Their clothing before the reservation period was scant. Young children went naked. Males wore a skin breech-clout or short skirt; females, a deer skin skirt from waist to knees, at times fringed or fancily decorated. Both sexes wore deer or elk skin moccasins.
Clark said of the Sierra tribes that "They are naturally of a gentle and friendly disposition, but their experience with the white man has made them distant and uncommunicative to strangers." And "as a rule also they are trustworthy, and when confidence is placed in their honesty it is very rarely betrayed."
Large game they hunted with the bow and obsidian arrowheads. They followed the stealthy still hunt, or went on the general hunt, covering a large area and driving the game to a common center for indiscriminate slaughter. Fish was caught with line and bone hook, with single bone tine spear, by weir traps in stream, or scooped out in baskets after polluting the water with soap-root plant juice. Acorns constituted the main staple breadstuff, the nut ground to a meal and the bitter tannin laboriously leached out of the thin gruel poured out in clean sand. The dog was the only domestic animal.
The Indians of the Yosemite region were of religious or superstitious temperament, devout in their beliefs and observances, and easily worked upon by their medicine men. They had elaborate symbolic ceremonies with dancing an important feature. Both sexes took part, but they never danced as a recreation. The ceremonial around a fire was accompanied by drum beating and a monotonous chant, the dancer circling until falling exhausted. The great dance occasions were before going to war and when cremating the dead. They had also tribal festival gatherings.
Polygamy was not uncommon among the Mariposa and other county Indians, with two and three and even more wives. Chiefs and headmen established relations of amity with other tribes by taking wives out of them. The young wife was bought, payment for the chattel constituting a chief part of the marriage ceremonial, and the wife becoming personal property to be sold or gambled away according to the mood. Clark says that in the marriage relation the Indian was as a rule strictly faithful. If the woman was found to be unfaithful, the penalty was death. Man whipping or wife beating were unknown, whipping was not resorted to even for disobedience by children, being considered a more humiliating and disgraceful punishment than death. Disobedience was a fault rare among children.
It is Clark, who is authority for the statement, that after the 1850-51 hostilities and liberation after four years of confinement on the reservations — the Yosemites and other tribes on and north of the San Joaquin placed on the Fresno reservation and those south of the river on the Kings and Tejon reservations — with tribal relations and customs almost broken up, the food supply reduced with the settlement of the country, life was more precarious and many at times were near the starvation point.
"In these straitened and desperate circumstances," recites Clark, in a publication of 1904, "many of their young women were used as commercial property and peddled out to the mining camps and gambling saloons for money to buy food, clothing or whiskey, this latter article being obtained through some white person in violation of the law."
The universal practice was among the Sierra foothill tribes to burn the bodies of the dead with their effects and votive offerings. This was a semi-religious practice to cheat the evil spirit of his prey in the spirit or soul, the body being burned to set the soul free the sooner to the happier spirit world. In later years the-burial custom of the whites was adopted, but the things that were once burned as offerings were cut into fragments before burial, lest some white desecrate the grave by digging them up. These Diggers — a name given them in derision because not good fighters and from the practice of digging for tuberous roots of plants for food — held such sacred reverence for the dead that after reservation liberation they impoverished themselves for years by burning their best belongings at the annual mourning festivals. One of their beliefs was that the spirits of the bad served another earth life in the grizzly bear as punishment for misdeeds, wherefor no Indian would knowingly eat bear meat. In certain lines of artistic work, the Diggers excelled all others, notably in basket work and how and arrows, which were of superior workmanship and fine finish.
A great fund of mythological lore was in their possession, handed down orally from generation to generation, hut they were reluctant to tell the whites these often pretty and poetical legends.
The warlike valley tribes were the Tulareans of Tulare Lake, the Yosemites of the valley of that name, the Monos from the other side of the range, and the Chowchillas of the river valley of that name. At the, signing of the Fort Barbour treaty, the second and third named tribes had neither signed, nor surrendered, nor been rounded up. The best known tribes were the Pohonochees living near the waters of the Pohono or Bridal Veil Creek in summer and on the south fork of the Merced in winter about twelve miles below Wawona, the Potoencies on the Merced, Wiltucumnes on the Tuolumne, Nootchoos and Chowchillas in the Chowchilla Valley, the Honaches and Mewoos on the Fresno and vicinity and the Chookchachanees on the San Joaquin and vicinity.
The original name of the Yosemite Valley was Ah-wah-nee, meaning "deep grass valley." The word "yosemite" signifies "a full grown grizzly bear." The valley portion of the Sierra region was inhabited by a peaceful people, who indulged in few controversies and were less belligerent than any on the Pacific coast, usually settling disputes by talk in general council.
The treaty of peace and friendship submitted in council at Fort Barbour, and afterward repudiated by the government by the way, was signed up on April 29, 1851, by chiefs representing sixteen tribes. Of tribal names other than those mentioned, only one has been perpetuated — that of the Pitiaches, whose home was in the vicinity of the site of Fresno city and whose one time existence is recalled by the official designation of Pitiaches Tribe No. 144, I. O. R. M. of Fresno.
The Fresno Indians of today court the seclusion of their foothill or mountain rancherias. In the fruit season, they mingle with the whites on the plains to seek employment in orchard or vineyard; otherwise they are not seen save on the days of the visiting circus or for the Fourth of July parades and celebrations. Such a moving appeal was made to the supervisors of the county in March, 1917, that they authorized H. G. Brendel as superintendent of Indian missions to provide medical service for the poor Indians and Dr. Charles L. Trout of Clovis to attend the sick in the mountains and present bills to the county for payment. It was the first step the county has ever taken to render a service to the Indians, but the relief was like the locking of the stable door after the horse was stolen.
The missionaries school them and give them religious instruction, afford them medical attention according to the means provided them, and prevail on them when they have lived in the marital state according to loose tribal customs and have borne children to accompany them to the county seat and for the sake of the children take out license and be wedded according to the law of the land. The Indians have had intercourse long enough with the whites to have lost faith in their medicine men, though one of these charlatans was haled into court about a year ago for manslaughter in the killing of a tribesman .in giving the blood sucking treatment to a patient resulting in death. The charge was in the end dismissed. The missionaries have done all they can in the medical line until the demands on them became too great without money for medicine and mileage for the physician. Measles, pulmonary and bronchial troubles are the principal ailments, especially among the children.
"I have watched men, women and children die because of no medical service," said Superintendent Brendel in his appeal to the supervisors. "It is a long way back into the hills and an Indian will ordinarily not earn enough or more than to provide the merest necessary food to keep up life. Why during winter they almost starve and when sickness comes they generally die. Once there were many Indians back in the hills, but now we have only 687, a slight increase over last year. The diseases they are subject to eat up the population fast. I often wonder how it is that we have any left, for the government has neglected to give them the aid that reservation Indians are entitled to."
Back in earlier days, the government's agents signed treaties with the Indians providing