The Yurok are one of half a dozen tribes in northwestern California who
exhibit jointly a surprisingly complex way of living. Others of this
highly cultured group are the Hupa, the Karok, the Tolowa, the Chilula,
and the Wiyot. One element especially in the tribal life of the region,
is the notion of aristocracy based upon wealth. This makes them rather
grasping. Every injury, from slander to rape, demands its money price.
The Yurok, accordingly, become adept at the art of taking offense.
Quarrelsomeness is a religion, and wrangling for a price, a fine art.
Some Yurok are born “stinkers” in money matters. The remainder have
that quality thrust upon them by the pressure of tribal feeling. They
speak an Algonkian language, live along the lower part of the Klamath
River, subsist mostly on fish (though they eat a lot of acorns) and
are nice folks when you know their ways (not until then, however). The
principal works which describe the Yurok are:
POWERS, STEPHEN. Tribes of California (U. S. Interior Department,
Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. III.)
WATERMAN, T. T. Yurok Geography (University of California Publications
in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. XVI.)
Notes on Yurok Culture (Museum of the American Indian, Heye
Foundation, [in press]).
A book which has no title, except a dedication “To the American
Indian,” by a Yurok woman, privately printed at Eureka, California, in
1916.
GODDARD, P. E. Life and Culture of the Hupa, University of California
Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol.
I. (a very fine work, describing not the Yurok, but the
neighboring Hupa, who follow the same mode of life.)