population of certain villages. All
villages are included the existence of which in approximately 1850 Loud
regards as reasonably certain. To these are added several of Loud's
doubtful sites, the validity of which has been confirmed by Merriam,
plus five villages missed by Loud but discovered by Merriam. The house
counts for those towns confirmed or discovered by Merriam have had to
be estimated. The number has been taken rather uniformly as 2 or 3 in
order to maintain as conservative a standard as possible. For 22 of the
larger and better known sites Loud's informants gave an average of 6.5
houses. Hence an average of 3 for those whose names and locations only
were known seems in no way excessive.

In table 4 (p. 97, herein) are shown the best estimates for the Mad
River and Humboldt Bay areas from Loud and Merriam and for the Eel
River valley from Nomland and Kroeber. The total is 440. At 7.5 persons
per house this means a population of 3,300 inhabitants for the Wiyot.
The corresponding figure given by Kroeber in the Handbook (p. 116) is
"perhaps 800 or not over 1,000." Loud states on page 302: "If asked to
give an extreme figure for the native population ... the writer would
say 1,500, and consider any higher figure pure folly." The present
writer, however, stands by the figure of approximately 3,300, insofar
as the estimate is based on ethnographic material.

It was suggested in connection with the Yurok that this tribe was
already undergoing some reduction in population at the time of the
first entry of Americans en masse in 1850 and that the best memory of
informants in the decade 1900-1910 could not give us the truly
aboriginal picture. For the Wiyot the evidence is still more
impressive. None of Loud's white informants could go back of 1850 and
one gets the impression that his Indian informants could do little
better. John Sherman, the informant of Nomland and Kroeber, was born in
1860, subsequent to ten years of massacre and disintegration of native
society. This state of affairs is reflected in many statements in
Loud's text. (See also table 3, pp. 94-96, herein.) For instance
several strikingly large and recent graveyards are mentioned, a
statement which can refer only to the period of 1850 or immediately
before. Site 22, according to tradition, had once possessed a large
population, and site 23 was said to have been a "regular rancheria" one
hundred years previously (that is, previous to 1918). Nevertheles