The Mattole occupied the drainage of the Mattole River below the mouth
of Upper North Fork and the coast from Davis Creek south to Spanish Flat.
The village lists of Merriam and Goddard provide a complete picture of
the Mattole settlements but almost nothing is known of them aside from
this. In the Handbook Kroeber reported (1925_a_, p. 142) that "not a
single item of concrete ethnology is on record regarding the Mattole,
other than the statement that they burned their dead." Almost nothing
has been learned since that time, but Nomland (1938) has published a
monograph on the neighboring Bear River group and the culture of the two
groups was no doubt much the same.
The territory of the Mattole lies wholly within the cold coastal
belt and consequently plant food was less abundant and no doubt less
important. The products of the rivers, when taken together with sea
mammals and other creatures caught in the ocean, provided an ample food
supply.
When Kroeber published the Handbook (1925_a_), he lumped the Mattole
proper with the Bear River group. Nomland (1938) and Goddard (1929)
showed that these two groups were distinct. This division is supported
by Merriam's data and I have therefore retained it.
Merriam appears to have spent a comparatively brief time among the
Mattole. The only informant mentioned for this group is a man called
Indian Joe Duncan, who is said to have lived at the mouth of the Mattole
River below Petrolia. Merriam seems to have visited the area in 1923.
His statement on these people, taken verbatim from his notes, follows.
The Bett[=o]l´ or Pet´-t[=o]l´, as they call themselves,
(commonly called Matt[=o]l´), inhabit the coast region from Davis
Creek, about six miles south of Bear River, southerly to Spanish
Flat, which is about 12 miles below the mouth of Mattole River.
Their center of distribution appears to have been the Valley of
Mattole River, at whose mouth the four or five survivors still
reside.
They say that before the Whites came they numbered between 300
and 500 persons.
Their southern boundary, Spanish Flat, is the northern
boundary of the Shelter Cove tribe, which reached thence southerly
to or beyond Bear Harbor. The Matt[=o]l´ say that the Shelter Cove
language is materially different from their own, and different also
from that of the Briceland Tribe, and that the Briceland language
is very hard to speak or understand. They declined to give the name
of either of these tribes.
The eastern boundary of the Matt[=o]l´ I was unable to locate
exactly. They gave it as along or near the west base of Elk
Mountain Ridge, including the Valley of Upper North Fork Mattole
River. At the same time they gave the names of two 'tribes' or
bands as inhabiting the Rainbow Ridge and Elk Ridge region. The
Elk Ridge tribe they call S[)a]-bahng-kahng, the Rainbow Ridge
people S[)e]-tso´-ik (from S[)e]-tso-[=e]k, Rainbow Peak). There is
uncertainty as to the relations and geographic locations of these
bands.
The tribe inhabiting the coast at Needle Rock they call
E´-l[)e]-tung. It is the same as the Shelter Cove tribe.