Athapascan Indians; Indians of North America -- California
The house count per site for this group must be extrapolated from
Goddard's house-pit counts (1923_a_, pp. 103, 105) on the sites of
two of the tribelets. This figure has been calculated by Cook, who
takes Goddard's house-pit count for 20 sites as "92 pits." For two
localities, however, Goddard specifies a certain number plus "several"
others. "If we allow 4 to represent 'several,' in each of these, then
the total number of pits is 100 and the average per site or village
is 5.0" (Cook, 1956, p. 104). Cook then reduces the figure by 20 per
cent to allow for the probability that not all the house pits represent
simultaneously occupied houses. His average number of houses per site is
4, which would not appear to be an overestimate. If we take this figure,
we have a total of 276 houses for the Wailaki as against Cook's figure
of 348, which was based on a greater area.
Cook takes 6 persons per house as the average density for the Wailaki.
This figure is arrived at in several ways. The figure of 7.5 per house
is well established for the Yurok and sets an upper limit for the
Wailaki area. Goddard appears to have based his population estimate on
a mean of 4.5 persons per house, almost certainly too low, and Cook
compromised at 6 per house. This figure is supported by independent
observation by Foster on the Round Valley Yuki (Cook, 1956, p. 107). The
social organization and the habitat of the Yuki and Wailaki are nearly
identical, so the population per house should be the same for both
groups.
Accepting the figure of 6 persons per house, we get a total population
of 1,656 for the Eel Wailaki and the North Fork Wailaki, as compared
with Cook's figure of 2,315 and Goddard's figure of between one and two
thousand.
_Pitch Wailaki._--Goddard (1924) records 33 villages for the Pitch
Wailaki. For two of the four tribelets, the count is virtually complete.
For a third tribelet, the T'odannañkiyahañ, Goddard lists 6 villages and
indicates that there were probably more (1924, p. 225). If, to allow for
these possible villages, we add 5 to the total above, we get a total of
38 villages for three tribelets, or an average of 12.7 per tribelet.
Although the fourth tribelet, the Tchokotkiyahañ, had a poorer habitat
than the other three (Goddard, 1924, p. 222), we may assume that it had
at least 8 villages, an estimate which is probably conservative in view
of its extensive territory. We then get a total of 46 villages for the
Pitch Wailaki.
Goddard counted house pits in 22 village sites and got an average of
5 per site. If we reduce this to 4 to account for unoccupied pits, we
have an estimate of 184 houses for the Pitch Wailaki, as against 172
estimated by Cook. On the basis of 6 persons per house this gives a
population of 1,104 as against 1,032 by Cook and between 650 and 800 by
Goddard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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