Chapter XII: The Growth of a Primitive Religion

150. Regional variation of culture.—151. Plains, Southwest,
Northwest areas.—152. California and its sub-areas.—153. The
shaping of a problem.—154. Girls’ Adolescence Rite.—155. The
First Period.—156. The Second Period: Mourning Anniversary and
First-salmon rite.—157. Era of regional differentiation.—158.
Third and Fourth Periods in Central California: Kuksu and
Hesi.—159. Third and Fourth Periods in Southern California:
Jimsonweed and Chungichnish.—160. Third and Fourth Periods
on the Lower Colorado: Dream Singing.—161. Northwestern
California: world-renewal and wealth display.—162. Summary
of religious development.—163. Other phases of culture.—164.
Outline of the culture history of California.—165. The question
of dating.—166. The evidence of archæology.—167. Age of the
shellmounds.—168. General serviceability of the method.

150. REGIONAL VARIATION OF CULTURE

As one first becomes acquainted with a totally strange people spread over a large area, such as the Indians of North America, they are likely to seem rather uniform. The distinctions between individual and individual, and even the greater distinctions between one group and another, become buried under the overwhelming mass-effect of their difference from ourselves. Growing familiarity, however, renders individual, local, and tribal peculiarities plainer. The specialist, finally, comes to concern himself with particular traits until the peculiarities occupy more of his attention than the uniformities. His danger always is to let himself get into the habit of taking sweeping similarities so much for granted that he ends by underemphasizing or forgetting them. At the same time his business is to add something new to human understanding—facts at any rate, interpretation if possible. Generalities are likely to be pretty widely known, and progress, new formulations, therefore depend ultimately on mastery of detail. This means that if a scientist is to contribute anything to the world’s comprehension, is to add a new mental tool to its chest, he must devote himself to specific traits, to discriminations of fine detail. It is only by finding new trees that he helps to make the woods larger.

If then we approach a race like the American Indians with the scientist’s or student’s purpose of discovering something more than we already know, we quickly find that institutions, customs, and utensils, in other words the cultures, vary from tribe to tribe. When one compares tribes living so far apart as to be no longer united in intercourse, nor even by communication with common intermediaries, there is scarcely a trait in which their cultures are wholly identical. Within a limited district a fair degree of uniformity is found to prevail. Yet when the boundaries of such an area are crossed, a new type of culture begins to be encountered, which again holds with local variations until a third district is entered.

151. PLAINS, SOUTHWEST, NORTHWEST AREAS

For instance, the Indians of the Plains between the Rocky mountains and the Mississippi river form a comparative unit. They are all warlike, the great aim in life of every man in these tribes being attainment of military glory. All the Plains tribes subsisted to a large extent on buffalo, lived in tipis—tents made of buffalo skins—and boiled their food with hot stones in buffalo rawhide. Nearly all of them performed a four days’ religious ceremony known as the Sun Dance, of which one of the outstanding acts was fasting and sometimes self-torture inflicted with skewers drawn through the skin and torn out. These customs were common to the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Blackfeet, Assiniboine, Omaha, Kiowa, Comanche, and other tribes.

As one passes from this region to the mountainous plateau which constitutes the present New Mexico and Arizona—the Southwest of the United States—one encounters a series of tribes often inhabiting stone houses, subsisting by agriculture, cooking in earthenware pots, little given to fighting, according authority to priests rather than warriors, erecting altars, and performing masked dances representing divinities. This Southwestern culture, its internal relations, and the tribes participating in it, have already been discussed in another connection (§ 87).

If, however, on leaving the Plains one turns northwest to the shores of British Columbia and southern Alaska, a third distinctive type of native civilization appears. Among these Northwestern or North Pacific Coast tribes, such as the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nutka, and Salish, the priest as well as the warrior bowed before the rich man, an elaborate set of rules and honors separating the wealthy high-born from the poor and lowly. Aristocracy, commoners, and slaves made up distinct strata of society in this region. Public rituals were occasions for the ostentation of wealth. Houses were carpentered of wood. Cooking was done in boxes. The prevalent food was fish.

The significant thing is that these are not three tribes, but three groups each consisting of a number of politically independent tribes spread over a considerable territory and evincing a fairly fundamental similarity of customs and institutions. We are confronting three kinds of culture, each super-tribal in range and attached to a certain area. These areas have sometimes been called “ethnographic provinces”; they are generally known as “culture-areas.” Of such areas ten are generally recognized on the North American continent. These are the Plains, Southwest, North Pacific Coast, Mackenzie-Yukon, Arctic, Plateau, California, Northeast, Southeast, and Mexico.[23]

Obviously we have here a classification comparable to that which the naturalist makes of animals. As the zoölogist divides the vertebrate animals into mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes, so the anthropologist divides the generic North American Indian culture into the cultures of these ten areas. The naturalist however cannot stop with a group as inclusive as the mammals, and goes on to subdivide them into orders, such as the rodents, carnivores, ungulates, and the like. Each of these again he goes on splitting into families, genera, and finally species. The species correspond to the smallest groups in human society, namely the tribes or nations. Parallel to the family or order which the naturalist finds between a particular species and the great class of mammals, one may therefore expect to discover groups intermediate between particular tribes and the large culture-areas. Such intermediate groups would consist of clusters of tribes constituting fractions of a culture-area: clearly pertaining to this area, but yet somewhat set off from other clusters within the same area—like the Pueblos and Navaho within the Southwest, as already described (§ 87). We may call such clusters or fractions sub-culture-areas, and must concern ourselves with them if we desire to deepen our understanding of aboriginal American civilization.

For the sake of simplicity, it will be well to select a limited portion of North America, instead of wrestling with the intricacies of the continent as a whole, in an endeavor to see how its culture-areas and sub-culture-areas reveal themselves in detail and help to throw light on native history. California will serve as a type example.

152. CALIFORNIA AND ITS SUB-AREAS

Modern state boundaries frequently do not coincide with either ethnic lines of division or with natural physiographic areas, especially when political units are created by legislative enactment, as has been the case with most of the United States. This partial discrepancy holds for California. The native culture most distinctive of California covered only the middle two-thirds of the present state, but took in Nevada and much of the Great Basin (Fig. 31).

Northernmost California, especially along the ocean, was inhabited by Indians that affiliated with the tribes of the North Pacific coast. One after another their customs and arts prove on examination to be related to the customs and arts of the coast of British Columbia, and to differ more or less from the corresponding practices of the Central California Indians. Here then we have a second cultural type, that of Northwestern California, which constitutes a subdivision of the North Pacific Coast culture-area.

The southern California Indians link with the Indians of the adjoining states of Arizona and New Mexico. In short, this part of California forms part of the Southwest culture-area. The southern California tribes are however not wholly uniform among themselves, but constitute two groups: those of the islands, coast, and mountains, and those of the Colorado river. These are distinguished primarily by the fact that only the river tribes practised agriculture. We may designate these two divisions as “Southern California” proper and “Lower Colorado River.”

The table on the opposite page gives a brief characterization of these four sub-culture-areas.

153. THE SHAPING OF A PROBLEM

So far we have been discriminating, that is, looking for characteristic differences. On the other hand, there has always existed a consensus of impression, among experienced as well as hasty observers, that a certain likeness runs through the culture of most the tribes of California, northern, central, and southern. With scarcely an exception they were unwarlike; nearly all of them made excellent baskets, but were deficient in wood-working. Obviously it is necessary to reconcile these uniformities with the peculiarities that distinguish the four regional types or sub-culture-areas, as well as to account for the peculiarities.

Let us simplify the problem by considering only one aspect of the four native cultures instead of the whole cultures. In this way there will be more likelihood of making a substantial beginning; any results obtained from the example can be subsequently checked from other aspects of the cultures to see if the findings are broadly representative. Further, let us arrange the items of information that are available on this one aspect of culture, not haphazardly, nor mechanically as under an alphabetic classification, nor in the sequence in which authors have published their observations, but naturally, or according to some principle that is likely to work out into an interpretation. Since part of the problem is the relation of the uniform features to the peculiar ones, a promising order will be to put at one end of the line or series of data the most universal features, and at the other the most particular or localized ones.

Let us select religion as that part of native culture to be examined, and limit this still farther by eliminating from consideration, for the time being, all forms of religion except public rituals, which among Indians are frequently accompanied or signalized by sacred dances. We may forget, for the moment, private rites, individual sacrifices, superstitions and taboos, medicine men, myths, and the like, and direct attention to dances made by groups of people, or the obvious equivalents of such dances, and ritual acts definitely associated with the dances or the common weal.

_Northwestern _Central California
California (California-Great
(North Pacific Coast)_ Basin)_

Houses Planks Earth or thatch
Sweat-houses Planks Earth
Head-gear Women’s caps Men’s head-nets
Foot-wear Moccasins None
Women’s skirts Deer-skin Deer-skin or fibers
Basketry Twined Twined and coiled
Pottery None None
Boats Dug-out canoes Rush rafts
Paddles Single-bladed Single-bladed
Staple food Salmon Acorns
Ring-and-pin game Salmon vertebræ Deer vertebræ
Shell money Dentalia Clam disks
Bows Sinew-backed Sinew-backed
War clubs Edged stone None
Social divisions None Dual
Shamans Women Men
Origin legend Previous race Creator
Religious society None Kuksu
Dances Wealth displays Spirit impersonations

_Southern California _Lower Colorado
(Southwest)_ River (Southwest)_

Houses Earth or thatch Earth
Sweat-houses Earth None
Head-gear Women’s caps None
Foot-wear Sandals or moccasins Sandals
Women’s skirts Fibers Fibers
Basketry Mostly coiled Almost absent
Pottery Undecorated Decorated
Boats Joined planks Rush rafts
Paddles Double-bladed Poles
Staple food Acorns and fish Maize
Ring-and-pin game Acorn cups Pumpkin rind
Shell money Clam disks Almost none
Bows Plain Plain
War clubs Knobbed wood Knobbed wood
Social divisions Dual and multiple Multiple
Shamans Men Men
Origin legend Birth from Earth Birth from Earth
Religious society Jimsonweed None
Dances Simple dances Dream singings

Choice of this phase of native culture is not quite random; ritual ordinarily is rather freer from the complications caused by natural environment than most other institutions and customs. Had industrial arts, for instance, been selected as the point of attack, it might be imagined that certain tribes made pottery, and others did not, because of the presence or absence of suitable clay in their respective habitats; or perhaps that a particular weave of basketry occurred universally because this weave followed more or less directly from the physical properties of some plant material that abounded everywhere in the state. On the other hand, when tribes do or do not make dances in honor of their divinities, or when they do or do not practise an elaborate mourning for their dead, these are customs into which the influence of natural environment can scarcely enter, since all peoples believe in spirits and suffer the loss of relatives.

154. GIRLS’ ADOLESCENCE RITE

When, then, we review the religious dances of the California tribes en masse, we find that there are only two which come near to being universal. One of these is the Victory Dance held over the head or scalp of a slain enemy; the other is an Adolescence Rite performed for girls at puberty. The latter is the more profitable to consider. It is the more widely spread, having been performed in every district of California, and by almost every tribe. The Victory Dance was not made by the Indians of northern California, who substituted for it a war incitement dance of different character. Further, a tribe having the tradition of the Victory Dance might often be at peace and go for a generation or two without the celebration. But a ceremony which it was thought necessary to make for each girl at puberty was obviously due to be performed every few years even among a small group.

There are many local variations in the Californian Adolescence Rite, but certain of its features emerge with constancy. These traits are based on the belief that the girl who is at this moment passing from childhood to maturity must be undergoing a critical transition. The occasion was considered critical not only for her but for the community, and, since the Indians’ outlook was limited, for the whole of their little world. A girl who at this period did not show fortitude to hardship would be forever weak and complaining: therefore she fasted. If she carried wood and water industriously, she would remain a good worker all her life, whereas if she defaulted, she would grow up a lazy woman. So crucial, in fact, was this moment, that she was thought extremely potent upon her surroundings, as constituting a latent danger. If she looked abroad upon the world, oak trees might become barren and next year’s crop of acorns fail, or the salmon refuse to ascend the river. Among many tribes, therefore, the maturing girl was covered with a blanket, set under a large basket, or made to wear a visor of feathers over her eyes. Others had her throw her hair forward and keep her head bowed. She was given the benefit of having ancient religious songs sung over her, and dances revolved around her night after night. Certain additional developments of the ceremony were locally restricted. Thus it was only in the south that the girl was put into a pit and baked in hot sand. But a number of specific features occur from the north to the south end of the state. Among these are the following rules. The girl must not eat meat, fat, or salt. She must not scratch her head with her fingers, but use a stick or bone implement made for the purpose. She must not look at people; and she should be sung over.

It should be added that most of these traits of the Girls’ Rite recur among the tribes of a much larger area than California, including those of Nevada and the Great Basin and the Pacific coast for a long distance north. This institution, then, is remarkably widespread and has preserved nearly the same fundamental features wherever it is found.

155. THE FIRST PERIOD

What can be inferred from this uniformity and broad diffusion? It seems fair to try the presumptive conclusion of antiquity. A continent is likely to be older than an island. A family of animals has probably existed longer than a single species. A world-wide custom normally is more ancient than one that is confined to a narrow locality. If it spread from one people to another, this diffusion over the whole earth would usually require a long time. If on the other hand such a custom had originated separately among each people, its very universality would indicate it as the response to a deep and primary need, and such a need would presumably manifest itself early in the history of the race.

It is true that one may not place too positive a reliance on evidence of this sort. The history of civilization furnishes some contrary examples. Thus the Persian fire-worshiping religion is older than Christianity, yet is now confined to the Parsees of Bombay and to one or two small groups in Persia. The use of tobacco has spread over the eastern hemisphere in four centuries. Still, such cases are exceptional; and in the absence of specific contrary considerations, heavy weight must be given to wideness of occurrence in rating antiquity.

If the Girls’ Rite were identical among all the tribes that practise it, there might be warrant for the conclusion that it had originated only a few centuries ago but had for some reason been carried from one tribe to another with such unusual rapidity as not to have been subjected to the alterations of time. Yet the fact that the essential uniformity of the rite is overlaid by so much local diversity—as for instance the baking custom restricted to southern California—indicates the unlikelihood of such a rapid and late diffusion. The ceremony is much in the status of Christianity, which, in the course of its long history, has also become broken into national varieties or sects, all of which however remain Christian.

The facts then warrant this tentative conclusion: that the Girls’ Rite is representative of the oldest stratum of religion that can be traced among the Indians of California—their “First Period.” The Victory Dance would presumably be of nearly but not quite the same antiquity.

156. THE SECOND PERIOD: MOURNING ANNIVERSARY AND FIRST-SALMON RITE

Pursuing the same method farther, let us look for rituals that are less widely spread than these but yet not confined to small districts. The outstanding one in this class is the Mourning Anniversary. This is a custom of bewailing each year, or at intervals of a few years, those members of the tribe who have died since the last performance, and the burning of large quantities of wealth—shell money, baskets, and the like—in their memory. Each family offers for its own dead, but people of special consideration are honored by having images made of them and consumed with the property. Until the anniversary has been performed, the relatives of the dead remain mourners. After it, they are free to resume normal enjoyment of life; and the name of the deceased, which until then has been strictly taboo, may now be bestowed on a baby in the family.

The Mourning Anniversary as here outlined is practised with little variation, less than the Girls’ Rite shows, throughout southern California and a great part of central California, especially the Sierra Nevada district. Its distribution thus covers more than half of the state. But it has not spread elsewhere except to a small area in southern Nevada and western Arizona.

In northern California the Mourning Anniversary is lacking. It is not that the Indians here fail to mourn their dead. In fact they frequently bewail them for a longer time than most civilized peoples think necessary. They may bury or burn some property with the corpse. But they do not practise the regular public commemoration of the southerly tribes. They do not assiduously accumulate wealth for months or years in order to throw it into a communal fire at the end. And they do not make images of their dead. In fact, they would be shocked at the idea as indelicate, if not impious. Is there anything in this northern part of California that takes the place of the anniversary?

Not as a psychological equivalent; but as regards distribution, there is. This is the custom, established in northern California and parts of Oregon, for a leading shaman or medicine-man to conduct a ceremony at the beginning of each year’s salmon run. Until he had done this, no one fished for salmon or ate them. If any got caught, they were carefully returned to the river. When the medicine-man had gone through his secret rites, he caught and ate the first fish of the year. After this, the season was open. To eat salmon no longer brought illness and disaster, as it was thought it would a few days earlier. Moreover, the prayers or formulas recited by the shaman propitiated the salmon and caused them to run abundantly, so that every one had plenty. There is clearly a communal motive in the rite, even though its performance was entrusted to an individual.

The one specific element common to the Mourning Anniversary and this First-salmon Rite is their connection with the natural year, the cycle of the seasons, a trait necessarily lacking in the Girls’ Rite with its intimately personal character. Because of this common feature; because, also, neither of these two rituals is as widespread as the Girls’ Rite and yet between them they cover the whole of California with substantially mutual exclusiveness, it seems fair to assume that they both originated at a later time than the Girls’ Rite, but still in fairly remote antiquity. They may therefore be provisionally assigned to a Second Period of the prehistory of California.

157. ERA OF REGIONAL DIFFERENTIATION

It is now necessary to return to the four regional divisions or sub-culture-areas of the modern tribes of California. Since the Northwestern one affiliated with the extensive North Pacific culture, and those of Southern California and the Colorado River with the great culture of the Southwest, many of their customs must have originated in those parts of these two culture-areas which lie outside of California. Even if the northern and southern Californians “lent” as well as “borrowed” inventions and institutions, they must on the whole have received or learned or imitated more in the interchange than they imparted. This is clear from the fact that the Indians of British Columbia are more advanced in their manufacturing ability, richer in variety of tools and utensils, and more elaborate in their organization of society, than those of Northwestern California; and a similar relation of superiority and priority exists between the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona and the Southern California tribes (§ 87). In other words, a stream of civilizational influences has evidently run from southern Alaska and British Columbia southward along the coast as far as Northwestern California, and another from the town-dwelling Pueblos to the village-inhabiting tribes of Southern California, in much the same way that civilization flowed from ancient Babylonia into Palestine, from Egypt into Crete, from Greece to Rome, from Rome to Gaul and Britain, from western Europe to the Americas after their discovery, and from the Christian to the non-Christian nations of to-day. Somewhere in the unraveling of the prehistory of California the first indications of these streams from the outside should be encountered.

They are not manifest in the two periods which have so far been established. The distribution of the Girls’ Rite of the First Period and of the Mourning Anniversary and First-salmon Rite of the Second, does not coincide with the major culture-areas of the continent. The Southwest, for instance, from which the modern southern Californians have received so much, does not possess any of these ceremonies. The Southwest culture therefore evidently originated, or began to take on its recent aspect, or at least to influence Southern California, chiefly after the two periods had passed by in which these ceremonies became established in California. The Girls’ Rite, to be sure, extends up the Pacific coast into Alaska. Yet it is more widespread than the North Pacific Coast culture, since this has its southerly limit in Northwestern California, whereas the ceremony is universal as far as to the southern end of the state, besides occurring inland throughout the Great Basin and Plateau regions. Being more widely spread than the Coast culture, the Girls’ Rite is presumptively more ancient.

The beginnings of the four modern types of California native culture must thus evidently be looked for at about the point now reached in our reconstruction. At first there was a single very widespread ceremony; then two less widely diffused ones; the next logical step in development would have been the growth of a still larger number of ceremonies or ritual systems. These, on account of their greater recency, and perhaps on account of conflicting with one another, would have spread only over comparatively small areas. Let us therefore assume that to this Third Period belonged the beginnings of the Wealth-display dances of the Northwestern Indians which are coupled with the idea of world renovation (table, p. 299); the so-called Kuksu dances made among the Central Californians by members of a secret society disguised as divinities; the Jimsonweed rites of the Southern tribes who use this narcotic plant as a mystical means of initiating the young into their religious society; and the series of long singings that the Colorado River tribes are addicted to and believe they have miraculously dreamed.

Of course, the idea could scarcely be entertained that these four local systems sprang into existence full-fledged. They are complicated sets of rituals, quite different from the simple Girls’ Rite and Mourning Anniversary. They must have grown up gradually from more meager beginnings and have been a considerable time reaching their present elaboration. It would thus seem justifiable to add not only one but two further periods of religious growth, in the earlier of which—the Third—these ceremonial systems of the historic Indians began their development, whereas in the later or Fourth they achieved it.

158. THIRD AND FOURTH PERIODS IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA: KUKSU AND HESI

For instance, in the Central California sub-culture-area a series of tribes possess a society to which young men are admitted only after a double initiation with formal teaching by their elders, the first initiation coming in boyhood, the second soon after puberty. The society holds great four-day dances in large earth-covered houses. Time is beaten to the dance and song with rattles of split sticks, and stamped with the feet on a great log drum. The dancers wear showy feather costumes which disguise them to the uninitiated women, children, and strangers, who take them to be spirits of old that have come to exhibit themselves for the good of the people. There may be as many as twelve divinities represented in this way, each with his distinctive name and dress. One of the most prominent of these is the god or “first-man” Kuksu, the founder of the sacred rites, after whom the entire system has been named the “Kuksu Cult.”

The tribes participating in the Kuksu Cult are the Patwin, nearer Maidu, Porno, Yuki, Miwok, and several others. They occupy an area which may be described as the heart of California: namely, the districts adjoining the lower Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and the Bay of San Francisco into which the two streams pour the drainage of the great interior valley (Fig. 32).

Beyond the Kuksu-dancing tribes there are others, like the farther Maidu, the Wailaki, and some of the Yokuts, among whom the medicine-men are wont to gather for public demonstration of their magical prowess. Thus, they assemble for a competition of “throwing” sickness into one another, or to charm the rattlesnakes so that they can be handled and that no one in the tribe may be bitten during the ensuing year. In these gatherings there is the idea of an association of people endowed with particular powers and operating more or less jointly for the benefit of the community. In short, this fringe of Central tribes beyond the border of the Kuksu Cult evince some of the psychology and motives of the Cult, but without the definite organization of the latter, and also without some of its specific practices, such as god-impersonation. These gatherings of the medicine men thus look as if they might have been the simple and generalized substratum out of which the Kuksu Cult grew by a process of gradual formalization and ritualistic elaboration. This conclusion is corroborated by the distribution. It is the tribes at the ends of the great interior valley, or in the hills above it, whose rites are of this loose type, while in the center are the true Kuksu-dancing groups. There is a periphery of low organization and a core of high organization. According to our previous rule (§ 87, 97), recency in acquisition but antiquity of stage pertain to the marginal as the more widely distributed; the geographically more compact nucleus representing an earlier beginning but a later stage of present development. That is, it is reasonable to believe that the Kuksu Cult grew out of semi-formal gatherings of medicine-men such as still survive in the outlying districts—the “backwoods” of the Central area.

Evidently if a still later religious movement developed as an elaboration or addition of the Kuksu Cult, it should be less widely diffused than this system, forming a sort of nucleus within the core. Actually there is such a later growth. This is the Hesi Dance, confined to the Patwin and Maidu of the lower Sacramento valley (Fig. 32), and regarded by them as the most sacred portion of the Kuksu system. It is the one of all their rituals into which the largest number of differently garbed performers enter, and is made twice a year as the spectacular beginning and finale of the series of lesser Kuksu dances.

The history of native ritual in Central California thus is fairly plain. Early in the Third Period, perhaps already during the Second, the specialists in religion, the medicine-men, had acquired the habit of giving public demonstrations. This resulted in a bond of fellowship among themselves and a sense of exclusiveness toward the community as a whole. Out of this sense there was elaborated during the Third Period, somewhere about the lower Sacramento Valley, the idea of an organized secret society with initiated members. The performances became more and more elaborate, and the production of proof of supernatural power gradually crystallized into impersonations of deities. By the beginning of the Fourth Period, the Kuksu Cult had been established. During this period, it was carried from the center of origin to its farthest limits, whereas at the center the Hesi Dance was evolved as a characteristic addition. If native development had been able to proceed undisturbed, if, for instance, the coming of the white race had been deferred a few centuries longer, the Hesi might have followed the diffusion of the earlier Kuksu Cult; and while this new spread was in progress, the Patwin who form the central nucleus of the whole Kuksu-Hesi movement might have been devising a still newer increment to the system.

159. THIRD AND FOURTH PERIODS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: JIMSONWEED AND CHUNGICHNISH

The Southern California Jimsonweed Rites are quite distinct from the Kuksu Cult in their regalia, dances, and teachings, but are also based on initiation. It may therefore be concluded, first, that they grew up contemporaneously in the Third Period; and next, that they sprang out of the same soil, a growing tendency of the medicine-men toward professional association. The selection of the jimsonweed as the distinctive element in the south seems to have been due to influences from Mexico and the Southwest. The tribes of Arizona and New Mexico use the plant in religion, the Aztecs ascribed supernatural powers to it, and the modern Tepecano of Mexico pray to it like a god. The Spanish-American name for the plant, toloache, is an Aztec word. Because Mexican civilization was so much the more advanced, it seems likely that the use of jimsonweed originated in Mexico, was carried into the Southwest, and from there spread into Southern California—perhaps at the receptive moment when the medicine-men’s associations were drawing more closely together and feeling the need of some powerful emotional element to lend an impetus to their cults.

While the Jimsonweed religion was followed by Californian tribes from the Yokuts on the north to the Diegueño on the south, its most elaborate forms occur among groups near the center of Southern California, especially the Gabrielino of Los Angeles and Catalina Island. This group associates the greatest number of rituals and dances with the Jimsonweed Society, and is therefore likely to have had the leading share in the working out of the religion.

By the opening of the Fourth Period the Gabrielino must have had the Jimsonweed Rites pretty fully developed, while the peripheral tribes like the Yokuts and Diegueño were perhaps only learning the religious use of the drug. The Gabrielino however did not stand still during this Fourth Period, and while the original rather simple Jimsonweed Rites spread north and south, they were adding a new element. This is the Chungichnish Cult, based on belief in a great, wise, powerful god of this name, to whom are due the final ordaining of the world and the institution of the Jimsonweed Rites and their correct performance. Associated with this belief is the use of the “ground painting.” This is a large picture, usually of the world, drawn in colored earths, sands, seeds, or paints, on the floor of the sacred enclosure in which the Jimsonweed rituals were practised. This ground painting served both as an altar for the rites and as a means of instructing the initiates (§ 192, 193). The custom of this sacred painting became firmly established among the Gabrielino, and is known to have spread from them to other tribes, such as the Luiseño. From these it has been carried, in part during the last century, after the white man was in the land, to still more remote tribes like the Diegueño, who recognize the Gabrielino island of Catalina as the source of the Chungichnish Cult and sing its songs to Gabrielino words (Fig. 32).

160. THIRD AND FOURTH PERIODS ON THE LOWER COLORADO: DREAM SINGING

In Southeastern California, among the tribes of the Lower Colorado River, the Third and Fourth Periods are less easily distinguished. The reason for this seems to be the fact that religion developed among these tribes less through the invention or establishment of new elements, than by the lopping away of older ones, with the result of a rather narrow specialization on the few elements that were retained. Tribes like the Yuma and Mohave scarcely danced for religious purposes. The special costumes, showy feather headdresses, disguises, musical instruments, sand-paintings, altars, and ritualistic processions that mark the Kuksu and Jimsonweed cults, were lacking among them. They did adhere to the widespread and ancient idea that dreams are a source and evidence of supernatural power. In short, their religion turned inward, not outward. Instead of their medicine-men forming a society based on initiation, the Colorado River tribes came to feel that every one might be a medicine-man according to his dreams. They put emphasis on these internal experiences. The result has been that they believe that a legend can be true and sacred only if it has been dreamed, and that a man’s songs should be acquired in the same way. Religion, therefore, is an intensely individualistic affair among them. Since no two men can dream quite alike, no two Yumas or Mohaves tell their myths or sing their song cycles identically. This cast to their religion is so strong that it looks to be fairly ancient. The beginnings of this local type of religion may therefore be set in the Third Period. As for the Fourth Period, it may be inferred that this chiefly accentuated the tendencies developed in the Third, the dream basis augmenting as ceremonialism dropped away.

161. NORTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA: WORLD-RENEWAL AND WEALTH DISPLAY

The Third and Fourth periods are also not readily distinguishable in Northwestern California. Yet here the rooting of these two eras in the Second is clearer. We have seen that all through northern California there exists the First-salmon Rite conducted by a prominent medicine-man of each locality; and we have referred the probable origin of this rite to the Second period. The modern Indians of Northwestern California consider their great dances of ten or twelve days’ duration as being essentially the showy public accompaniment of an extremely sacred and secret act performed by a single priest who recites a magical formula. His purpose in some instances is to open the salmon season, in others to inaugurate the acorn crop, in still others to make new fire for the community. But whatever the particular object, it is always believed that he renews something important to the world. He “makes the world,” as the Indians call it, for another year. These New-year or World-renewing functions of the rites of the modern Indians of Northwestern California thus appear to lead back by a natural transition to the First-salmon Rite which is so widely spread in northern California. Evidently this specific rite that originated in the Second Period was developed in the Northwest during the Third and Fourth eras by being broadened in its objective and having attached to it certain characteristic dances.

These dances are the Deerskin and Jumping Dances. They differ from those of the Central and Southern tribes in that every one may participate in them. There is no idea of a society with membership, and hence no exclusion of the uninitiated. In fact the dances are primarily occasions for displays of wealth, which are regarded as successful in proportion to the size of the audience. The albino deerskins, ornaments of woodpecker scalps, furs, and great blades of flint and obsidian which are carried in these dances, constitute the treasures of these tribes. The dances are the best opportunity of the rich men to produce their heirlooms before the public and in that way signalize the honor of ownership—which is one of the things dearest in life to the Northwest Californian.

Another feature of these Northwestern dances which marks them off from the Central and Southern ones is the fact that they can only be held in certain spots. A Kuksu dance is rightly made indoors, but any properly built dance house will answer for its performance. A Yurok or Hupa however would consider it fundamentally wrong to make a Deerskin Dance other than on the accepted spot where his great-grandfather had always seen it. The reason for this attachment to the spot seems to be his conviction that the most essential part of the dance is a secret, magical rite enacted only in the specified place because the formula recited as its nucleus mentions that spot.

In the Northwest we again seem to be able to recognize, as in the Central and Southern regions, an increasing contraction of area for each successively developed ritual. Whereas the First-salmon Rite of the Second Period covers the whole northern third of California and parts of Oregon, the Wealth-display dances and World-renewing rites of the Third and Fourth Periods occur only in Northwestern California. The Jumping Dance was performed at a dozen or more villages, the slightly more splendid Deerskin Dance only in eight (Fig. 32). This suggests that the Jumping Dance is the earlier, possibly going back to the Third Period, whereas the Deerskin Dance more probably originated during the Fourth.

162. SUMMARY OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT

The history of religious cults among the Indians of California seems thus to be reconstructible, with some probability of correctness in its essential outlines, as a progressive differentiation during four fairly distinct periods. During these four eras, the most typical cults gradually changed from a personal to a communal aim, ceremonies grew more numerous as well as more elaborate, influences from the outside affected the tribes within California, and local differences increased until the original rather close uniformity had been replaced by four quite distinct systems of cults, separated in most cases by transitional areas in which the less specialized developments of the earlier stages have been preserved. This history may be expressed in visual form, as on page 314.

163. OTHER PHASES OF CULTURE

A natural question arises here. Does this reconstructed history apply only to ritual cults, or can a parallel development be traced for other elements of religion, for industries, inventions, and economic relations, for social institutions, for knowledge and art? The findings are that this history holds for all phases of native culture. Material and social development progressed much as did religion. Each succeeding stage brought in new implements and customs, these became on the whole more specialized as well as more numerous, and differed more and more locally in the four sub-culture-areas. Thus the plain or self bow belongs demonstrably to an earlier stratum than the sinew-backed one, basketry precedes pottery, twined basketry is earlier than coiled, the stone mortar antedates the slab with basketry mortar as the oval metate does the squared one, earth-covered sweat houses are older than plank roofed ones, and totemism may have become established before the division of society into exogamic moieties. It would be a long story to adduce the evidence for each of these determinations and all others that could be made. It will perhaps suffice to say that the principles by which they are arrived at are the same as those which have guided us in the inquiry into religion. It may therefore be enough to indicate results in a scheme, as on page 315. It will be seen that this is nothing but an amplification of the preceding table. The framework there constructed to represent the history of native rituals has here been further filled with elements of material and social culture.

164. OUTLINE OF THE CULTURE HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA

In general terms, the net results of our inquiry can be stated thus.

First Period: a simple, meager culture, nearly uniform throughout California, similar to the cultures of adjacent regions, and only slightly influenced by these.

Second Period: definite influences from the North Pacific Coast and the Southwest, affecting respectively the northern third and the southern two thirds of California, and thus leading to a first differentiation of consequence.

Third Period: more specific influences from outside, resulting in the formation of four local types: the Northwestern, under North Pacific influences; the Southern and Lower Colorado under stimulus of the Southwest; and the Central, farthest remote from both and thus developing most slowly but also most independently.

Fourth Period: consummation of the four local types. Influences from outside continue operative, but in the main the lines of local development entered upon in the previous era are followed out, reaching their highest specialization in limited tracts central to each area.

This summary not only outlines the course of culture history in native California: it also explains why there are both widely uniform and narrowly localized culture elements in the region. It thus answers the question why from one aspect the tribes of the state seem so much alike and from another angle they appear endlessly different. They are alike largely insofar as they have retained certain old common traits. They are different to the degree that they have severally added traits of later and localized development.

165. THE QUESTION OF DATING

A natural question is how long these periods lasted. As regards accurate dating, there is only one possible answer: we do not know nearly enough. Moreover modern historians, who possess infinitely fuller records on chronology than anthropologists can ever hope to have on primitive peoples, tend more and more to lay little weight on specific dates. They may set 476 A.D., the so-called fall of Rome, as the point of demarcation between ancient and mediæval history because it is sometimes useful, especially in elementary presentation, to speak definitely. But no historian believes that any profound change took place between 475 and 477 A.D. That is an impression beginners may get from the way history is sometimes taught. Yet it is well recognized that certain slow, progressive changes were going on uninterruptedly for centuries before and after; and that if the date 476 A.D. is arbitrarily inserted into the middle of this development, it is because to do so is conventionally convenient, and with full understanding that the event marked was dramatic or symbolic rather than intrinsically significant. In fact, the value of a historian’s work lies precisely in his ability to show that the forces which shaped mediæval history were already at work during the period of ancient times and that the causes which had molded the Roman empire continued to operate in some degree for many centuries after the fall of Rome.

Nevertheless there is no doubt that occasional dates have the virtue of impressing the mind with the vividness which specific statements alone possess. Also, if the results of anthropological studies are to be connected with the written records of history proper, at least tentative dates must be formulated, though of course in a case like this of the periods of native culture in California it is understood that all chronology is subject to a wide margin of error.

History provides a start toward a computation, although its aid is a short one. California began to be settled about 1770. The last tribes were not brought into contact with the white man until 1850. As early, however, as 1540 Alarcón rowed and towed up the lower Colorado and wrote an account of the tribes he encountered there. Two years later, Cabrillo visited the coast and island tribes of southern California, and wintered among them. In 1579 Drake spent some weeks on shore among the central Californians and a member of his crew has left a brief but spirited description of them. In all three instances these old accounts of native customs tally with remarkable fidelity with all that has been ascertained in regard to the recent tribes of the same regions. That is, native culture has evidently changed very little since the sixteenth century. The local sub-cultures already showed substantially their present form; which means that the Fourth Period must have been well established three to four centuries ago. We might then assign to this period about double the time which has elapsed since the explorers visited California; say seven hundred years. This seems a conservative figure, which would put the commencement of the Fourth Period somewhere about 1200 A.D.

All the remainder must be reconstruction by projection. In most parts of the world for which there are continuous records, it is found that civilization usually changes more rapidly as time goes on. While this is not a rigorous law, it is a prevailing tendency. However, let us apply this principle with reserve, and assume that the Third Period was no longer than the Fourth. Another seven hundred years would carry back to 500 A.D.

Now, however, it seems reasonable to begin to lengthen our periods somewhat. For the Second, a thousand years does not appear excessive: approximately from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D. By the same logic the First Period should be allowed from a thousand to fifteen hundred years. It might be wisest to set no beginning at all, since our “First” period is only the first of those which are determinable with present knowledge. Actually, it may have been preceded by a still more primitive era on which as yet no specific evidence is available. It can however be suggested that by 2000 or 1500 B.C. the beginnings of native Californian culture as we know it had already been made.

166. THE EVIDENCE OF ARCHÆOLOGY

There is left as a final check on the problem of age a means of attack which under favorable circumstances is sometimes the most fruitful: archæological excavation, especially when it leads to stratigraphic determination, that is, the finding of different but superimposed layers. Unfortunately archæology affords only limited aid in California—much less, for instance, than in the Southwest. Nothing markedly stratigraphical has been discovered. Pottery, which has usually proved the most serviceable of all classes of prehistoric remains for working out sequences of culture and chronologies, is unrepresented in the greater part of California, and is sparse and rather recent in those southern parts in which it does occur.

Still, archæological excavation has brought to light something. It has shown that the ancient implements found in shellmounds and village sites in Southern California, those from the shores of San Francisco Bay in Central California, and those along the coast of Northwestern California, are distinct. Certain peculiar types of artifacts are found in each of these regions, are found only there, and agree closely with objects used by the modern tribes of the same districts. For instance, prehistoric village and burial sites in Northwestern California contain long blades of flaked obsidian like those used until a few years ago by the Yurok and Hupa. Sites in Southern California have brought to light soapstone bowls or “ollas” such as the Spaniards a century ago found the Gabrielino and Luiseño employing in cooking and in jimsonweed administration. Both these classes of objects are wanting from the San Francisco Bay shellmounds and among the recent Central Californian tribes.

It may thus be inferred (1) that none of the four local cultures was ever spread much more widely than at present; (2) that each of them originated mainly on the spot; and (3) that because many of the prehistoric finds lie at some depth, the local cultures are of respectable antiquity—evidently at least a thousand years old, probably more. This fairly confirms the estimate that the differentiation of the local cultures of the Third Period commenced not later than about 500 A.D.

167. AGE OF THE SHELLMOUNDS

Archæology also yields certain indications as to the total lapse of time during the four periods. The deposits themselves contribute the evidence. Some of the shellmounds that line the ramifying shores of San Francisco Bay to the number of over four hundred have been carefully examined. These mounds are refuse accumulations. They were not built up with design, but grew gradually as people lived on them year after year, because much of the food of their inhabitants was molluscs—chiefly clams, oysters, and mussels—whose shells were thrown outdoors or trodden under foot. Some of the sites were camped on only transiently, and the layers of refuse never grew more than a few inches in thickness. Other spots were evidently inhabited for many centuries, since the masses of shell now run more than thirty feet deep and hundreds of feet long. The higher such a mound grew, the better it drained off. One side of it would afford shelter from the prevailing winds. The more regularly it came to be lived on, the more often would the inhabitants bring their daily catch home, and, without knowing it, thus help to raise and improve the site still further.

Some of these shellmounds are now situated high and dry, at some distance above tide water. Others lie on the very edge of the bay, and several of these, when shafts were sunk into them, proved to extend some distance below mean sea level. The base of a large deposit known as the Ellis Landing mound, near Richmond, is eighteen feet below high tide level; of one on Brooks island near by, seventeen feet. The conclusion is that the sites have sunk at least seventeen or eighteen feet since they began to be inhabited. The only alternative explanation, that the first settlers put their houses on piles over the water, is opposed by several facts. The shells and ashes and soil of the Ellis Landing mound are stratified as they would be deposited on land, not as they would arrange in water. There are no layers of mud, remains of inedible marine animals, or ripple marks. There is no record of any recent Californian tribe living in pile dwellings; the shore from which the mound rises is unfavorably situated for such structures, being open and exposed to storms. Suitable timber for piles grows only at some distance. One is therefore perforce driven to the conclusion that this mound accumulated on a sinking shore, but that the growth of the deposit was more rapid than the rise of the sea, so that the site always remained habitable.

How long a time would be required for a coast to subside eighteen feet is a question for geologists, but their reply remains indefinite. A single earthquake might cause a sudden subsidence of several feet, or again the change might progress at the rate of a foot or only an inch a century. All that geologists are willing to state is that the probability is high of the subsidence having been a rather long time taking place.

The archæologists have tried to compute the age of Ellis Landing mound in another way. When it was first examined there were near its top about fifteen shallow depressions. These appear to be the remains of the pits over which the Indians were wont to build their dwellings. A native household averages about 7 inmates. One may thus estimate a population of about 100 souls. Numerous quadruped bones in the mound prove that these people hunted; net sinkers, that they fished; mortars and pestles, that they consumed acorns and other seeds. Accordingly, only part of their subsistence, and probably the minor part, was derived from molluscs. Fifty mussels a day for man, woman, and child seem a fair estimate of what their shellfish food is likely to have aggregated. This would mean that the shells of 5,000 mussels would accumulate on the site daily. Laboratory experiments prove that 5,000 such shells, with the addition of the same percentage of ash and soil as occurs in the mound, all crushed down to the same consistency of compactness as the body of the mound exhibits, occupy a volume of a cubic foot. This being the daily increment, the growth of the mound would be in the neighborhood of 365 feet per year. Now the deposit contains roughly a million and a quarter cubic feet. Dividing this figure by 365, one obtains about 3,500 as the presumable number of years required to accumulate the mound.

This result may not be accepted too literally. It is the result of a calculation with several factors, each of which is only tentative. Had the population been 200 instead of 100, the deposit would, with the other terms of the computation remaining the same, have built up twice as fast, and the 3,500 years would have to be cut in half. On the other hand, it has been assumed that occupation of the site was continuous through the year. Yet all that is known of the habits of the Indians makes it probable that the mound inhabitants were accustomed to go up into the hills and camp about half the time. Allowance for this factor would double the 3,500 years. All that is maintained for the computed age is that it represents a conscientious and conservative endeavor to draw a conclusion from all available sources of knowledge, and that it seems to hit as near the truth as a calculation of this sort can.

One verification has been attempted. Samples of mound material, taken randomly from different parts, indicate that 14 per cent of its weight, or about 7,000 tons, are ashes. If the mound is 3,500 years old, the ashes were deposited at the rate of two tons a year, or about eleven pounds daily. Experiments with the woods growing in the neighborhood have shown that they yield less than one per cent of ash. The eleven daily pounds must therefore have come from 1,200 pounds of wood. On the assumption, as before, that the population averaged fifteen families, the one-fifteenth share of each household would be eighty pounds daily. This is a pretty good load of firewood for a woman to carry on her back, and with the Indians’ habit of nursing their fires economically, especially along a timberless shore, eighty pounds seems a liberal allowance to satisfy all their requirements for heating and cooking. If they managed to get along on less than eighty pounds per hut, the mound age would be correspondingly greater.

This check calculation thus verifies the former estimate rather reasonably. It does not seem rash to set down three to four thousand years as the indicated age of the mound.

This double archæological conclusion tallies as closely as one could wish with the results derived from the ethnological method of estimating antiquity from the degree and putative rapidity of cultural change. Both methods carry the First traceable period back to about 1,500 or 2,000 B.C. After all, exactness is of little importance in matters such as these, except as an indication of certitude. If it could be proved that the first mussel was eaten by a human being on the site of Ellis Landing in 1724 B.C., this piece of knowledge would carry interest chiefly in proving that an exact method of chronology had been developed, and would possess value mainly in that the date found might ultimately be connectible with the dates of other events in history and so lead to broader formulations.

168. GENERAL SERVICEABILITY OF THE METHOD

The anthropological facts which have been analyzed and then recombined in the foregoing pages are not presented with the idea that the history of the lowly and fading Californians is of particular intrinsic moment. They have been discussed chiefly as an illustration of method, as one example out of many that might have been chosen. That it was the California Indians who were selected, is partly an accident of the writer’s familiarity with them. The choice seems fair because the problem here undertaken is rather more difficult than many. The Californian cultures were simple. They decayed quickly on contact with civilization. The bulk of historical records go back barely a century and a half. Archæological exploration has been imperfect and yields comparatively meager results. Then, too, the whole Californian culture is only a fragment of American Indian culture, so that the essentially local Californian problems would have been further illuminated by being brought into relation with the facts available from North America as a whole—an aid which has been foregone in favor of compact presentation. In short, the problem was made difficult by its limitations, and yet results have been obtained. Obviously, the same method applied under more favorable circumstances to regions whose culture is richer and more diversified, where documented history projects farther back into the past, where excavation yields nobler monuments and provides them in stratigraphic arrangement, and especially when wider areas are brought into comparison, can result in determinations that are correspondingly more exact, full, and positive.

It is thus clear that cultural anthropology possesses a technique of operation which needs only vigorous, sane, and patient application to be successful. This technique is newer and as yet less refined than those of the mechanical sciences. It is also under the disadvantage of having to accept its materials as they are given in nature; it is impossible to carry cultural facts into the laboratory and conduct experiments on them. Still, it is a method; and its results differ from those of the so-called exact sciences in degree of sharpness rather than in other quality.

It will be noted that throughout this analysis there has been no mention of laws; that at most, principles of method have been recognized—such as the assumption that widely spread culture elements are normally more ancient than locally distributed ones. In this respect cultural anthropology is in a class with political and economic history, and with all the essentially historical sciences such as natural history and geology. The historian rarely enunciates laws, or if he does, he usually means only tendencies. The “laws” of historical zoölogy are essentially laws of physiology; those of geology, laws of physics and chemistry. Even the “laws” of astronomy, when they are not mere formulations of particular occurrences which our narrow outlook on time causes to seem universal, are not really astronomical laws but mechanical and mathematical ones. In other words, anthropology belongs in the group of the historical sciences: those branches of knowledge concerned with things as and how and when they happen, with events as they appear in experience; whereas the group of sciences that formulates laws devotes itself to the inherent and immutable properties of things, irrespective of their place or sequence or occurrence in nature.

Of course, there must be laws underlying culture phenomena. There is no possibility of denying them unless one is ready to remove culture out of the realm of science and set it into the domain of the supernatural. Where can one seek these laws that inhere in culture? Obviously in that which underlies culture itself, namely, the human mind. The laws of anthropological data, like those of history, are then laws of psychology. As regards ultimate explanations for the facts which it discovers, classifies, analyzes, and recombines into orderly reconstructions and significant syntheses, cultural anthropology must look to psychology. The one is concerned with “what” and “how”; the other with “why”; each depends on the other and supplements it.