California offered every means for agriculture, but its wild vege tal products, especially acorns, berries and seeds, were sufficiently abundant to afford sustenance to the interior tribes without re course to tillage, consequently it is the only sedentary culture area in the United States where corn was not cultivated. Pottery, some times with rudimentary decoration, was made in the southern half of California for domestic and for mortuary uses, but it is in no wise comparable with that of the Pueblos. Movable mortars (found under ancient conditions only in the northern half of the state), bowls and globular cooking vessels, especially of steatite obtained chiefly from Santa Catalina island, together with a great variety of basketry, some of which has not been excelled any where, took the place of pottery to a large extent ; these with the pestle, the heavy globular, conical and cylindrical mortars, the later metate slabs with their flattish hand-stones, and the pounding slab used by the coast tribes from San Francisco bay northward, were the only utensils suitable for gathering, preparing, contain ing and storing the native vegetal products. In the northern part the large mortars consist of excavations in bedrock. Many of the stone vessels are exceptionally well made, and some are orna mented with shell incrusted with bitumen. Rectangular and ovoid cooking plates and tobacco pipes of steatite, and polished bowls and cups of serpentine, are among the stone objects of the higher class from the historic Chumash territory about Santa Barbara. In the central and northern parts, especially in the Hupa country, black and mahogany obsidian is abundant, hence chipped imple ments of this material are found in great numbers. The large cere monial knives, or batons, of obsidian, some of which are two feet or more in length, are marvels of the flaking art, and barring the flaked obsidian objects of Mexico are second in this respect only to the slender flint blades of ancient Tennessee. There are also superb flint blades in some localities, and arrow-points and spear heads of exceptional beauty. Unusual stone artifacts are circular digging-stick weights, hook-shape carvings, killerwhale images, boat-shape amulets of steatite found in the Santa Barbara region, and the plummet-like stones and imperforate banner-stones of middle California. The grooved stone axe, the celt and the gouge, implements of such high importance in other areas, do not occur or are of great rarity on the Pacific slope, the small adze-blades, and perhaps implements of shell taking their place to some extent. The occurrence of stone artifacts in the auriferous gravels of Cal ifornia has been mentioned in referring to the antiquity of man in America.
Sea-food was abundant and formed the chief diet of the inhabi tants of the coast and adjacent islands, as is attested by the abundant shell-heaps, the shells being chiefly mussels, clams and oysters. The heaps about San Francisco bay, some of which, esti mated to be at least 3,00o years old and which were still occu pied after the coming of the Spaniards, reach enormous propor tions, the Ellis Landing heap having a million and a quarter cubic feet of material. The principal artifacts from these mounds are obsidian implements, mortars and pestles, bone awls and plummet like "charm stones," all substantially with the same frequency throughout. The ease with which shells of all kinds were procured (haliotis, clam and dentalium especially) profoundly influenced the native arts, for some of the shells were used not only as lesser uten sils, but afforded the means for incrusting both ornaments and objects of utility, and in the north were made into wampum for trade and for embellishing garments, baskets, etc.
There is no reason to suppose that the dwellings of the Cal ifornia Indians in early times differed materially from those known to history. They were all of a temporary character, being built of thatch, brush or bark, sometimes of poles covered with earth, and in the northern forest country slabs of wood were employed.
Stone was not used as building material. The floor of the dwelling was usually excavated lower than the surrounding surface. The absence of ruins and earthworks has made the discovery of in habited sites largely a matter of accident, yet it is known that the prehistoric sedentary population of California was large. Prehis
toric sites rarely reveal anything of.moment that is not apparent in the life of the recent natives of the same locality, hence archae ology has added little to the determinations of ethnology.
Notwithstanding the excellence of their basketry, their well made utensils of stone, their chipped obsidian and flint imple ments, and their work in shell and bone, the California Indians were far from attaining the degree of material culture reached by the Pueblos of the arid region. From central California northward the status of culture represented by art works rises gradually as we pass to the north through Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, the culmination being reached by the tribes of the north-west coast.
The historically known tribes of the area belong to a number of distinct linguistic groups who subsisted and to a large extent still subsist by fishing and hunting, and by the natural supply of seeds, nuts, fruits and roots, in the southern part acorns and fish being the principal food, while all along the Columbia river es pecially salmon was the staple. Their better houses in the coastal region, some of them very large, were of planks with shed or gable roofs, now traceable chiefly by the depressions of their shal low floor excavations; in the interior stone-capped earth rings, 30 feet or more in diameter, mark the sites of pit-houses. In the Nez Perce country, on Snake and Clearwater rivers, village-sites are marked by circular and elongate house-rings varying from 25 feet in diameter to i8 by 6o to 85 feet, represented by a depres sion a foot to three feet deep, with elevated rims—the remains of ordinary dwellings and of communal lodges. As in California, along the shores are numerous shell-heaps, artifacts from which virtually agree with those of the general region. In Willamette val ley and in southwestern Oregon, as well as in Washington, burial mounds have yielded a wide range of ordinary local articles, associated in some cases with objects of civilized origin. Earth works and simple fortifications are mentioned, but little is known of them. Petroglyphs are distributed throughout the region, those opposite The Dalles, in Washington, showing correlation in tech nique and design with certain pictographic animal figures in Idaho, Utah and Nevada. Stone artifacts seem to vary little from those known to the historic Indians. Certain forms of implements and other stone objects characteristic of California extend north ward throughout the length of the Columbia-Fraser area, while other forms characteristic of the north-west coast extend far to the south. Deep globular mortars prevail in some parts, and metates are found in others. The pestles in certain localities are of the oblong-club shape, many well finished and tastefully carved; in others they are ovoid or flattish, many being merely adapted boulders; and all were occasionally used as hammers. Tobacco pipes, straight in the south and bent in the north, are known; the grooved axe is absent, but adzes, celts and chisels of jadeite have been found on the middle Columbia. Among the other abundant stone objects are dishes, knives, net-sinkers, abraders, scrapers, reamers, drills, etching tools, weaving implements ; spindle-whorls, plain and grooved hammers and mauls, bowls, paint cups, arrow shaft smoothers, clubs, and projectile points; and antler wedges and bone clubs and fishing implements are likewise found.