a head-ornament of feathers, and a feather petticoat reaching from the waist half-way down to the knees, and the rest of his body painted black. He then went into the temple and performed a pas seul before the god Chinigchinich. Here, in a