As she rides by

publicly testify as to the authenticity of said physical evidence?” Here he ran a hand through his mop and beamed across the room at me. I beamed back.
    “A brilliant summation, Mr. Chandler, if I may say so,” I said.
    “Otherwise known and more familiarly appellated as Taffy,” he said.
    He put his pipe down in what looked like a cereal bowl, laced his fingers together, then proceeded to give me a short, sharp, fast, and highly informative lecture on the American Indian, the most interesting and most potentially useful parts of which I will now pass on to you. Useful to me, I mean, I do not mean useful in that afterward you will be able to make you own birch bark canoe or conical tepee, or know how to leach the tannin out of acorns to render them edible.
    So, briefly, then: A culture area is a geographical area occupied by groups of peoples whose cultures are roughly similar to each other but dissimilar, roughly, to those of other areas. North America , historians managed to agree some few years ago, now for convenience is divided into seventeen such culture areas. The one that concerns us is called, aptly, California , and contains about two-thirds of the present state.
    Rough population count of Amerinds from Alaska down to, say, Costa Rica , in 1492: 30,000,000.
    Rough population count today: 142 (my estimate).
    Number of distinct and separate languages then (both continents): 1,000-2,000.
    Number of written languages then (both continents): 3, all in Central or Northern South America .
    California culture area: Distinguished by a great diversity of types and speech. Little or no farming. Some coastal fishing. Little game hunting. Diet mainly consisted of twenty-seven varieties of acorns, seeds, rodents, birds, worms, grasshoppers, and caterpillar sandwiches, much like the diet of many present-day Californians, give or take. Narcotics in general use included tobacco, Jimson weed, datura, and, later, peyote, much like the indulgences of present-day Californians, give or take. The Californians of that time were known for their mild manners and peace-loving temperaments, which brings to an abrupt end our comparisons with then and now.
    The population in the LA area at the start of the 1700s was perhaps 150-375 per hundred square kilometers, moderately dense for those days. Its decline began with the arrival of the Spanish in 1770, and the Gold Rush of 1849 put an end to it all as far as our redskin brothers were concerned. The major tribes in California included the Miadu, Miwok, Pomo, and Yokuts, unfamiliar names all, and none of which was ever represented by Jeff Chandler, Burt Lancaster, or even Susan Peters, in the movies.
    Another sad story. Where did they all go to, the fifty thousand Yokuts, for example? Back over the mountains, to be set upon by the more aggressive Plains Indians? Surely many remained, only to be set upon by the early Christian missionaries. Selfishly, I hoped that some stubborn tribelets did, as it was the missionaries who converted them from the cremation of their dead to the burial thereof.
    When Taffy had finished his recital, he got a new pipeful going to his satisfaction, then said to me, “Bones. I’d love to get you some bones; who do I know who would have bones?” He thought for a moment, then sighed. “Too difficult. We’ll have to use witchcraft.”
    “We will?”
    “Which was commonplace,” he said, nodding. “Witchcraft equals medicine men, which equal the religious leaders of the day, so to speak. Now, if I were a Yokut pestered into interring the remains of his tribe’s medicine man by interfering busybodies, might I not slip a few of his most prized possessions—the tools of his trade, so to speak—into the grave with him, which he will surely need on the Other Side?”
    “Absolutely,” I said.
    “His split-stick clapper, for example,” he said. “But, being wooden, it would probably not have survived until now. Or his rasp. But I’ll tell you what could have survived 150 years underground—aside from a Welsh tin miner—his deer-hoof jingler, which was a kind of rattle. It might well be decorated, too, with some typical tribal design, which would place it geographically.” He looked innocently over at me. I gave him a wide-eyed stare in return.
    “Be pretty hard to track down a thing like that, though, I bet,” I said.
    “How many d’you want, boyo?” he said. “I’ve a dozen on the wall at home.”
    “I think one should do it,” I said.