s
informant's knowledge.

With regard to those limitations it should be noted that the informant
was a native of the Kulanapo community on the west side of the lake. He
should therefore have had closest acquaintance with his own people and
the adjacent group, the Habenapo. His figure for the Kulanapo was 500,
a value which Kniffen attacks on the ground that Palmer's informant
intentionally exaggerated the importance of his own group. This is a
wholly gratuitous assumption and inconsistent with the fact that, since
more was known at that time about the west-shore people, his figures
could easily have been checked, had they been widely at variance with
the facts. In the second place, the figure for the Habenapo was given
as 300. Now Barrett (1908, p. 194) quotes even more specifically from
Palmer:

The Hoo-la-na-po (Kulanapo) tribe was just below the present site
of Lakeport.... At one time there were two hundred and twenty
warriors, and five hundred all told in the rancheria. They are now
reduced to sixty. Sal-vo-di-no was their chief before the present
one, Augustine.

If we are going to discredit the testimony of the chief concerning his
own village thirty years previously, we had better throw out along with
it the information secured from septuagenarians who have to recount at
second hand what their forefathers told them.

Some confirmation of Palmer's figure for the Habenapo is given by
Barrett (1908, p. 195), who mentions a statement from the Report of
the Commissioner for Indian Affairs in 1858 referring to the Lupillomi.
The latter in turn are identified by Barrett as the Habenapo. The
Commissioner said: "Upon the Lupillomi ranch, near Clear Lake, there
are some three hundred Indians." Although by 1858 there may have been
some reduction and mixing of population, the identity is striking.

Although the figures of Palmer's informant may be relied upon for his
home territory at the southwestern corner of the Lake, for the north,
east, and southeast shores he may have been inaccurate, being less
familiar with those sections. The chief evidence for such a conclusion
lies in the discrepancy between his figure for Cigom and that secured
by Gifford after a meticulous and exhaustive examination of every
individual who had lived in the village. Palmer's figure is 160 whereas
Gifford's is 235. Thus Palmer's informant clearly underestimated, by a
ratio of 2 to 3. Hence it is not unreasonable to incre