at least 250
persons. This number may therefore be accepted without much hesitation.
Kabedile (or Kah-baht-be-da-chut-te) is said by Merriam to have had 30
to 40 house holes. He also mentions the fact that the Mexicans
perpetrated a massacre here in 1846, in the course of which 25 were
killed and many children stolen for slaves. If we take the lower limit
mentioned for houses and reduce one-third, we still get a probable 20
houses, which at 14 persons per house gives a minimum population of 280
persons. Stewart gives Kulakau and the three villages considered to be
parts of it equal rank with Mato and Kabedile. Merriam says of
Cha-bo-tse-y-chut-te (Kobotsiu) that it was a "big village." Hence we
may safely ascribe 250 persons to the town.

Merriam adds certain comments on the villages. Boo-tah-kah-chut-te had
a "big round house." Che-ah-po-y-chut-te was of "fair size but no
roundhouse." She-ko-ki-chut-te consisted of "two big rancherias and
roundhouse." The other 10 villages are listed merely by locality
without additional information. We encounter here a clear instance of
the perplexity which pursues us throughout the Pomo area. We must
accept either the combined word or Barrett and Merriam that there were
numerous subsidiary villages inhabited in Sherwood Valley during
aboriginal times or the word of Stewart that there were not. At this
point it must be emphasized again that by 1840 the Northern Pomo had
been invaded by Spanish-Mexicans from the San Francisco Bay region and
their aboriginal social order had been partially disrupted.
Furthermore, we know that they had been exposed to serious inroads by
disease, such as the great smallpox epidemic of the 1830's. In
particular, that of 1837, the so-called "Miramontes epidemic," began at
Fort Ross and is known to have seriously involved the Russian River
Valley. There is much reason to believe, therefore that the population
decline began by 1830, with its accompanying shifting and consolidation
of villages. Both Barrett and Merriam did their field work among the
Pomo from 1900 to 1910, say as an approximate date 1905. A
seventy-year-old informant at that time could thus actually remember
the year 1840. But a similar individual in 1935 could remember of his
own knowledge only to 1870. He would have to draw on second- and
third-hand information imparted by his forefathers. As Stewart (p. 29)
says of one of his Sherwood Valley informants his "father's father told
JMc of 'old