Note 54 — CONTENTS

A rather lengthy digression must be made here since the details are involved. S. A. Barrett ("Pomo Buildings," Holmes Anniversary Volume, Washington, D.C., 1916, p. 7) states that semisubterranean, earth-covered houses were used about 1900 by men of means (chiefs, good hunters, lucky gamblers, and medicine men). This house was a small edition of the larger dance house (described by Barrett, Ethno-Geography, p. 10). Fletcher's description says that in the majority of houses the combined roof entrance and smoke hole was present. This qualification does not exclude the possibility that some houses had the ground-level tunnel entrance which should be expected in the area. In historic times the Pomo seem, in large part, to have given up making these permanent dwellings in favor of less permanent mat- or grass-covered houses, which were inexpensive and more convenient to erect. The same process of loss seems to have occurred among the Coast Miwok, since Dr. Kelly's informants did not remember such houses. Archaeological sites in the Point Reyes-Drake's Bay region show numerous circular depressions which are clearly the remains of such houses. A further indication of their presence at an earlier time can be gained from "linguistic archaeology." The Sierra (Interior) Miwok use the word kotca for the earth-covered, underground house with combined roof entrance and smoke hole (S. A. Barrett and E. W. Gifford, "Miwok Material Culture," Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, Vol. II, No. 4 [1933], p. 198). The same word for house (i.e., dwelling) is present among the Coast Miwok (Barrett, Ethno-Geography, word no. 64, p. 71), who once had a similar house, as is shown by archaeological remains, but abandoned it in ethnographic times. It is not unreasonable on these grounds to assume the presence in Coast Miwok territory of the type of house described by Fletcher.