The California Indians, No. XIII [pp. 542-550]

THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS.
Sweep round us, lost ones, in unmeasured night,
Yet glad with wonders audible, and needs
Made beautiful with speech! Uplifted wings
Shade the dark seas, and bear us swiftly through
The shadows of the star-sown fields of blue,
Fed by cloud-rivers with continuous light,
And chords of song, and of diviner things,
Drawn sweetly down in starry water-falls.
So we sail southward, by glad breezes blown
All the still hours; we pass the Farallones,
Encircled with unceasing lines of spray,
And brooding ever with perpetual moans
And wings of sea-birds.-Lo! the riven Gate,
With the sun on the walls of Alcatraz!
Through the twin cliffs with straining sail we pass,
And round to moorings in the peaceful bay,
Where on her sand-hills, girt with queenly state,
The mistress of the western seas lies lone.
THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS.
NO. XIII.-THE PATWEtNS.
N the middle and lower Sacra mento, west side, there is one of
the largest nations of the State; yet its
members have no common government,
not even a name for themselves. They
have a common language, with little divergence of dialects for so great an area
as it embraces, and substantially common customs; but so little community
of feeling that the petty subdivisions
have often been at the bitterest feud.
For the sake of convenience and as a
nucleus of classification, I have taken a
word which they all employ-iatween,
signifying "Indian," or, in some dialects, more properly "person."
Antonio, chief of the Chnposels-a
very intelligent and well-traveled Indian
-gave me the following geographical
statement, which I found correct, so far
as I went: In Long, Indian, Bear, and
Cortina valleys, all along the Sacramento, from Jacinto to Suisun inclusive, on
Cache and Puta creeks, and in Napa
Valley, the same language is spoken,
which any Indian of this nation can understand throughout. Strangely, too,
the Patween language laps over the Sacramento, reaching in a very narrow belt
along the east side, from a point a few
miles below the mouth of Stony Creek,
down nearly to the mouth of Feather
River. In the head of Napa Valley,
from Calistoga Hot Springs to the Geysers, inclusive, are the Ashochemies
(Wappos), a separate tribe; and in Pope
and Coyote valleys was spoken still another language.
The various tribes were distributed as
follows: On the bay named after them,
the Suisuns, whose celebrated chief was
Solano. In Lagoon Valley were the
Malaccas; on Ulatus Creek and about
Vacaville, the Olulatos; on Puta Creek,
the Lewytos. (These last three names
were given to me by a Spaniard, and I
[DEC.
542