TABLE 2
Numbers of Houses
The figures in the first column are for village sites as listed in table 1. Sources: R, Randall's map; 1. Waterman's list (1920. p. 206); t. Waterman's text (1920); M. Merriam's village lists; p, an estimate.
THE WIYOT
There are three primary ethnographic sources for the population of the Wiyot. The first is the extensive monograph by Loud (1918), the second a short paper by Nomland and Kroeber (1936), and the third the village lists of Merriam.
Loud based his data on interviews with numerous informants together with a rather cursory visual inspection of the region. He shows nearly two hundred sites of all kinds on his map and differentiates by means of conventional symbols between what he calls "archaeological" and "modern village" sites. By the latter he means settlements which were occupied at approximately the time of the American invasion of 1850. In his text he discusses descriptively a few of the more important of the "modern village" sites but for most of the smaller places he furnishes no information other than inclusion on his map. His coverage is fairly good for the valley of the Mad River and for Humboldt Bay but his treatment of the valley of the Eel River is nearly worthless. Recognizing this deficiency in Loud's data, Nomland and Kroeber secured the services of an informant who was born in 1860 in this area and had lived there all his life. They were thus able to obtain a very complete list of sites, together with a fairly accurate house count for each of them. This list is therefore as reliable as we shall ever be able to get and, unless we wish to discard this type of information completely, we must accept it as essentially correct.
For the Mad River and Humboldt Bay areas the recently acquired village lists of Merriam form an admirable supplement to Loud's compilation. Merriam went over the ground personally and checked carefully Loud's sites. He was thus able to clarify many of the obscurities in the data furnished by the earlier investigator. Where points of discrepancy arise between the two authors therefore, more reliance may be placed upon Merriam.
The family number is taken by Kroeber (1925. p. 116) as the same as for the Yurok, i.e., 7.5. Loud obtained estimates for both house number and population for three villages. Site 45 gave 13.5 persons per house, site 67 gave 9, and site 112 gave 5. The average is slightly over 9, a figure which has no further significance than to indicate that the Yurok value of 7.5 may be applied safely to the Wiyot.
With respect to Kroeber's principle of a one-third reduction in the number of houses the same considerations apply as with the Yurok data. There is nothing to indicate in the work of either Loud or Nomland and Kroeber that informants were not thinking in terms of inhabited houses rather than total deserted houses or house pits. Indeed we have in Loud's text three specific instances (nos. 7, 67, and Y) where the informant not only stated that the houses were occupied in the early days but also gave the names of the persons living in all of them. It is difficult to reconcile a one-third reduction with such data.
In table 3 (pp. 94-96, herein) are given a few notes, gleaned mainly from Loud and supplemented from Merriam's list, which are of interest in determining the existence and population of certain villages. All villages are included the existence of which in approximately 1850 Loud regards as reasonably certain. To these are added several of Loud's doubtful sites, the validity of which has been confirmed by Merriam, plus five villages missed by Loud but discovered by Merriam. The house counts for those towns confirmed or discovered by Merriam have had to be estimated. The number has been taken rather uniformly as 2 or 3 in order to maintain as conservative a standard as possible. For 22 of the larger and better known sites Loud's informants gave an average of 6.5 houses. Hence an average of 3 for those whose names and locations only were known seems in no way excessive.
In table 4 (p. 97, herein) are shown the best estimates for the Mad River and Humboldt Bay areas from Loud and Merriam and for the Eel River valley from Nomland and Kroeber. The total is 440. At 7.5 persons per house this means a population of 3,300 inhabitants for the Wiyot. The corresponding figure given by Kroeber in the Handbook (p. 116) is "perhaps 800 or not over 1,000." Loud states on page 302: "If asked to give an extreme figure for the native population ... the writer would say 1,500, and consider any higher figure pure folly." The present writer, however, stands by the figure of approximately 3,300, insofar as the estimate is based on ethnographic material.
It was suggested in connection with the Yurok that this tribe was already undergoing some reduction in population at the time of the first entry of Americans en masse in 1850 and that the best memory of informants in the decade 1900-1910 could not give us the truly aboriginal picture. For the Wiyot the evidence is still more impressive. None of Loud's white informants could go back of 1850 and one gets the impression that his Indian informants could do little better. John Sherman, the informant of Nomland and Kroeber, was born in 1860, subsequent to ten years of massacre and disintegration of native society. This state of affairs is reflected in many statements in Loud's text. (See also table 3, pp. 94-96, herein.) For instance several strikingly large and recent graveyards are mentioned, a statement which can refer only to the period of 1850 or immediately before. Site 22, according to tradition, had once possessed a large population, and site 23 was said to have been a "regular rancheria" one hundred years previously (that is, previous to 1918). Nevertheless the population of these towns could not be included in the present estimate because no informant living in this century could remember houses there. Site 68 had been declining prior to 1850, the inhabitants either dying or moving elsewhere. The tremendous destruction of populationafter1850 is everywhere evident in Loud's account and it is not too much to suppose that the confusion of the period is reflected in toolowvalues given by modern informants. If this is true, then it is quite possible that the estimate given here of 3,300 Wiyot is actually considerably lower than the true aboriginal population, rather than higher.
WIYOT ... 3,300
TABLE 3
Wiyot Sites listed by Loud (1918)
Notes and comment with respect to some of Loud's sites. Page numbers unless otherwise specified refer to Loud (1918). The notation "Merriam" indicates that the site was checked and accepted by Merriam, who included it in his village list of the Wiyot. The letter A signifies that Merriam had obtained an Athapascan name for the site, thus confirming its existence as an entity known to the neighboring tribes in pre-American times.
TABLE 4
Wiyot Settlements
Mad River and Humboldt Bay
Wiyot settlements according to Loud, Merriam, and Nomland and Kroeber, covering the Mad River and Humboldt Bay. The key designations are those given by Loud. The house counts are from Loud with the exception of sites B and C which are from Nomland and Kroeber and of several sites from Merriam for which I have made my own estimates (indicated by the lettersMp.). In all instances where a range is given by informants (e.g., 2-4 houses) the mean is placed in the table.
Eel River
Wiyot settlements on the Eel River as given to Nomland and Kroeber by the informant John Sherman. The villages are numbered consecutively from the list on pages 40 to 42 of their paper (1936). The list here is cut off at village no. 32, which Kroeber, following Powers, puts as the limit of the Wiyot. The presence of the Wiyot racial group above this point is controversial. For numerous towns the informant uses the non-specific terms "few," "many," etc. These expressions have been transformed arbitrarily, but I think conservatively, into numerical form as follows: Few = 2; several = 4; many = 8; large = 10.
THE KAROK
The village distribution of the Karok was treated briefly by Kroeber in the Handbook, pages 99 to 102, and far more exhaustively in a later paper (1936). For the latter he secured the services of two good informants, a very elderly Indian man named Ned and a woman, Mary Jacops, with whom he examined the area carefully. The list set forth on pages 30 to 34 of his publication must be regarded as definitive. It is true that Merriam has a very complete list of Karok villages but his names vary linguistically from those of Kroeber to such an extent that, save in a few instances, it is extremely difficult to reconcile them. However, since Merriam's total is 115 for the same territory where Kroeber finds 108 and since Merriam does not give house counts the Kroeber list may be used exclusively.
Ned gave house counts but Mrs. Jacops did not. Kroeber amplified wherever possible with data from Curtis (cited by Kroeber, p. 30, as The North American Indian, 13:222). Ned's counts were very cautious since he distinguished frequently between the number of houses he had seen at a given site and the number he had heard were there. On the basis of such distinctions Kroeber reduces the total count by a factor of one-sixth. He states (p. 35):
Among the Yurok ... two occupied houses may be reckoned for each three house sites recognized when full detailed data are at hand. They are obviously not detailed for the Karok.
Among the Yurok ... two occupied houses may be reckoned for each three house sites recognized when full detailed data are at hand. They are obviously not detailed for the Karok.
I must take issue with two points. With the Karok the counts were not based upon house sites recognized but on the memory ofinhabited housesby informants. Hence the house site or pit theory cannot apply. In the second place, a reasonably thorough examination of thepublishedmaterial on the Yurok, Wiyot, and the Karok shows that the data for the Karok presented by Kroeber represents the fullest detail of all with respect to the number of houses.
Apropos of the same question it is of interest to point out the house counts given by Ned for the fifteen villages also provided with counts by Curtis for 1860. Kroeber has tabulated these himself and shows that, despite variation in individual detail, the total for Ned is 60 and that for Curtis is 57-60. The identity is remarkable. Commenting on this situation, Kroeber makes the following very significant statement (p. 35. fn.):
It is apparent that, for any particular settlement, no precise figure, even by a good informant, is very reliable unless based on an enumeration of named houses. But for a larger series of settlements the particular variations, resulting from changes of residence or difference of times referred to, tend to cancel each other out and to yieldcomparable and fairly reliable totals.
It is apparent that, for any particular settlement, no precise figure, even by a good informant, is very reliable unless based on an enumeration of named houses. But for a larger series of settlements the particular variations, resulting from changes of residence or difference of times referred to, tend to cancel each other out and to yieldcomparable and fairly reliable totals.
(Emphasis mine.) The present writer, consequently, can see no necessity for a gross reduction of one-sixth of the computed population.
Kroeber's list shows 108 towns plus 10 mentioned by Curtis as being in Karok territory on the Salmon River. The first 84 villages were covered by Ned, who gave house counts for 61 of them. Using wherever possible the houses actually seen, not merely heard of, by Ned we get a total of 248. This is a little smaller than Kroeber's total for the same sites of 254. In this group of 84 villages 9 have counts from Curtis but not from Ned, with a total of 24 houses. By Kroeber's own showing Curtis' counts are as reliable in the aggregate as those of Ned. Sites 85 to 108 are derived only from Mrs. Jacops who did not give counts. Kroeber proposes (pp. 34-35) to reduce these to 15 settlements and assign an average value of 4 houses per village. This seems entirely reasonable, and gives us 60 houses. We may now add the 10 villages on the Salmon River cited from Curtis by Kroeber and, to be conservative, assign an average count of 3 houses each. The total of all Karok houses then becomes 362. At the customary 7.5 persons per house the population of the Karok is 2,715. or with sufficient accuracy, 2,700.
KAROK ... 2,700
THE HUPA
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.
The towns of the Hupa fall naturally into two subdivisions, the first comprising those in Hupa Valley proper and the second those above the valley which extended along the main Trinity River and its South Fork. The first included 12 villages which are mentioned by name by Goddard and are shown on his map. For most of them he indicates houses by dots and solid squares which can easily be counted. Kroeber lists on page 129 the same 12 towns and all but one of them appear on Merriam's list. (These are numbered 1-12 in table 5. p. 100, herein.) Village no. 2, Dakis-hankut, is omitted by Merriam but is shown with houses by Goddard. Village no. 8, Totltsasding, is stated by Kroeber to have been "unoccupied in 1850." Goddard however merely says that it had been deserted for a long time. On the other hand it had been sufficiently well known to the Yurok for them to have a name for it, and Merriam does not question its existence. These two villages may therefore be retained in the list.
With regard to the second group Kroeber gives two villages (nos. 13 and 14) as "permanent settlements." Above these come five towns (nos. 15 to 19 inclusive) lying on the main Trinity River, which are mentioned by name by Kroeber. Although they are mentioned "in early sources" as being in the area Kroeber nevertheless does not think they should be added to his list. However, they are cited by Merriam, for the same area, and three of them are shown with house counts on Gibbs's map. Their existence seems therefore to be assured. They are probably the "5 other villages in and above Hupa Valley, not positively identified" which are cited in the Yurok list by Kroeber on page 131.
No. 20, Tjelding, is given by Kroeber as certain and is included by Merriam. The remaining villages, although not specifically mentioned by Kroeber or Goddard, are given in his list by Merriam with the explicit statement that "these were permanent villages. There were also several camps along the south side of Trinity." Since Merriam is the only investigator who has made a thorough examination of this area, his work must be accepted.
With respect to house counts it is interesting to compare the six villages in Hupa Valley which occur, on the one hand, on the Yurok list of Kroeber or on the Gibbs map and, on the other hand, on Goddard's map. The former give a total count for these towns of 82 houses, whereas Goddard shows 78. The Yurok census and Gibbs's map were formulated in 1851 and 1852 immediately after the advent of the whites. Goddard presumably derived his data from informants in or about the year 1900. From the two sets of figures it is clear that Goddard's cannot be too high and therefore those he gives for villages not covered by the earlier sources must be reasonably reliable. Goddard's total for 11 sites is 128, or an average of 11.6 houses per settlement. In default of other information this value, rounded off to 11, may be applied to no. 8.
Passing to the second group, we find that the five villages above Hupa Valley on the main Trinity River are shown on the 1851 census list as having 23 houses. The map by Gibbs assigns house counts to three of these, nos. 15, 16, and 19 with 4, 3, and 6 houses respectively. The average from the census is 4.6 houses per village and that from Gibbs is 4.3. We may accept from these data the value 4.5 as representing the mean house count for villages outside Hupa Valley proper. This is notably lower than the mean for the valley itself but is consistent with the poorer, more remote terrain.
Using Goddard's counts and the 1851 census where possible and supplementing by the estimate given above for the other villages we get a total of 198 houses for the Hupa. At 7.5 persons per house the population would have been 1,485. This is considerably above Kroeber's "barely 1.000" (p. 130).
A further question presents itself at this point. Should we accept without reservation the Yurok value of 7.5 inhabitants per house? Two lines of evidence become pertinent here. Goddard in describing Hupa society makes the following statements (p. 58):
A typical family consisted of the man and his sons, the wife or wives of the man, the unmarried or half-married daughters, the wives of the sons, and the grandchildren. To these may be added unmarried or widowed brothers or sisters of the man and his wife.... All the children born in thesame housecalled each other brothers and sisters, whether they were children of the same parents or not.
A typical family consisted of the man and his sons, the wife or wives of the man, the unmarried or half-married daughters, the wives of the sons, and the grandchildren. To these may be added unmarried or widowed brothers or sisters of the man and his wife.... All the children born in thesame housecalled each other brothers and sisters, whether they were children of the same parents or not.
(Emphasis mine.) To this Kroeber adds (p. 132): "The ultimate basis of this life is obviously blood kinship, but theimmediately controlling factor is the association of common residence; in a word, the house." Now the social family in the usual monogamous tribe included the father, mother, children, and occasional close relatives. This was the underlying assumption of Kroeber's estimate of 7.5 persons as the social family among the Yurok. Here, very clearly, the social family was far more extensive, perhaps in occasional instances as much as double the Yurok value. At any rate the value 7.5 seems definitely too low.
Another approach is through the data furnished by Kroeber on page 131 of the Handbook. Here he shows a population census taken from seven villages in the year 1870 (the last item "sawmill" may be deleted as impossible to place). The total is 601 persons. Goddard's data show for these same seven villages a house count of 92 for the years centering around 1850. The direct average number of persons per house would be 6.53. Meanwhile Kroeber points out the disparity between the sexes: 232 males and 359 females. This he attributes to warfare alone, a dubious conclusion. Regardless of cause, however, we may calculate that in the absence of this male mortality and with a normal sex ratio of approximately unity the population would have been twice the female number or 718. 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. Consequently, we must allow for a reduction from 1850 to 1870 even on the part of the females. It is impracticable to set any sure figure on the decline but a value of 20 per cent would be very conservative, particularly in comparison with all the northwestern tribes. This would mean a population for the seven villages of 879, or say 900 in 1850. On this basis the number of persons per house becomes 9.78.
I think therefore we are justified in ascribing 10 persons to each Hupa house. If so the population would have been 1,980, or approximately 2,000. It is entirely possible that even this is too conservative an estimate.
HUPA ... 2,000