As Soon As They Are In,
The Women Give The Signal, And The Men Hasten To Play Their Part.
But One Of Them Enters The Pen At A Time; And, After Chasing The
Terrified Animals Round The Inclosure, Is Relieved By One Of His
Companions.
In this way the hunters take their turns, relieving
each other, and keeping up a continued pursuit by relays, without
fatigue to themselves.
The poor antelopes, in the end, are so
wearied down, that the whole party of men enter and dispatch them
with clubs; not one escaping that has entered the inclosure. The
most curious circumstance in this chase is, that an animal so
fleet and agile as the antelope, and straining for its life,
should range round and round this fated inclosure, without
attempting to overleap the low barrier which surrounds it. Such,
however, is said to be the fact; and such their only mode of
hunting the antelope.
Notwithstanding the absence of all comfort and convenience in
their habitations, and the general squalidness of their
appearance, the Shoshokoes do not appear to be destitute of
ingenuity. They manufacture good ropes, and even a tolerably fine
thread, from a sort of weed found in their neighborhood; and
construct bowls and jugs out of a kind of basket-work formed from
small strips of wood plaited: these, by the aid of a little wax,
they render perfectly water tight. Beside the roots on which they
mainly depend for subsistence, they collect great quantities of
seed, of various kinds, beaten with one hand out of the tops of
the plants into wooden bowls held for that purpose. The seed thus
collected is winnowed and parched, and ground between two stones
into a kind of meal or flour; which, when mixed with water, forms
a very palatable paste or gruel.
Some of these people, more provident and industrious than the
rest, lay up a stock of dried salmon, and other fish, for winter:
with these, they were ready to traffic with the travellers for
any objects of utility in Indian life; giving a large quantity in
exchange for an awl, a knife, or a fish-hook. Others were in the
most abject state of want and starvation; and would even gather
up the fish-bones which the travellers threw away after a repast,
warm them over again at the fire, and pick them with the greatest
avidity.
The farther Captain Bonneville advanced into the country of these
Root Diggers, the more evidence he perceived of their rude and
forlorn condition. "They were destitute," says he, "of the
necessary covering to protect them from the weather; and seemed
to be in the most unsophisticated ignorance of any other
propriety or advantage in the use of clothing. One old dame had
absolutely nothing on her person but a thread round her neck,
from which was pendant a solitary bead."
What stage of human destitution, however, is too destitute for
vanity! Though these naked and forlorn-looking beings had neither
toilet to arrange, nor beauty to contemplate, their greatest
passion was for a mirror.
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