Page:The American Indian.djvu/260

212 3. California Area. In California we have a marginal or coast area, which Kroebe divides into four sub-culture areas. However, by far the most extensive is the central group to which belongs the typical culture. Its main characteristics are: acorns, the chief vegetable food, supplemented by wild seeds, roots and berries are scarcely used; acorns made into bread by a roundabout process; hunting mostly for small game and fishing where possible; houses of many forms, but all simple shelters of brush or tule, or more substantial conical lean-to structures of poles; the dog was not used for packing, and there were no canoes, but used rafts of tule for ferrying; no pottery, but high development of basketry, both coil and twine; bags and mats very scanty; cloth or other weaving of twisted elements not known; clothing was simple, and scanty, feet generally bare; the bow, the only weapon, usually sinew-backed; work in skins very weak; work in wood, bone, etc., weak; metals not at all; stone work not advanced; no picture writing; designs only upon baskets and not symbolic; social organizations simple without gens or clan forms; political solidarity almost lacking; no formal social ranking, but some tendency to recognize property distinctions; ritualism, fetishism, and religious symbolism almost lacking; well developed puberty ceremonies for girls and a kind of secret initiation for men; a mourning ceremony in which gifts are burned; a tendency to maintain a series of dances in a fixed order; a semi-underground or earth-covered house for ceremonies, a sweat house and the sleeping place of adult males; shamanism conspicuous, but absence of fasting and other inducing methods; regalia not elaborate, feather head bands most general; creation and culture origin myths prevail, a dignified creator, but in addition coyote tales.

As with the preceding areas, we must again consider intermediate groups. In the South, the characteristic linguisticindividuality vanishes to make room for large groups of Yuman and Shoshonean tribes; here we find some pottery, sandals, wooden war clubs, and even curved rabbit sticks, all intrusive; but, in ceremonies and other non-material traits, these tribes conform to the California type we have outlined. The extinct