The Wailaki, the southernmost group of Athabascans on the Eel River,
are as little chronicled as most of the Athabascan groups. As far as
geography and language are concerned we have very good information
(Goddard, 1923_a_; 1923_b_), but there is very little general
ethnography. Kroeber was able to devote to them only a little more than
three pages in the Handbook (1925, pp. 151-154), and we know scarcely
more today.
The territory of the Wailaki lies for the most part outside the redwood
forest (pls. 11_b_, _c_) and for that reason they had access to a more
abundant supply of the food, particularly acorns, used by the interior
peoples than did most of the Athabascan groups. Perhaps for this reason,
or perhaps simply because of proximity, the culture of the Wailaki
shows considerable affinity with the culture of Central California and
correspondingly less with that of Northwestern California. This affinity
is particularly evident in their tribelet organization, which obtrudes
itself in the accounts of both Goddard and Merriam. In the groups
farther north such organization receives little attention.
Merriam's information on the Wailaki consists for the most part of
ethnogeography, including villages, tribelets, and place names. His
informants in this group were Fred Major and Wylakki Tip. I have been
able to find out nothing about Fred Major, but Merriam gives the
following statement on Wylakki Tip.
My informant, known as Wylakki Tip, a full blood Tsennahkennes
[Eel R. Wailaki, but see Kroeber's data, p. 229], whose father and
mother were born and lived at Bell Springs, tells me that they
belonged to the Bell Springs Canyon band known as Tsi-to-ting
ke-ah, named from the neighboring mountain tsi-to-ting. He adds
that from the mouth of Blue Rock Creek northward the Tsennahkennes
owned the country to the main Eel, and that the present location of
Bell Springs Station, on the west side of the river, is in their
territory but that the east side of the river from Bell Springs
Station to the mouth of Blue Rock Creek was held by a so-called
Yukean tribe.
In Merriam's notes there is no general statement on the Bahneko or North
Fork Wailaki; he was evidently somewhat undecided whether they were
truly a distinct group. However, he comments on the Tsennahkennes, or
Eel River Wailaki, as follows.
[Illustration: Map 5. Villages and tribelets of the Eel Wailaki and the
North Fork Wailaki. Roman numerals indicate tribelets, arabic numerals
village sites.]
Tsennahkennes ... A Nung-gah^{hl} Athabascan tribe in north-central
Mendocino County, California, occupying the greater part of the
mountainous country on both sides of main Eel River from Red Mountain
and the upper waters of East Branch South Fork Eel easterly to Salt
Creek, and from a few miles south of Harris southerly to Rattlesnake
Creek. Their territory thus includes the major part of Elkhorn Creek,
the headwaters of East Branch South Fork Eel, Milk Ranch Creek, and Red
Mountain Creek, practically all of Cedar Creek, and the whole of Bell
Springs and Blue Rock Creeks. The old stage road from Cummings north to
Harris, passing Blue Rock and Bell Springs, traverses their territory.