THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION
OF THE NORTH COAST
OF CALIFORNIA

BY

S. F. COOK

ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECORDS
Vol. 16, No. 3

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECORDS

Editors (Berkeley): R. L. Olson, R. F. Heizer, T. D. McCown, J. H. Rowe
Volume 16. No. 3. pp. 81-130

Submitted by editors April 21, 1955
Issued October 18, 1956
Price, 75 cents

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles
California

Cambridge University Press
London, England

Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION OF THE NORTH COAST OF CALIFORNIA

BY

S. F. COOK

INTRODUCTION

The present manuscript attempts a reassessment of the aboriginal population of Northwestern California, from the Oregon line to the Bay of San Francisco. There are no natural and fixed limits to the territory. Its outline serves merely the purposes of convenience. For this reason the individual units within the whole area are based, not upon natural ecological provinces such as mountain ranges, valleys, or river basins, but upon ethnic or "tribal" boundaries. Moreover, since there is no necessary interrelationship between the component parts, each is considered as a separate entity, and its population is computed separately. There is no final grand total to be added up, the significance of which transcends that of any of the constituents.

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. We must know how many people there were before we can study their equilibrium with the physical or cultural environment.

The outcome of this study is to augment markedly the previously estimated number of inhabitants in the region at hand, and, by implication, the number in the whole state. The magnitude of the aboriginal population has steadily diminished in our eyes for many years. I believe it was Powers who thought that the natives numbered as high as 750,000 or more. Merriam thought there were 260,000. Kroeber, in the Handbook of California Indians, (1925, p. 882) reduced it to 133,000. I myself in an earlier work (1943, pp. 161 et seq.) reviewed the evidence and raised Kroeber's figure by no more than 10 per cent. It appears to me that the trend toward assessing the native population in continually diminishing terms is due to the operation of two factors.

The first is a tendency on the part of subsequent generations to adopt a highly skeptical attitude toward all statements and testimony derived from earlier generations. 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. This failing, so the argument runs, becomes most apparent when any numerical estimates are involved. Thus the soldier inevitably grossly magnifies the force of the enemy, the priest inflates the number of his flock, the farmer falsifies the size of his herds, the woodsman increases the height of the tree—all just as the fisherman enlarges upon the big one which got away. That these individuals are frequently subject to an urge to exaggerate cannot for a moment be denied. Nevertheless, under many circumstances most men lack a desire to do so or, if they feel such desire, know how to curb it.

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. 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. Evidence of falsehood should be looked for and, if found, the account should be discounted or discredited. Otherwise it should be admitted at face value. It need not be stressed, of course, that the acceptance or the rejection of a given datum because it does or does not conform to a preconceived theory constitutes a major scientific crime.

In the assessment of the California population it may have come about through the years that the disinclination to agree with contemporary observation has been carried too far and that a more liberal attitude of mind is needed. If so, then the reduction of the population which has taken place in print may have overshot its mark and the figures may require revision upwards.

The second factor is methodological. Throughout the last half-century, and beginning with the pioneer work of Barrett and Kroeber, ethnographers have employed the informant method almost exclusively. It is not my intention to deprecate this procedure in any way or to imply that it has not proved an exceedingly valuable tool. I would like to suggest, however that it does carry certain limitations. I refer specifically to the inability of old men and women to remember and transmit quantitative facts over a great span of years. On the other hand, qualitative facts and ideas can persist in the mind with little or no blurring or alteration. Thus a man might retain clearly from his own memory, or through that of his parents, where a village was located, what its name was, and some of the people who lived there. Yet he might have no clear concept whatever how many persons inhabited the village or how many villages were known to the tribe. This failure to retain and transmit accurate knowledge of number or mensuration becomes intensified if the informant is required to reach across an intervening period of unrest and confusion, both physical and mental, to an era of stability long since vanished. Yet this is just what the informant is asked to do when he tries to tell about the geographic and demographic conditions existing one or more generations prior to his own youth.

I do not wish to advocate throwing out all informant testimony for these reasons—or, indeed, any of it. I merely wish to suggest that an undeviating adherence to literal statements of informants may on occasion lead to population estimates which are too low. The same discretion and criticism should be accorded them as in the other direction should be accorded to the statements left by contemporary white observers.

THE YUROK

The first exhaustive and scholarly attempt to assess aboriginal population was that of A. L. Kroeber (1925) in his Handbook of the Indians of California. He made a particularly careful study of and worked out his fundamental principles with the Yurok. Hence any reappraisement of the population problem in Northwest California must begin with a thorough examination of all the evidence pertaining to this tribe.

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.

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. Since all the contemporary accounts agree with this conclusion it may be accepted as established.

With regard to the number of houses per village it must be admitted that this factor is subject to wide variation both in locality and time. The number of house pits observed many years after the village itself has disappeared is likely to be unreliable for many reasons, although it may be used as a first approximation in default of better data. A safer guide is the memory of reliable informants or actual house counts made by explorers or original settlers. These are the sources of the values given by Kroeber and Waterman.

For the Yurok there are five chief compilations of villages, with and without house counts:

In table 1 (pp. 85-91, herein) will be found a list of 78 villages, based primarily on Waterman's data. Under each village name are assembled such facts as I can find in the writings of Kroeber and Waterman bearing on the existence of the town. In the third column is placed my own evaluation of these facts in the form of a statement whether such existence should be regarded as certain, probable, or doubtful. The results have been then transferred to table 2 (p. 92, herein). In the first column of this second table is the arbitrary number assigned each town shown in table 1 (pp. 85-91, herein), the doubtful towns being omitted. In the second column is the source, where the letter "l" denotes that the house number is derived from Waterman's list on page 206, the letter "t" that the number was derived from Waterman's textual descriptions, and the letter "M" that the data were secured from Merriam's village lists. The letter "R" indicates that the town appeared on Randall's map of 1866 but was not adequately discussed by Waterman or Kroeber. The letter "p" indicates that the house number is my own estimate. The third column shows the house number itself. In addition are shown the corresponding house numbers as taken from Kroeber's informants ("modern memories") or from the census of 1852 as cited by Kroeber.

The total number of houses is 412, which, at 7.5 persons per house, gives a population of 3,090.

Some insight into the validity of the value thus obtained may be secured by cross checking the various sources for house number. As a basis for comparison the list in table 1 (pp. 85-91, herein) may be used, since it is constructed for the great majority of villages from Waterman's final estimate. There are 16 towns for which a number is given in Waterman's list (1920, p. 206) and for which a statement of house numbers derived directly from informants is to be found in his detailed descriptions. For these towns the list shows 88 houses and the text 101. Now, if the same ratio of house numbers (i.e., 88 to 101) is applied to the total population as derived from table 2 (p. 92, herein) the result is a population of 3,562 persons.

On his detailed maps Waterman shows the location of the houses in 19 villages. Presumably he checked these houses carefully with informants, for in many instances he appends the house names, although as a rule only the pits remained when he saw the sites. There are in all 210 houses, whereas in his list on page 206 for the same towns he gives 192 houses. The total population projected from the maps would then be 3,380.

In a similar manner Waterman's list may be compared with Kroeber's list from informants and from the 1852 census. For the pertinent towns the numbers are: Waterman, 163 houses; Kroeber's informants, 154; the 1852 census 141. Projecting to the full list in table 2 (p. 91, herein) the population values are respectively 2,918 and 2,671. Of all the extrapolations the most significant is that from the 1852 census for it demonstrates that at that date the Yurok population could not have fallen far short of 2,500, a figure set by Kroeber as the absolute maximum for aboriginal times. In 1852 the tribe had already suffered materially from the disturbance caused by white settlement and hence must not have represented the full pre-settlement value. The average of all five estimates is 3,124.

Kroeber states unequivocally that he cannot concede to the Yurok a population greater than 2,500. Yet the best ethnographic data we possess, much of it assembled by Kroeber himself, indicate a population of 3,100 to 3,200. The key to the controversy seems to lie in Kroeber's decision that house sites and pits must be reduced by a factor of one-third in order to compute population. His conclusions are summed up in the following paragraph (1925, p. 18):

Let us now consider the following points.

1. With respect to the 173 house sites mentioned in the paragraph above Kroeber states on the same page (1925, p. 18): "Recent counts of houses and house pits recollected as inhabited, total over 170 for the Rekwoi-Kepel stretch." (Emphasis mine.) In other words the data furnished by Kroeber's informants and presented in the table on page 18 were not based upon the actual or presumptive number of pits but on inhabited houses. It is this total which conforms so closely to the count made by the census-takers of 1852 and also that shown on Waterman's list. By Kroeber's own admission therefore a one-third reduction for these Yurok towns would not only be unnecessary but would lead to entirely false conclusions.

2. Kroeber is not clear whether he means house pits existing on the ground in 1910 or pits which might have been visible had there been no destruction due to floods or mining subsequent to 1850. He states that, if the latter are included, then the number of house sites "may be set at" 200 or more. But by implication he recommends that the observed number be reduced by one-third. Now on Waterman's maps the author shows for 19 towns the actual or approximate location of the pits visible or otherwise known in the year 1909. There are 210 of these. At the same time the inhabited houses recollected by informants for the same towns, as revised by him in his list on page 206, is 192. Hence the true ratio of reduction is not one-third, or 1 in 3, but 18 in 210, or 1 in 11.7. It is of course possible to assume that 78 pits were destroyed between 1850 and 1909 so that the total number was 288 instead of 210. Then, if the one-third reduction is applied, the result is 192 houses. Such an arithmetical exercise constitutes merely arguing in a circle. On the basis of Waterman's concrete data it would appear reasonable to make a 10 per cent reduction in those localities where information concerning number of houses is derived exclusively from pits remaining long after habitation has ceased.

3. Certain considerations apply to absolute town size apart from the problem of house number. In Waterman's text descriptions there is no clear instance of a village inhabited in 1909 which had been settled or originated after 1850, apart from relocations due to floods or mining. On the other hand, there are numerous towns which declined or disappeared during the days of the American invasion and of which the memory was very hazy in the minds of informants sixty years later. For instance hopaw had been broken up by smallpox "in the early days." The village of rnr was being abandoned at the time of the coming of the whites. The inhabitants of keperor "all died at once" and the site was deserted. When Waterman saw otsepor the village had only three house pits, but informants well remembered several families living there. Waterman felt sure that srpr, espaw, and loolego had been larger in aboriginal times than informants seemed to think. The region around Big Lagoon was once much more populous than Waterman's data would indicate. No one of these instances is in any way conclusive but their cumulative effect is considerable. It is quite possible therefore that along the entire northwest coast and the Klamath basin the population began an abrupt decline coinciding with the first arrival of permanent white settlers. Such a condition would be in entire conformity with much of the testimony derived from informants in 1910.

YUROK ... 3,100

TABLE 1

Analysis of Village Sites

According to Kroeber, Waterman, and Merriam. Unless otherwise specified, page numbers refer to Waterman (1920). The column "Status" indicates whether the existence of a village at or about the year 1850 may be regarded as certain (C), probable (P), or doubtful (D).