HUPA. This, the most advanced and best known tribe of the Pacific coast division of the Athabascan family of American Indians, lives, to the number of 600, on lower Trinity river in Hoopa valley, north-western California. Their culture, shared by the Yurok and Karok, was characterized by acorn and salmon sub sistence, canoes, frame houses of planks bearing individual names ; clanless villages, a wealth-aristocracy owning debt slaves, fishing places and oak groves, dentalium shell and woodpecker scalp currency, treasures of albino deer skins, huge obsidian blades, furs, etc. ; no political authority but an intricate law of persons and property ; wealth displaying, stringently localized dances, without symbolism but attached to the recitation of narrative magical formulas. This is the southernmost efflorescence of the native culture characteristic of the North Pacific coast of North America, though lacking the potlatch festivals, secret societies and masks, totem poles and carving art of the northern tribes.
See Goddard in Univ. Calif. Publ. Am. Arch. Ethn., vol. i. (ico4) ; Kroeber, Bur. Am. Ethn. Bull. 78 (1925).