87.

All the villages have long since been totally deserted and Goddard
could count only house pits. (Merriam made no counts of any kind.) He
did this for only two groups, the Baskaiya and the Slakaiya. Here he
found and mentions on pages 103 and 105 twenty sites containing house
pits. In all there were 92 pits but for two localities he specifies a
certain number plus "several" others. If we allow 4 to represent
"several" in each of these, then, the total number of pits is 100 and
the average per site or village is 5.0.

Now since we are dealing here only with pits and not counts of houses
remembered by informants, a reduction according to the Kroeber
principle is justified for it is quite probable that all the houses
once standing on the pits were not simultaneously occupied. When
Kroeber has no other data, he recommends a reduction by one-sixth. I
think that in this instance it would be proper to reduce by one-fifth,
or 20 per cent. This would give an effective average of 4 houses per
village. In the 13 communities covered by Goddard and by Merriam there
were 87 villages, which at 4 houses per village would give a total of
348. No evidence is offered by either author to the effect that the
remaining 5 subtribes differed in any essential way from the first 13.
Hence we must ascribe to them 134 houses, making 482 in all.

We might use the Yurok family number 7.5, but Goddard's account carries
the implication that perhaps the Wailaki family was somewhat smaller,
suggesting a factor of 7.0 rather than 7.5. Goddard bases his estimates
upon a mean population of 15 to 30 persons per village. This would mean
4.5 persons per house, certainly too low a value for the aboriginal
social family. At four houses per village the family number would be
5.6, still probably somewhat too low. Perhaps a compromise is
advisable, say at 6.0. The average village size could be then put at 25
persons, a figure definitely lower than was assumed for the more
northerly Athapascan tribes but still one which seems to be indicated
by the social organization described by Goddard. The total population
of the Wailaki proper would then be 80 per cent of 482 houses
multiplied by 6.0 or 2,315 persons.

Goddard indicates on page 108 his belief that the villages were not
simultaneously inhabited. However, he adduces no evidence to favor this
view. On the contrary, he mentions in his text four villages which were
stated by informants _not_ to have been in