It is still early morning on San Francisco Bay. The tide is going out,
and the sun, just topping the eastern hills, is reflected in the placid
waters as in a great oval mirror. On the horizon beyond the expanse of
the waters of the bay, the sunlight glitters on the snowy summit of Mt.
Hamilton; to the left, looms the hazy outline of Mt. Diablo; and to the
right, glorious in the clear sunlight, stands green-clad Mt. Tamalpais,
guarding the entrance to the broad channel heading north into San Pablo
Bay. The surface of the channel is slightly choppy, because here passes
out to sea the collected volume of the great rivers that drain the
interior mountains and valleys. The shore of the bay is low and marshy,
lying in sweeping curves. Along these curves faint blue smokes rise at
intervals against the shadowy background of the hills. These smokes
mark settlements, of which there are along the entire bay shore about
two hundred, strung like pearls on a necklace.
In one of the curving arms of the bay, smoke ascends from a grayish
spot in the marshland, some three hundred yards back of the shore line.
It is the village of Kawina. Four miles farther east, directly on the
water front, lies the village of Akalan. Beyond that the shore line
turns, and other settlements hug the shore at every point where a fresh
water streamlet empties into the bay.
The clam diggers are straggling along the beach toward home. A number
of young men from Akalan have gone to the head of the cove a few rods
away. They are engaged in dragging a dozen or more curiously shaped
bundles of dried tule-rushes down the muddy slope to the tide channel,
which drains the extensive marshes ranging along the entire east base
of the potrero. When the clam gatherers left home the channel was dry,
but the tide already is fast returning and the breakfast bringers have
to be assisted across.
It is a lively, not to say noisy, occasion. The older children glide
down the slippery mud into the water, and flounder across amidst
laughter and shouting. Only the women with their baskets, and the
smaller children cross by ferry; for these tule bundles are boats or,
rather, floats. Some of them carry only from four to six persons,
others as many as fifteen. The ferrying proceeds rather slowly, to the
lively chatter of the women. The children have run on ahead, up the
grassy incline to the village.
The grass suddenly ceases at the foot of a blackish eminence on which
the village stands. The eminence is about twenty feet high and of
an irregular contour, the slope in places being gradual, in others
steep, while the top is roughly flattened. On approaching nearer, the
whole mound-like structure appears to be composed of the shells of
clams, mussels, and oysters. There is an occasional brightly colored
abalone shell. Here and there are scattered pairs of deer antlers, and
the wing bones of ducks, geese, and other birds with feathers still
attached. Crushed or broken bones of various animals lie everywhere.
And there are fish bones. Flies are swarming about; the odor is far
from enticing. Closer inspection would reveal the presence of ashes and
charcoal, as well as a goodly number of bowlders and pebbles of crackly
surface. The impression is that of a huge ash pile or refuse heap. And
yet on top of it all stands the village!
The village is an irregularly grouped cluster of about thirty
hive-shaped huts, with openings facing either south or east. The huts
themselves are constructed on a framework of slender poles set in
circles from twelve to sixteen feet in diameter, the top ends being
bent together and intertwined some eight or nine feet above the ground.
Over this is placed a layer of twigs and grass, and this again is
covered with earth and sod. Only the top is left open for the exit of
smoke. This morning, however, the fires are out in front of the doors,
each family having its own.
A number of fair-sized bowlders form a ring around the edge of the
dying embers. Ranged about each of these circles, within reaching
distance, are seated the members of the family. Even the older men,
who do not condescend often to eat with the women and children, are
present. They are mostly grizzled, ill-kempt, sluggish looking fellows,
who have barely had time to rub the sleep out of their eyes. Through
the rainy winter months they have been comparatively inactive, the
women have been doing the work; but now it is April and the warmth of
spring is bringing them out of their hibernation. Soon they will be off
for the entire summer, and fall to leading an active life among the
hills where food is not so easily obtained as it is on the bay shore,
though it can be had in greater variety if all hands, including the
men, make the effort.
The clams brought in from the beach are being distributed, and the
older folk place them, just as they are, on the hot rocks around the
fire. The smaller children watch intently and yet uneasily, having
repeatedly been scolded for poking their fingers against the sizzling
shellfish lying nearest on the rocks. Suddenly some of the clams
open up, ready to eat. They have been cooked in the most admirable
fashion in their own juice. In the group around the fire, next to one
of the rear huts, are seated a very old man, a middle-aged woman,
two children, and a half-grown boy. It is the boy Wixi, who has just
proposed to his mother to boil some of the fish.
“Boiled fish! Boiled fish! Who ever heard of boiled fish?” blurts out
the old man in a cracked voice. He is blind, or nearly so, judging from
his dull, deeply sunken eyes. His hair, as well as his straggly beard,
is white, and his face and neck are seamed and wrinkly, suggestive of
tanned alligator skin. His body is thin and frail, his hands shaking.
“Well, fish _could_ be boiled,” Wixi retorts. “You boil acorn meal and
you boil buckeye meal and you boil lots of things. Why couldn’t you
boil fish?”
“Why couldn’t you boil fish? Why couldn’t you boil fish?” the old
man screams, his whole frame trembling. “You couldn’t boil fish
because—because nobody ever did such a thing! Chakalli didn’t tell us
to boil fish.”
This sort of dispute has been an almost daily occurrence for many
moons, since the time of the boy’s initiation ceremony, when he began
to assume the responsibilities of manhood. His father, as Wixi would
say, is away. A shaman, he had failed to cure the poisoned wound of
a certain chief, and he had been quietly waylaid on the trail. Since
then, his family had had to suffer partial disgrace.
That was some years ago, and the boy, thrown thus early upon his own
resources, had learned through stress of circumstances to practice a
number of new devices. He discovered that by suspending a grass mat in
a vertical position by means of an upright stick to serve as a support,
he was able alone to sail his tule float speedily before the wind.
Other young men would have copied his device, only they had elders in
direct authority and were prevented. But Wixi, being already something
of an outcast in the village, was suffered to do much as he pleased,
his feeble old grandfather being in no position to check him.
On this occasion, Wixi, instead of arguing with the old man, dips his
hands quickly into a basket standing in a slight hollow, well away
from the fire, and brings out four or five small rocks dripping with
water. He throws them to one side, and by means of a couple of sticks,
pulls several rocks out of the fire and drops them, one by one, into
the basket, half full of water. There is a momentary splutter and rise
of steam, and then the water in the basket begins to boil. Wixi places
several chunks of the stingaree in the boiling water, and in a short
time is eating boiled fish.