Merriam adds certain comments on the villages. Boo-tah-kah-chut-te had a "big round house." Che-ah-po-y-chut-te was of "fair size but no roundhouse." She-ko-ki-chut-te consisted of "two big rancherias and roundhouse." The other 10 villages are listed merely by locality without additional information. We encounter here a clear instance of the perplexity which pursues us throughout the Pomo area. We must accept either the combined word or Barrett and Merriam that there were numerous subsidiary villages inhabited in Sherwood Valley during aboriginal times or the word of Stewart that there were not. At this point it must be emphasized again that by 1840 the Northern Pomo had been invaded by Spanish-Mexicans from the San Francisco Bay region and their aboriginal social order had been partially disrupted. Furthermore, we know that they had been exposed to serious inroads by disease, such as the great smallpox epidemic of the 1830's. In particular, that of 1837, the so-called "Miramontes epidemic," began at Fort Ross and is known to have seriously involved the Russian River Valley. There is much reason to believe, therefore that the population decline began by 1830, with its accompanying shifting and consolidation of villages. Both Barrett and Merriam did their field work among the Pomo from 1900 to 1910, say as an approximate date 1905. A seventy-year-old informant at that time could thus actually remember the year 1840. But a similar individual in 1935 could remember of his own knowledge only to 1870. He would have to draw on second- and third-hand information imparted by his forefathers. As Stewart (p. 29) says of one of his Sherwood Valley informants his "father's father told JMc of 'old times'." It is hardly to be expected that an old man could very accurately transmit population data secured as a small boy at his grandfather's knee. For these reasons I think Merriam's village names cannot be discarded, unless specific evidence proves that they are errors. They must be accepted as villages which at one time were inhabited. There remains of course the possible contingency that some of these places had been abandoned before the advent of the first white influence or that they were spots inhabited for a short time during the upheaval accompanying the American invasion. Since there is no conceivable way in which we may ascertain the true facts in detail, perhaps some arbitrary correction is desirable. Consequently the following procedure is suggested: estimate the population on the basis of all the Merriam names, then reduce by one-third. Such a method should take care of all instances of temporary villages, camp sites etc.