ously blood kinship, but the _immediately controlling
factor is the association of common residence; in a word, the house_."
Now the social family in the usual monogamous tribe included the
father, mother, children, and occasional close relatives. This was the
underlying assumption of Kroeber's estimate of 7.5 persons as the
social family among the Yurok. Here, very clearly, the social family
was far more extensive, perhaps in occasional instances as much as
double the Yurok value. At any rate the value 7.5 seems definitely too
low.

Another approach is through the data furnished by Kroeber on page 131
of the Handbook. Here he shows a population census taken from seven
villages in the year 1870 (the last item "sawmill" may be deleted as
impossible to place). The total is 601 persons. Goddard's data show for
these same seven villages a house count of 92 for the years centering
around 1850. The direct average number of persons per house would be
6.53. Meanwhile Kroeber points out the disparity between the sexes: 232
males and 359 females. This he attributes to warfare alone, a dubious
conclusion. Regardless of cause, however, we may calculate that in the
absence of this male mortality and with a normal sex ratio of
approximately unity the population would have been twice the female
number or 718. The average number per house under such conditions would
then have been 7.80.

It must be borne in mind that the population count is of 1870 and the
house count is of 1850 or earlier. Although Kroeber feels that there
was no population decline, apart from the effect of warfare on the
males just mentioned, I cannot agree with him. In the face of the
overwhelming evidence for a tremendous decline subsequent to 1850 on
the part of the Indian population throughout all California it is
impossible to concede complete immunity to any one tribe no matter how
well protected it might have been. Consequently, we must allow for a
reduction from 1850 to 1870 even on the part of the females. It is
impracticable to set any sure figure on the decline but a value of 20
per cent would be very conservative, particularly in comparison with
all the northwestern tribes. This would mean a population for the seven
villages of 879, or say 900 in 1850. On this basis the number of
persons per house becomes 9.78.

I think therefore we are justified in ascribing 10 persons to each Hupa
house. If so the population would have been 1,980, or approximately
2