other natives had done in the experience of the chronicler. The English gave their visitors shirts and linen cloth, in return for which (as Fletcher thought) the Indians presented to Drake and some of the English such things as feathers, net caps, quivers for arrows, and animal skins which the women wore. Then, having visited for a time, the natives left for their homes about three-quarters of a mile away. As soon as they were home, the Indians began to lament, "extending their voices, in a most miserable and dolefull manner of shreeking." Inserted between the passages dealing with the departure of the Indians to their homes and their lamenting is a description of their houses and dress. The houses are described as "digged round within the earth, and haue from the vppermost brimmes of the circle, clefts of wood set vp, and ioyned close together at the top, like our spires on the steeple of a church: which being couered with earth, suffer no water to enter, and are very warme, the doore in the most part of them, performes the office of a chimney, to let out the smoake: its made in bignesse and fashion, like to an ordinary scuttle in a ship, and standing slopewise: their beds are the hard ground, onely with rushes strewed vpon it, and lying round about the house, haue their fire in the middest...." The men for the most part were naked, and the women wore a shredded bulrush (tule? Scirpus sp.) skirt which hung around the hips. Women also wore a shoulder cape of deerskin with the hair upon it.

Another representation of the "crowning" of Francis Drake.
(From an old engraving; provenience not known.)

From the foregoing facts some important conclusions can be drawn. First, the wonderment of the natives is but an extension of attitudes they had daily shown from the 17th to the 20th; and similar manifestations continued throughout the long stay of the English.[50] The English were looked upon as unusual, perhaps supernatural, visitors, since nothing is more clear than the fact that they were not treated as ordinary mortals. Kroeber has suggested that the Indians regarded the English as the returned dead, and there is much to be said for this view, as will be shown later. The doleful shrieking, weeping, and crying are evidence sui generis that the presence of the English was in some way associated with ghosts or the dead.[51]

The circular semisubterranean house, roofed over with poles and earth-covered, is also characteristic of a wide area of central California. The Coast Miwok of Drake's Bay and Bodega Bay[52] used these houses, as did the Pomo.[53] It is clearly not a temporary brush-covered house like those seen in the Bodega-Tomales Bay region.[54] The "caules of network" undoubtedly refer to the well-known net caps of central California,[55] a type so widespread that exact localization or provenience is impossible.

The Fletcher account is fairly specific on particulars of dress—women wore shredded bulrush skirts and deerskin shoulder capes, and men were ordinarily naked. The bulrush or tule-fiber clothing is attested for Bodega Bay[56] and Drake's Bay,[57] but it is also found generally throughout central California. Men were generally naked in California, so Fletcher does not note here a distinctive cultural trait. The wearing of deerskin capes by the women is not strictly substantiated by the observations of later explorers, although Cermeño (1595) said that the women in Drake's Bay "covered their private parts with straw and skins of animals."[58] Archibald Menzies noted that the women in Tomales Bay wore a deerskin wrapped around their middle and reaching to the knees,[59] and Francisco Eliza said that near Bodega Bay "the women cover themselves from the waist down with deer skins."[60] Colnett mentions the Indian dress of deerskins in Bodega Bay.[61]

June 23.—On this day, after a two-day absence, "a great assembly of men, women, and children" appeared at the camp of the English. The Indians stopped at the top of the hill at the bottom of which Drake's camp was pitched, and one man made "a long and tedious oration: deliuered with strange and violent gestures, his voice being extended to the vttermost strength of nature...." At the conclusion of the speech or oration, all the other Indians reverently bowed their bodies "in a dreaming manner" (?) and cried "Oh" in approbation. Then the men, leaving their bows, women, and children behind them, came down to the English with presents and gifts. While the men were gift giving, the women cried and shrieked piteously, tore their cheeks with their fingernails until the blood flowed, tore off the single covering from the upper parts of the body, and, holding their hands high, cast themselves on the ground with great violence, regardless of consequences. The English, grieved at this spectacle of sacrifice, attempted to dissuade the Indians by praying and indicating by signs that their God lived above. During this "performance" (prayers, singing Psalms, and reading chapters of the Bible), the Indians "sate very attentiuely: and obseruing the end of euery pause, with one voice still cryed, Oh, greatly reioycing in our exercises." The natives were watching with great interest what seemed to them a ceremonial performance (which it actually was, but not in the sense in which the Indians understood it). The singing of Psalms interested the Indians most, and whenever the natives came, says Fletcher, their first request was Gnaah, an entreaty that the English should sing. After the Indians and English