Sherburne Friend Cook

“ If there were 1.21 children and the family number was 5.0, the average number of adults was 3.79. For simple equilibrium or stability, such as we must assume existed in pre-white times, at least 3 children must be found in every family. Thus with 3.79 adults there would have to have been a family number of 6.79 or say, 6.80 merely to maintain the population. Considering the relative richness of the environment and the quite elaborate culture of the Pomo an average of 7.0 is by no means excessive for the aboriginal Pomo. ”

“ The average number per house under such conditions would then have been 7.80.
It must be borne in mind that the population count is of 1870 and the house count is of 1850 or earlier. Although Kroeber feels that there was no population decline, apart from the effect of warfare on the males just mentioned, I cannot agree with him. In the face of the overwhelming evidence for a tremendous decline subsequent to 1850 on the part of the Indian population throughout all California it is impossible to concede complete immunity to any one tribe no matter how well protected it might have been. ”

“ To maintain explicitly or by implication that every observer without exception who reported on the size of Indian villages or the numbers of Indians seen was guilty of inflating the values is no more justifiable than to accuse every man who makes a tax return of having cheated the government. ”

“ Since the objective here is the calculation of pure numbers, it is irrelevant that the natural habitat, the mode of life, the reactions to environment of the various tribes and linguistic stocks vary enormously. Such a disregard for the basic principles of ethnography and human ecology will be tolerated only because the limitations of space and time demand that the fundamental question "What was the population?" be answered before opening up the problem of why the population was no greater or no less. ”

“ A careful collection of former village sites through modern informants has never been possible, even at the beginning of the present century, because Marin County was infiltrated by the Spanish and the Indian life was thus disrupted at a very early date. Indeed the first recognizable Coast Miwok baptism was at San Francisco in 1783. Barrett and Kroeber have assembled, to be sure mainly from the tradition handed down to informants by their ancestors, a quite impressive list of villages. ”

“ Pipo-holma (Driver) . This was the northernmost village in the valley. Barrett says (p. 271) this was an aboriginally Wappo town and took the lead in the war with the Pomo.
Tsimitu-tso-noma (Driver) . Driver says that this was a "small town" with no sweathouse, and that the people sweated at Unutsawaholma. The name was not known to either Barrett or Merriam and it is quite possible that it was a summer camp, or a temporary site, or merely a suburb of one of the other villages. Its existence as a permanent settlement is open to some doubt. ”

“ For calculating population from village data it is necessary to know the number of houses per village and the number of inhabitants per house. Both these variables depend for their value upon numerous demographic and cultural factors and hence must be determined separately for nearly every tribe studied. Kroeber has paid special attention to the second variable, the number of inhabitants per house, and has concluded that the best value for the Yurok is 7.5 persons. ”

“ As a purely empirical device, in order to settle the matter, let us assume that each of the nine names represents a small village of 20 inhabitants.
With respect to the size of the villages we suffer from a complete lack of any direct information. By comparison with the rancherias around Clear Lake and in Alexander Valley we could consider that the four large towns contained 200 persons apiece. The five highly probable villages are likely to have been larger than many others, and may have contained 100 each. ”

“ For Driver's village the same considerations must apply. However, since the family number was found to be 4.38, rather than 5.0 the aboriginal value may be put at 6 instead of 7. Then, if the number of families per house is 1.91, the average persons per house would be 11.5, a figure which there is no strong reason for changing. It now appears that, if Unutsawaholma "formerly" had 17 houses, with 11.5 persons per house, the "former" population would have been approximately 195, or in round numbers 200. ”

“ The baptism factor of 15 per cent cannot be used here with confidence because the upper Napa Valley was much more accessible to the San Rafael Mission and particularly the Sonoma Mission than was the area around and above Middletown. At the same time the distance and difficulty of approach were somewhat greater than in the case of the lower Russian River Valley near Santa Rosa and Sebastopol, for which the baptism factor was taken as one-third. As a compromise we may take a factor of one-quarter, or 25 per cent. ”

“ Inherent in this point of view is the feeling, consciously expressed or unconsciously followed, that all human beings contemporary with an event either lie deliberately or exaggerate without compunction. ”

“ Furthermore let it be noted that, according to his explicit statement, the aboriginal village organization had broken down utterly, and the Indians were living in new places in conformity with new economic and social requirements. No wonder modern informants frequently cannot look past the period of upheaval and give us a clear picture of untouched aboriginal life before the white man came! ”

“ Sherwood Valley.—In this valley lived the Mato or Mato-poma of Stewart, or the Mah-to-poma of Merriam, whose permanent villages were inland but who ranged a large territory extending to the coast. According to Stewart there were three minor divisions of the group, with three permanent villages, Mato, Kabedile, and Kulakau, each of which had its own chief. On no other evidence would we be justified in ascribing 200 persons to each subgroup. Stewart says (p. 33) : "The best guesses of my informants placed the primitive population at about 500 persons, half of them in the main village of Mato." ”

“ Cooper settled the Molino Rancho, in Santa Rosa Valley, in 1834, there were living in his neighborhood as many as 2,000 Canimares." The latter term refers of course to the southeastern portion of the Southern Pomo.
We should not accept these pioneer estimates of Indian population without examination and qualification. Neither should we reject them, equally uncritically, as automatically exaggerated and mendacious, and hence worthless. It is quite likely that Cooper knew more about the number of Indians on his ranch than any other white man, at the time or since. ”

“ Under our law each person is innocent until proved guilty. Similarly, within the range of his intellect and the scope of his senses a traveler or a settler or a miner or a soldier of one hundred years ago should be credited with telling the truth unless there is clear evidence from outside sources that he is prevaricating. ”

“ First, the informants of Foster were recalling the important villages which they had seen or been told about but had forgotten the minor sites, hence the great preponderance of nohots. In the second place, it is unnecessary for purposes of calculation to know the names or the number of the peripheral "parasitic" rancherias if we know the primary towns, the nohots, for, knowing a nohot, we know a community. Thus we may immediately set the population of the Witukomnom as at least 1,710 persons. If the informants gave incomplete data, then the number would be higher. ”

“ He would have to draw on second- and third-hand information imparted by his forefathers. As Stewart (p. 29) says of one of his Sherwood Valley informants his "father's father told JMc of 'old times'." It is hardly to be expected that an old man could very accurately transmit population data secured as a small boy at his grandfather's knee. For these reasons I think Merriam's village names cannot be discarded, unless specific evidence proves that they are errors. They must be accepted as villages which at one time were inhabited. ”

“ That the Clear Lake Pomo were in a deplorable state at the time described by Gifford is attested by the statements of his informants concerning the subsequent fate of the 57 children mentioned in the text. Of these, 29, or 50.9 per cent, "died young." Such a tremendous child mortality is quite consistent with our entire picture of the postcontact decline in Indian population but is wholly at variance with any reasonable concept of aboriginal conditions. ”

“ Lethal epidemics had swept over the country repeatedly. Massacre and slaughter had been the rule rather than the exception. Indeed, the open valley through Sonoma and Napa up to Calistoga had suffered more seriously than any other area except perhaps the delta of the Sacramento River. A population reduction from the aboriginal level by one-third prior to 1843 would not be out of line with the apparent facts.
The estimates for the period 1840-1845 derived from Yount, Hittell, and Menefee included the Central Wappo with the more southern groups. ”

“ When we are presented with such an entire lack of direct data, we are quite justified in falling back on the indirect area-density method. Thus the densities are tabulated below for the five other Athapascan tribes (including the Wailaki, considered subsequently) and for the Coast Yuki, a tribe in the region for which we have very accurate counts. ”

“ Kroeber says settlements not communities and Barrett says villages. Reference therefore may have been to individual dwelling places not to groups or constellations. Foster begs the question entirely by referring merely to the work of the previous investigators as "ample." On the other hand, if the Huchnom organization was similar to that of the Yuki, as Foster avers, then at least some of the names mentioned must have been community capitals, or nohots, the smaller villages peripheral to which have been forgotten. ”

“ There are four sources of consequence for the Hupa population. The first is the discussion to be found on pages 128 to 132 in the Handbook by Kroeber, which includes a census furnished to the government by the Yurok in 1851. The second is a monograph published by Goddard (1903) . The third is a particularly exhaustive village list compiled by Merriam. The fourth is a map drawn by Gibbs in 1852, photostatic copies of which are to be found in the Merriam collection. ”

“ Merriam gives 15 villages for the Hoechkienok or "Upper Redwood" tribe, 3 for the Kotinet or "Blue Lake and North Fork Mad River" tribe and 15 for the Mawenok, who lived "on Mad River from opposite Korbel up to the ranch of John Ahlgren about 21 miles in air line." The Chilula and Mattole were credited with 45 persons per village. The habitat of the Whilkut lies on smaller streams and is generally less favorable than that of the Chilula or the Mattole. Hence the number may be reduced to 40 per village. The total is then 1,320. ”

“ There is nothing outstandingly different about the terrain occupied by the Lassik, Nongatl, and Sinkyone, except that perhaps it lies somewhat higher on the streams (but the Wailaki are still higher) and contains fewer flats and open valleys. The three tribes being considered had respectively 325 square miles, 700 square miles, and 615 square miles of territory. If the density was 4.96 persons per square mile the population would have been, to correspond, 1,612; 3,472; and 3,050. If we allow for a somewhat poorer habitat, these values may be reduced a little, say to 1,500 ”

“ Three primary avenues of approach are possible: ecological, ethnographic, and archaeological. It is proposed to deal here with the second, or ethnographic material. The principal sources are three in number; the pertinent chapter in the Handbook, the extensive monograph by Waterman (1920) and the village lists of Merriam (see Bibliography) . All these investigators inspected the terrain and interviewed many informants during the decade 1900-1910. Hence their data have now become definitive. ”

“ If we use the region delineated by Barrett (1908) on his large-scale map, the peoples mentioned above occupied approximately 950 square miles of land surface. The density of population was reckoned for the Pomo at 8.0 per square mile and that for the Coast Miwok, with a population estimated at 3,000, comes to 3.4. The equivalent estimates for the Wappo and Lake Miwok would be respectively 7,600 and 3,260. There are no grounds for immediate decision whether either is too high or too low. ”