Nothing Escaped Their Notice; And Any Thing They
Could Lay Their Hands On Underwent The Most Minute Examination.
To Get Rid Of Such Inquisitive Neighbors, The Travellers Kept On
For A Considerable Distance, Before They Encamped For The Night.
The country, hereabout, was generally level and sandy; producing
very little grass, but a considerable quantity of sage or
wormwood.
The plains were diversified by isolated hills, all cut
off, as it were, about the same height, so as to have tabular
summits. In this they resembled the isolated hills of the great
prairies, east of the Rocky Mountains; especially those found on
the plains of the Arkansas.
The high precipices which had hitherto walled in the channel of
Snake River had now disappeared; and the banks were of the
ordinary height. It should be observed, that the great valleys or
plains, through which the Snake River wound its course, were
generally of great breadth, extending on each side from thirty to
forty miles; where the view was bounded by unbroken ridges of
mountains.
The travellers found but little snow in the neighborhood of
Powder River, though the weather continued intensely cold. They
learned a lesson, however, from their forlorn friends, the Root
Diggers, which they subsequently found of great service in their
wintry wanderings. They frequently observed them to be furnished
with long ropes, twisted from the bark of the wormwood. This they
used as a slow match, carrying it always lighted. Whenever they
wished to warm themselves, they would gather together a little
dry wormwood, apply the match, and in an instant produce a
cheering blaze.
Captain Bonneville gives a cheerless account of a village of
these Diggers, which he saw in crossing the plain below Powder
River. "They live," says he, "without any further protection from
the inclemency of the season, than a sort of break-weather, about
three feet high, composed of sage (or wormwood), and erected
around them in the shape of a half moon." Whenever he met with
them, however, they had always a large suite of half-starved
dogs: for these animals, in savage as well as in civilized life,
seem to be the concomitants of beggary.
These dogs, it must be allowed, were of more use than the beggary
curs of cities. The Indian children used them in hunting the
small game of the neighborhood, such as rabbits and prairie dogs;
in which mongrel kind of chase they acquitted themselves with
some credit.
Sometimes the Diggers aspire to nobler game, and succeed in
entrapping the antelope, the fleetest animal of the prairies. The
process by which this is effected is somewhat singular. When the
snow has disappeared, says Captain Bonneville, and the ground
become soft, the women go into the thickest fields of wormwood,
and pulling it up in great quantities, construct with it a hedge,
about three feet high, inclosing about a hundred acres. A single
opening is left for the admission of the game. This done, the
women conceal themselves behind the wormwood, and wait patiently
for the coming of the antelopes; which sometimes enter this
spacious trap in considerable numbers.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 135 of 230
Words from 69482 to 70001
of 118673
