Between different groups of these Indians, the common bond was
similarity of language as well as frequency and cordiality of
intercourse. In so primitive a condition of society there was
neither necessity nor opportunity for differences of rank. The
influence of chiefs was small and no distinct classes of slaves
were known. Extreme poverty was the chief cause of the low social
and political organization of these Indians. The Maidus in the
Sacramento Valley were so poor that, in addition to consuming
every possible vegetable product, they not only devoured all
birds except the buzzard, but ate badgers, skunks, wildcats, and
mountain lions, and even consumed salmon bones and deer
vertebrae. They gathered grasshoppers and locusts by digging
large shallow pits in a meadow or flat. Then, setting fire to the
grass on all sides, they drove the insects into the pit. Their
wings being burned off by the flames, the grasshoppers were
helpless and were thus collected by the bushel. Again of the
Moquelumne, one of the largest tribes in central California, it
is said that their houses were simply frameworks of poles and
brush which in winter were covered with earth. In summer they
erected cone-shaped lodges of poles among the mountains. In
favorable years they gathered large quantities of acorns, which
formed their principal food, and stored them for winter use in
granaries raised above the ground. Often, however, the crop was
poor, and the Indians were left on the verge of starvation.

Finally in the far south, in the peninsula of Lower California,
the tribes were "probably the lowest in culture of any Indians in
North America, for their inhospitable environment which made them
wanderers, was unfavorable to the foundation of government even
of the rude and unstable kind found elsewhere." The Yuman tribes