Francis Drake and the California Indians, 1579Heizer, Robert F. (Robert Fleming)
History
Francis Drake and the California Indians, 1579
Heizer, Robert F. (Robert Fleming)
Drake, Francis, approximately 1540-1596 -- Travel -- California; Indians of North America -- California
From the foregoing facts some important conclusions can be drawn.
First, the wonderment of the natives is but an extension of attitudes
they had daily shown from the 17th to the 20th; and similar
manifestations continued throughout the long stay of the English.[50]
The English were looked upon as unusual, perhaps supernatural, visitors,
since nothing is more clear than the fact that they were not treated as
ordinary mortals. Kroeber has suggested that the Indians regarded the
English as the returned dead, and there is much to be said for this
view, as will be shown later. The doleful shrieking, weeping, and crying
are evidence _sui generis_ that the presence of the English was in some
way associated with ghosts or the dead.[51]
The circular semisubterranean house, roofed over with poles and
earth-covered, is also characteristic of a wide area of central
California. The Coast Miwok of Drake's Bay and Bodega Bay[52] used these
houses, as did the Pomo.[53] It is clearly not a temporary brush-covered
house like those seen in the Bodega-Tomales Bay region.[54] The "caules
of network" undoubtedly refer to the well-known net caps of central
California,[55] a type so widespread that exact localization or
provenience is impossible.
The Fletcher account is fairly specific on particulars of dress--women
wore shredded bulrush skirts and deerskin shoulder capes, and men were
ordinarily naked. The bulrush or tule-fiber clothing is attested for
Bodega Bay[56] and Drake's Bay,[57] but it is also found generally
throughout central California. Men were generally naked in California,
so Fletcher does not note here a distinctive cultural trait. The wearing
of deerskin capes by the women is not strictly substantiated by the
observations of later explorers, although Cermeño (1595) said that the
women in Drake's Bay "covered their private parts with straw and skins
of animals."[58] Archibald Menzies noted that the women in Tomales Bay
wore a deerskin wrapped around their middle and reaching to the
knees,[59] and Francisco Eliza said that near Bodega Bay "the women
cover themselves from the waist down with deer skins."[60] Colnett
mentions the Indian dress of deerskins in Bodega Bay.[61]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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