Cosumni Indians. A tribe, probably Moquelumnan, formerly residing on or near Cosumnes River, San Joaquin County, California. According to Rice 1 these Indians went almost naked; their houses were of bark, sometimes thatched with grass and covered with earth: the bark was loosened from the trees by repeated blows with stone hatchets, the latter having the head fastened to the handle with deer sinew. Their ordinary weapons were bows and stone-tipped arrows. The women made finely woven conical baskets of grass, the smaller ones of which held water. Their amusements were chiefly dancing and football; the dances, however, were in some degree ceremonial. Their principal deity was the sun, and the women had a ceremony which resembled the sun dance of the tribes of the upper Missouri. Their dead were buried in graves in the earth. The tribe is now (1904) practically extinct.
Citations:
- quoted by Mooney in Am. Anthrop., III, 259, 1890[↩]