Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

The following alternate spellings may be typos, or refer to different places or people.

• Willamet and Willamette
• Choteau and Chouteau
• Mohave and Mojave
• Pratt and Pratte
• Purisima and Purissima
• Radisson and Raddison

The photograph of "Navajo Silver Beads" shown in the list of illustrations as being on page 72 does not appear in the book.

Duplicated advertisements in the front and back matter of the book have been removed from the front.

THE SIERRA BLANCA

Blanca Peak, 14,390 feet. Baldy Peak, 14,176 feet.

Blanca Peak is the Third Highest in Colorado.

The point of view is on Trinchera Creek looking north from an altitude of about 8000 feet. To the left is the San Luis Valley through which flows the Rio Grande, and to the right are the two high passes known as Veta and Sangre de Cristo. The Sierra Blanca forms the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Range and was one of the great landmarks of the Wilderness.

Sketch in oils made at the place by F. S. Dellenbaugh.

Breaking the
Wilderness

The Story of the Conquest of the Far West, from the Wanderings
of Cabeza de Vaca, to the First Descent of the Colorado by
Powell, and the Completion of the Union Pacific
Railway, with Particular Account of the
Exploits of Trappers and Traders

By
Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
Member of the Powell Colorado River Expedition; Author of "The Romance of the Colorado River," "The North Americans of Yesterday," etc.

"Accursèd wight!

He crowds us from our hills. He hacks and hews,

Digs up our metals, sweats and smelts and brews."

Hauptmann, The Sunken Bell.

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1908

Copyright, 1905
BY
FREDERICK S. DELLENBAUGH

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

TO
ALMON HARRIS THOMPSON
WHOSE ABILITY, FORESIGHT, AND GOOD JUDGMENT
SO VITALLY AIDED THE COLORADO RIVER EXPEDITION OF
1871 AND 1872
AND FOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS
HAVE SO GREATLY PROMOTED
THE SUCCESS OF GOVERNMENT EXPLORATION AND SURVEY
THIS VOLUME
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
TO COMMEMORATE TRAVELS TOGETHER
IN
THE WILDERNESS

PREFACE

In this volume I have endeavoured to present a review in chronological order of the important events which contributed to breaking the Wilderness that so long lay untamed west of the Mississippi, mentioning with as much detail as possible in a single popular volume the principal persons and happenings in proper sequence, but paying special attention to the trapper and trader element, which, more than any other, dispelled the mysteries of the vast region.

I believe this to be the first book so fully to treat the subject as a consecutive narrative. By means of it, not only may the story of the struggle to master the Wilderness be examined, but the place of the trapper and trader in the work of its reduction, and that of Coronado, Mackenzie, Lewis and Clark, Frémont, Powell, and similar explorers, may be determined with reference to each other as well as with reference to the general order.

Many people seem to know little about Western history; about Coronado, Cabeza de Vaca, or even about Mackenzie; and others are by no means clear as to where in the historical scale these characters belong. While the name of Daniel Boone is familiar to every child, names of men equally eminent in the same pursuits, like Jedediah Smith, Bridger, Fitzpatrick, etc., are scarcely known at all. Nor have many persons a just appreciation of the numerous attempts that were made to explore the Western Wilderness, or of the extremely early period in the history of North America when these attempts began. Many are surprised, therefore, to learn that the first European entrance into the western part of the United States occurred over three and a quarter centuries ago. At least partly, this vagueness is due to the one-sidedness up to the present of the usual works dealing with American history, most of which are only histories of the eastern part of the country, with mere offhand references to the important events of the region beyond the Mississippi. Numerous details are presented of early Virginia and of New England, but the happenings in New Mexico and in California, and the great West generally, are dismissed with a few superficial notes.

Within the last year or two much has been written about Lewis and Clark, and consequently their grand exploit is well known, but its relation in the popular mind as to accomplishment and position with reference to other explorations is often quite uncertain. It therefore appeared to me that a single volume which should tell the Wilderness story in unbroken sequence, with special emphasis on the trapper and trader, would be of value. I have consequently shown the first attacks by sea and land, and the gradual closing in on all sides, through the matchless trail-breaking of the trappers and traders, down to the year when Powell practically finished this particular white man's task by his bold and romantic conquest of the Colorado,—the year when the first railway trains crossing the continent began a new era. In order that the subject might be still clearer and more comprehensive, I have gone farther and have told the story of the chief denizens of the pristine Wilderness: the beaver, the buffalo, and their close associates, those indomitable, iron-nerved people, the Amerinds; the North-Americans of yesterday.

Sometimes it is difficult to describe with precision the route of an explorer without searching his original story, and, in my studies, this has not always been practicable. For example, I do not know where the journals of Hunt and Bonneville now are, if extant. Irving's interpretation seems fairly accurate, but as he was entirely unfamiliar with the region west of the Rocky Mountains, his description is not always clear. In other cases, especially in that of Verendrye, I have relied on the transcripts of others. The trail of Coronado I have long studied with special care, and I have reached the conclusions embodied in the map on [page 115],—conclusions entirely at variance with all accepted authorities, but which I feel confident, nevertheless, are in the main correct.

One early explorer in the Minnesota and Hudson Bay regions I have not mentioned. This is Radisson, who, it is claimed, saw the upper Mississippi before Marquette. The omission was an oversight. Miss A. C. Laut has given a convincing account of his travels in her Pathfinders of the West, to which I take pleasure in referring the reader for information on this point.[1]

A completed book is the mirror of the writer's shortcomings. I hope the reflections which may fall to my lot in this one will not be too painful, for I have had in contemplation others to fill in a general scheme. One starts with a desire for perfection, but without the resources of a Carnegie he is apt to fall so far short of the mark that he fears to look in the glass at all.

With the Wilderness, however, I can claim some degree of familiarity, for I may be said to have been "in at the death," as I was one of Powell's companions down the Colorado on his second voyage, 1871-72, and have been over portions of almost every one of the principal historical trails. I have travelled there on foot, on horseback, by boat, by waggon, and by railway,—even by Pullman "Palace" car. I have lived under its open sky through summers and through winters; its snows, its rains, its burning heat, have baptised me one of its children. In some cases my footsteps have been among the first of our race to break the surface; and if I have not visited every nook and corner of it during the last thirty four years it is the fault of my purse, not of my spirit.

My remarks on supplying whiskey to the natives may by some be deemed too severe, but in my own opinion there is no expression of condemnation adequate to denounce the debauchment of the American tribes by this foul means. It was a crime against civilisation, against humanity; a cruel, dastardly outrage against these people who by its means largely have been reduced to the lowest degree and are sneered at by those who have profited by their debasement. In the final chapter I have thought it desirable to add a footnote to the effect that I am neither a teetotaler nor a prohibitionist for the reason that my condemnatory remarks might otherwise be attributed to the prejudice of zeal, rather than to indignation at the low devices resorted to by white men to work the Amerinds for their own profit. A great deal that is base and mean is now excused on the ground that this is a commercial age, but I can only remark that if there is to be no standard for measuring modern conduct but financial profit, the white man's footsteps are surely on the wrong trail.

The reader in following these pages must remember that comfort is generally relative, and that what appears hard from the chimney corner may have been comparative luxury. I have never slept more comfortably anywhere than under a foot of snow.

I have had much kind assistance and am grateful for it. I am particularly obliged to Mr. William J. Schieffelin for the generous and unlimited use of valuable books from his library; to Mr. E. H. Harriman for transportation favours; also for the same to Mr. S. K. Hooper; to Mr. F. M. Bishop for the loan of a volume on Jacob Hamblin not otherwise obtainable; to Mr. O. D. Wheeler and the Montana Historical Society for cuts; to Captain E. L. Berthoud, Edgar A. Rider, and Jack Sumner for manuscript notes; to Mr. L. H. Johnson for manuscript notes and photographs; to Mr. B. L. Young for a special drawing of the rock pecking of a buffalo in southern Utah; to Mr. R. H. Chapman, Mr. J. B. Lippincott, Mr. J. K. Hillers, Mr. E. E. Howell, Mr. Delancy Gill, for photographs; and to the United States Bureau of Ethnology for the use of illustration material. I would also here thank my publishers for their constant consideration, for presents of books pertaining to my subject, and for the loan of others; and Mr. H. C. Rizer, chief clerk of the United States Geological Survey, for assistance and courtesies extending over a long series of years. Finally I wish to express my renewed thanks for many favours to the veteran geographer and explorer, A. H. Thompson, of the United States Geological Survey, to whom I have the honour of dedicating this book.

Frederick S. Dellenbaugh.

New York, December 7, 1904.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

BREAKING THE WILDERNESS

CHAPTER I

Extent of the Wilderness—The First White Man—The Backbone of the Continent—A Vanished Sea and a Petrified Ocean—The Biggest Trees—The Spike of Gold.

The natural habitat of man is the wilderness. No matter how civilised he may become, his heart turns with longing to the woods, to the sea, and to the mountains. There he is unconventional; animals are his compeers, the forest his friend, the free-flowing stream nectar to his lips. Civilised peoples, after all, are but wanderers driven from the Garden of Eden by the sword of necessity. Of the virtues they claim, a large proportion is imperative, the result of conflicting numbers—society's effort to preserve itself. Men are no better, no worse, in the wilderness or in civilisation; nor does race or colour appear exactly to define quality. By noting this at the outset we may be inclined to be more sympathetic; and therefore may better understand the superb wilderness which forms the subject of this work.

Nearly two-thirds of the entire present area of the United States was comprised in it, extending between the north and south bounds of the Union, from the Mississippi on the one hand, to the Pacific on the other; a vast region of marvellous diversity, greater far than several of the Old-World empires rolled into one. Up to the hour when the Santa Maria flung her parting banners out and under the steady will of the Admiral moved upon the Western Mystery, no European had ever beheld the wide horizon of this splendid realm, nor yet even dreamed of it, for whatever in the way of exploration prior to Columbus the Northmen may have accomplished on the Atlantic coast of America, we may be sure not one of them ever set foot beyond the banks of the Father of Waters. And so this land, unknown to Europeans, remained unknown till the year when Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, escaping from the terrible disasters of the Narvaez Florida expedition, in his enforced long wanderings, crossed the lower margin, now the State of Texas, and in 1536, less than four decades after the Discovery, gave to expectant Europe first news of the "hunchback cows" and the great interior. That was a day of marvels. After Mexico and Peru anything! Though we may smile at the imaginings of those iron-nerved Spaniards, they were not inconsistent with their time. Now the mighty tract is well known to us, but our knowledge has come piecemeal through centuries of endeavour, the last portion of the unknown yielding only so late as 1869. It is a romantic story. In these pages the salient features will be traced with special attention to the doings of the trappers and traders who bore in its conquest so dominating an influence.

In the beginning it will be well to glance at the main facts of the region, and see what it was that the newcomers were compelled to encounter and overcome before the land became theirs. Vast mountain chains there were, turbulent rivers, deserts and semi-deserts, and forbidding gorges. Almost through the middle, trending north-westerly and south-easterly, stretched the great Backbone of the continent, the Shining Mountains, or, as we now call them, the Rocky Mountains, with many peaks reaching up beyond the timber-line and into the realm of perpetual snow, peaks now familiar under the names of early explorers like Pike, Long, James, Frémont, etc., and whose meandering crest composed the Continental Divide, casting the rains on one side into the broad Pacific, and on the other side into the tides that laved the shores of Europe. For a considerable portion of the year deep snows upon these heights prevented all crossing, except at great hazard. This mountain range was at the same time the western limit of the most remarkable and bountiful river valley in all the world, the basin of the Mississippi, whose other edge was bounded by the verdant slopes of the Alleghanies, and which came within a stone's throw of the Niagara cataract and the Great Lakes.

The Backbone of the Continent.

Photograph by R. H. Chapman, U. S. Geol. Survey.

Four large rivers of immense length took their rise towards the north on the summits of the Backbone, the greatest three springing like triplets of a single mother from practically the same spot in what is now Wyoming. One of these, rushing toward the north-west over a cataract that rivals Niagara, and over falls and wild rapids, swept into the Pacific through a line of dangerous breakers which, notwithstanding the labours of our best engineers, still remains a barrier to the entrance. This was the "River of the West," now the Columbia, taking its name from the ship of Captain Gray, the first to sail into its mouth. Another river, the real continuation of the Mississippi, ran its course for some three thousand miles before joining the parent stream at a point still more than a thousand miles from the Gulf of Mexico, navigable in high-water season for boats of moderate draught for about two thousand miles of its length above the junction. This was the Missouri, at first the main highway from the east into the wilderness, leading the trappers and traders to the very threshold of the great mountains. The third river, the Seedskedee, the Rio Colorado Grande of the Spaniards, now the Green and Colorado, started just over the range at the head of the Missouri and the Columbia, and leaping down the westerly precipices in bold cataracts, made for the south-west and the gulf now called California, never heeding the mountain barriers, but for half its two thousand miles of length cleaving through them, a series of terrifying chasms, deep and difficult, where its waters are torn by hundreds of loud rapids, and whose tributary chasms unite with the mother gorges to interpose almost insurmountable obstacles in the path of the explorer,—the last portion of the wilderness to be vanquished and, though vanquished, yet to this day formidable and defiant. The fourth river, less in magnitude and vigour than the others, but nevertheless fractious, rose some miles southward of their birthplace on the rugged slopes of spurs of the great range, and sweeping to the south and south-east entered the Gulf of Mexico. This was the Rio Grande del Norte, now abbreviated to Rio Grande, and forming for a long distance the boundary of Mexico. It was on this river that the first settlements were made in the wilderness, by Europeans, in what is now New Mexico.

Wilderness of the Upper Missouri.

Photograph by R. H. Chapman, U. S. Geol. Survey.

East of the huge central mountain system there rolled away from the base of the range to the Mississippi endless plains resembling a petrified ocean; the prairies, treeless, sublime in their immensity. For about half the distance from the mountains to the river, approximately as far as the 100th meridian, this enormous territory was well-nigh rainless, thus presenting an additional barrier to investigation from the eastward. The remaining half was invitingly fertile. Across these wide prairies meandered eastwardly several branches of the Missouri and the Mississippi, chief among them the Platte, the Arkansas, and Red River. West of the Backbone lay a maze of mountains, "parks," deep gorges, now called canyons, cliffs, plateaus, and valleys, limited on the far western side by a second mother-range rivalling in height and extent and impenetrability the central system itself. This was the Sierra Nevada and its upper continuation, the Cascade Range. About midway between the two master ranges another, the Wasatch, extended northerly and southerly, forming the eastern limit of the dry bed of an ancient sea of which a small remnant remained concentrated in a salt lake some fifty miles in length. This vanished sea is now known as Lake Bonneville, its old bed as the "Great Basin." Its southern rim breaks down from an altitude of about ten thousand feet in a series of mighty cliffs, like cyclopean steps, to the canyons of the Colorado, and near the summit of this rim a river starts north down into the basin, sweeping along for many miles to turn suddenly to the westward and end in a lake without visible outlet, in the middle of a stretch of desert. This is now the Sevier. West of the salt lake another stream, the Humboldt, took its rise and, darting boldly toward the Sierra as if to cut it in twain, meekly collapsed in a small lake at the foot. Between the Wasatch and the Rocky Mountains lay the valley of the Colorado, already mentioned, a marvellous labyrinth of canyons and cliffs, of dead volcanoes, lava beds, plateaus, and mountain peaks of rare beauty.

The Yosemite Valley.

Photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.

Some of the stream branches took their rise in a series of deep valleys called "parks," lying close within the main range and known to-day as North, Middle, and South parks, with still another below South Park, called San Luis Park, in which heads the Rio Grande. Thus the wide area intervening between the two chief mountain systems, the Rocky and the Sierra, was one of extraordinary topographical diversity, presenting innumerable minor mountain ranges (most of them, like the mother chains, trending northerly and southerly), lines of high cliffs of great length, extensive plateaus, and wonderful gorges like mountain ranges hollowed out and turned upside down below the surface of the earth, gorges so long and so deep as to absolutely and completely separate the areas lying on their opposite sides. East of the Rocky Mountains was the vast prairie land mentioned, while west of the Sierra lay the sunland now known as California, with the moister region of Oregon immediately above it cut in twain by the Columbia rushing triumphantly to the sea. Here too was still another lesser mountain chain, the Coast Range.

On the headwaters of the Yellowstone branch of the Missouri was a district of hot springs and geysers, famous now the world round. Here also were the great falls of the Yellowstone and its celebrated canyon, so wonderful in the variety and brilliancy of its colouring, now held, by the wisdom of Congress, for a National Park. Farther south, like a beacon for the Christian pilgrim, there shone aloft, formed in ice and snow, on the topmost slopes of a high peak, the semblance of a perfect cross. The Arkansas, in freeing itself from the mountains, carved through them a long gorge, deep and narrow, of splendid picturesqueness, which later made a highway for the locomotive. Besides the Great Salt Lake there were broad salt lagoons farther south in what is now New Mexico, and in California likewise salt spread itself by tons and tons over the surface of the ground. In Southern Utah were the superb Temples of the Rio Virgen. In the Sierra Nevada was the now celebrated Yosemite, one of the grandest valleys on the globe; and there too stood the largest known trees, patriarchs from a former age, three hundred feet in height, with trunks of enormous circumference—the Sequoia. Here also were the redwood forests, scarcely less noble than the Sequoia. The vegetation was as varied as the topography. On the prairies of what is now Kansas flourished the sensitive plant, covering the ground with its lovely rose-coloured, rose-scented blossoms, round as a puff-ball, the delicate stems withering at the touch of a human hand, to lift themselves again when the intruder had withdrawn. Farther west the antithesis of this exquisitely sensitive growth, the cactus, spread its defiant lances everywhere, and there it was the human hand and not the plant which withered at the touch. And the cactus was no less beautiful than the sensitive "rose"; indeed, more beautiful, for nothing could exceed the gorgeousness of its blossoms of various shades of red, or yellow, or white as they stood resplendent under the glowing sun against the soft colour of the earth.

The Grizzly Giant.

Height, 285 feet. Circumference, 93 feet. Copyright by C. C. Pierce & Co.

At the north, and on the higher lands of the south, grew the pine trees in magnificent forests, with the beautiful spruce and cedar, the latter attaining its noblest proportions in the north-west. Towards the south, on the lower lands, grew the juniper and the piñon, the latter bearing a delicious, edible nut, a boon to the native. In the south, too, were the mesquite with its sweet bean, and the splendid yuccas, some of them tree-like and twenty or thirty feet high, the pitahaya, and many other plants strange to European eyes. These and the cacti require a dry climate and a hot one, and the southern portion of the wilderness was particularly dry and hot. The extreme south-western part was the driest and the hottest, and there stretches of real desert interposed further obstacles to exploration and to settlement. On the other hand, the climate of the extreme north-west was the reverse. There mist and rain, nearly unknown in the lower basin of the Colorado, were almost constant. But the characteristic of the major part of the wilderness was excessive dryness, prohibiting agriculture without irrigation. The high peaks, receiving snow and rain in plenty, dealt out the moisture generously through creeks and rivers upon the parching plains roundabout.

A Wilderness Home.

Photograph by R. H. Chapman. U. S. Geol. Survey.

Thus there were wide deserts as well as regions of humidity; an immense range in climate with a corresponding range in life zones, till the biologist discovered in this area specimens ranging from the boreal to the tropical. The animals were of all kinds found on the North American continent. There were scorpions, tarantulas, snakes (many varieties of rattlesnakes) in the south; there and elsewhere beaver, bison, panthers, bears, wolves, deer, elk, mountain sheep, and small game of various kinds, all adjusted to altitude or latitude. Bears were particularly numerous. The bison (buffalo) roamed the east in countless numbers, crossing the Rocky Mountains and pushing westward to the Pecos, to Green River, and to the Columbia. As a wild animal the bison now is extinct, and it is difficult to imagine the enormous herds that so short a time ago at will traversed the face of the wilderness. The beaver existed in vast numbers also, and this fact was the first incentive to exploration of the immense tract by Americans. Deer and antelope grazed everywhere and scarcely a day could pass without the traveller sighting some of these animals. All furnished subsistence to the man who was there, the Amerind. Because this person was not a European he has often been regarded as hardly worth consideration, but he was a good specimen of mankind in the hunter state. Physically and mentally he had few superiors. He knew the country as well as we know it to-day. He knew every pass in the mountains, every buffalo trail. Each tribe knew its own land limits, as well as those of its neighbours, and each defended its home with unsurpassed daring and bravery.

This was the wilderness when the hordes of Europe descended upon it and claimed it for their own. Well did they fight their way into it, and equally well did the native oppose the invasion and fight to preserve his ancestral home in all its freedom and pristine glory. But the Europeans were stronger and wrested it from him, from the animals, and from Nature; yet it was never fully theirs till the sledge drove home that last spike of gold that pinned the East and the West together and tacked the skirts of Europe to those of Cathay.

CHAPTER II

The Intelligent Beaver, Chief of the Rodents—A Four-Footed Engineer—A Builder of Houses, Artificial Canals, Dams, Ponds, and Lakes—Beaver Meadows—A Masterful Woodchopper—A Tail for the Epicure—Muskbogs—The Fatal Trap.

Several factors combined to break the wilderness to the uses of the Americans into whose possession it eventually fell. One of these, and it was one of the most important in its effect on primary exploration, was the presence there in vast numbers of a comparatively small and singularly intelligent animal called the beaver, belonging to the order Rodentia. While not of great size it was, nevertheless, with one exception, the largest of its kind, weighing thirty or forty pounds and being about three and one-half feet long. In colour it was chestnut brown and was endowed with a rich, thick fur, one-half to three-quarters inch long, with coarse hair scattered through it about one inch longer. It so happened that this particular quality of fur was in great commercial demand in Europe for the making of hats. For some time it had constituted an article of profitable export from the eastern part of the continent, as the similar animal in Europe had been exterminated. Finally the supply from America also diminished as the trappers pursued their merciless task. Then followed the discovery that the great wild region west of the Mississippi contained beaver in immense numbers, and beaver trapping immediately became the principal quest of many bold natures eager to stake their lives in a tilt with Fortune, just as others later played a different game with the golden gravels of California.

The Mountain Part of the Wilderness.

Relief map by E. E. Howell.

No Place for Beaver.

Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.

In their search for the most lucrative beaver grounds they crossed the boundless prairies, and stimulated by the prospect of riches and the excitement of new scenes they sought the innermost recesses of the mountain wilderness, slaying what opposed their way, taking beaver by thousands and tens of thousands, and sending pack upon pack by way of St. Louis to the waiting markets of the Old World. The early returns may be estimated from the success of one enterprising man who, having employed a band of expert trappers, came out of the far regions on one occasion with nearly two hundred packs, each worth in St. Louis about one thousand dollars. In one period of two and one-half years, over six hundred thousand beaver skins were sent out by one of the great companies that were organised systematically to prosecute the fur business in North America.[2] Thus it was that the beaver became responsible for the first opening of the great western Unknown, and in order fully to understand the interesting story of human endeavour, it is necessary to glance at the characteristics of this remarkable creature, which unwittingly performed such a prominent part in affairs so momentous to the American Republic and to the world, and which in consequence has become almost extinct. By it was the trapper and trader led from the Mississippi to the Western Ocean, and from the Gila River to and beyond the bounds of Canada.

With so great regularity was the daily life of the beaver ordered that the hunters in their admiration ascribed to it mental qualities which probably it did not actually possess, yet it certainly executed well defined works with skill and precision, and performed many acts which might easily have been the result of mental processes.[3] A house builder and an engineer, it constructed for its occupation comfortable lodges, it excavated canals for its convenience, and formed ponds and lakes of considerable extent by means of dams made of trees, sticks, mud, and stones. Moreover, the trees were felled by its own efforts, and cut up into pieces suitable for the object desired. The mud and stones were then combined with these pieces with a dexterity that was astonishing and that will always command for this amphibious, burrowing creature of the genus Castor a high rank in the animal world. Its paws were supplied with long, strong claws, the hind ones having an extra claw peculiar to the beaver. The front pair were small and were used deftly like human hands; and the animal could walk erect on its hind feet carrying small stones and earth, pressed against the throat, for house or dam building; it could drag poles and sticks in the same manner. When necessary to move larger stones they pushed them along, sometimes using the tail also, and stones of five or six pounds' weight were moved in this way. All their works were of the same general character, and in each class they did not vary their methods, which were largely dictated by surrounding conditions. Being amphibious, they naturally lived by and in water. Their food being tender bark and small twigs of trees, they were forced to gnaw down woody growths to exist, and as these growths near streams usually incline toward the water they naturally fell into or across the channel. Accumulations of driftwood and of the discarded food sticks started dams, and the animal aided the natural construction by adding mud and more sticks. Thus, perhaps, its habits were begun in the remote past by what is called instinct rather than any reasoning quality, yet there remains always the problem as to where instinct stops and reason begins. At any rate there appears to have been no very deep intellectuality about the beaver, notwithstanding its dexterity and ingenuity. It was moulded by the laws of its life exactly as the spider is when it spins a web; yet in the case of the beaver there was a complexity of action that seems extraordinary, although the action apparently was always that which beaver after beaver had employed for an immense period. Where a stream was large and deep or swift, the beaver could not build a dam, nor was it necessary, as it could and did burrow into the banks, excavating a chamber above the water-level, and the primary object of the dam was to supply deep water to cover the lodge entrance. Where waters were continually swift or turbulent and uncontrollable, and especially where they were not bordered by an abundance of cottonwoods, willows, yellow birch, or other favourite food wood, the beaver was absent. For these reasons they were never found in deep canyons. The trappers, as soon as by some bitter experience they discovered this, sought them no further in such localities, hence while these men traversed almost every other foot of the great wilderness, the huge canyons, particularly those of the Colorado River series, were avoided. They continued, therefore, terra incognita long after the remainder of the region was broken; till, in fact, the remarkable boat journey of Major Powell in 1869 fathomed their mysteries. Thus the habits of the beaver controlled widely separated events.

Beaver Country.

Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.

Where brooks or creeks were small with the proper wood growths beaver were abundant, as well as in natural lakes and on all the quieter reaches of the large rivers. Across small streams trees were felled, and with the aid of sticks, mud, and stones the beaver laid up a dam to back up the water and form a basin wherein could be built their lodges with entrances below the surface. On mountain streams these dams one above another often transformed them for long distances into a series of pools and ponds where great numbers of beaver made their homes. In such places a trapper would reap a speedy reward, more particularly as there was no thought of sparing any of the creatures for the future. Often fifty or sixty beaver would be taken in a single night.

According to Morgan, dams were of two kinds, the "stick" and the "solid bank." The former was made by a combination of sticks and poles on the lower side, while the upper was built of sticks and earth. The sticks were laid in the direction of the current with the butts up-stream, and not across. This was probably due to the animal's inability to lay the stick in any other way, the current itself determining the beaver's conduct, though it is possible that experience had taught that this was the best method, for by such arrangement the water was not wholly obstructed and, percolating through the interstices, was less likely to break away the structure. The other form of dam, the solid bank, was merely a modification of the stick dam adapted to a deeper channel. Large quantities of earth and stones were added to this to enable it to withstand the greater force of water, and this seems to indicate some degree of contemplation on the part of the builder; yet the result was natural, as the animal, having placed earth on one form of dam, would go on placing earth on the same form in deeper water as a matter of instinct. But there was one touch in the construction of the solid-bank dam which more than any other appeared to be the result of thought. This was an opening left in the top of the dam, several inches lower than the remainder, and three or four feet long, as a spillway for surplus water. In the stick dam no spillway was provided because the surplus was allowed to flow through the interstices, so that the construction of this feature in the larger, more compact dams seems to have been an example of pure invention to guard against possible disaster.

Great Beaver Dam—Grass Lake.
260 feet long.

From Morgan's American Beaver

Red Canyon—Green River.

Where Ashley Went for Beaver in 1825.

Photograph by E. O. Beaman, Colo. Riv. Exp.

All dams were begun at the surface and no sticks or stakes were driven down in beginning to hold in place the sticks that were to compose the bulk of the structure. Earth and stones, the latter of as much as six pounds each in weight, were brought to the spot and piled on the sticks. Trappers asserted that they would load each other's backs with earth and stones to be carried to the site, but this statement is not sufficiently authenticated to receive much confidence. In form all dams were curved, up stream in small dams and down in the larger. This was doubtless due to the current, which in small streams, obstructed easily in the centre, would become stronger on the sides and push the sticks down, while the reverse would be the case in large streams. Ordinarily the dams would support a man's weight. They seemed like masses of driftwood under the foot. The older they were, the more compact. Within the ponds, formed by these remarkable dams, sometimes covering more than fifty acres, one or many lodges were built to furnish shelter and protection to the beaver family. These houses were dome-shaped structures composed of sticks and mud, the dome rising above the water-level between four or five feet and extending along it about sixteen feet. The top of the lodge was left rather loose, but below it was compact with earth. This gave the interior sufficient ventilation. The floor, which was about two inches above the water-line, was hard and clean with, in summer time, fresh cut grass around the sides. Being so near the level the inmates could tell, by the lowering of the surface, whether the dam had a break in it, in which case they would sally forth to make repairs. Trappers took advantage of this trait, breaking the dam and setting traps in the break. The interiors were about two yards in diameter and twelve to sixteen inches in height, the roof above being about three feet in thickness, while the sides were four or five. There were several kinds of entrances, ten to fifteen feet long, but one was always straight with an inclined floor, to permit food sticks to be taken into the house and out again when the bark on them had been consumed. Then the sticks were used in construction work. Other entrances were more abrupt and full of curves. The winter pile of food sticks was sunk alongside the house where it was easily accessible under the ice. No animal could successfully attack one of these lodges, so that the family within it was perfectly safe, but men with axes could force an entrance from above.

Beaver Canal.

From Morgan's American Beaver

Lower Colorado River—Mouth of Gila on Right.

Where Pattie Trapped Beaver in 1826.

Photograph by Delancy Gill.

In low ground the dams backing the water around trees killed them and in course of time they would disappear, leaving in their place an open, boggy space covered with a growth of rank vegetation. These were called by the hunters "beaver meadows." The "beaver canals" were cut through marshy places and were sometimes prominent features of the local landscape, extending four or five hundred feet in length, and having a breadth of three feet, with a depth of fifteen to thirty inches.

When in the water the beaver was far more graceful and active than when on land, swimming powerfully by means of its large, strong, webbed hind feet, aided, when speed was desired, by the broad, flat tail used like the blade of a sculling oar, which, indeed, it much resembled, being ten inches long by five wide, and smooth, hard, and scaly, and entirely devoid of the soft fur which covered the body. Besides this use in swimming, the tail served as a prop when the animal desired to sit up on land, and also as a sort of trowel for beating down the mud-mortar used in dam building. At night it was also struck sharply on the surface of the water as a signal of alarm, giving a report which sounded, in the stillness, like a pistol shot and could be heard for a long distance. In regions frequented by man, or where in any way likely to be disturbed, the beaver was nocturnal and did most of its work during the dark hours, but where unmolested it spent much time out in the broad daylight. I saw large numbers swimming about in daytime when on Green River in 1871, in Wonsits Valley, where white men had rarely passed, and they gave no indication of special alarm at sight of us. Perhaps they regarded our boats as nothing more than drifting logs, just as the seal of Alaska is deceived by the trick the natives there have of covering themselves and their canoes with white cloth to resemble floating ice. At one point where we were in camp a whole day within a few hundred yards of a colony actively engaged in their various labours in the sunlight of the river bank, they apparently did not notice our presence, and even a rifle ball sent among them did not seem to derange their equanimity. In this locality the banks were full of burrows, and as we passed along in our boats we could see the beaver swimming around in every direction. We shot at several, but as they immediately sink to the bottom when killed, the gun is not successful in taking them, except in very shallow streams. We would have failed altogether albeit we made no special effort, had not one of the boats been able to head off a large fellow that was wounded, just as he arrived at the opening of his burrow, which happened, at that stage of river, to be a little above the water-level. A moment more and the animal would have been safe from us, but though the bottom was invisible on account of the turbidity of the river, one of our men quickly took the plunge and grasped the beaver from behind firmly around the middle at the moment when its head was almost against the steep high bank. The depth was no more than about three feet, and though the beating of the heavy tail, and the fierce struggles, made it anything but easy, the beaver was thrown into the boat, where a blow from an oar finished him. The captor, drenched and covered with mud, climbed triumphantly on board. Some of the meat was cooked and suggested to me beef in flavour, though it was rather tough and unappetising. The tail makes a soup which is the delight of the epicure, or was, when beaver tails were procurable, but somehow that which our cook concocted did not strike our palates favourably and we abandoned it for the regulation bacon and beans. Beaver meat was often the only food the trapper and frontiersman could obtain, and they considered it quite a good article of diet. The one we tested was doubtless too old a specimen, and we had no opportunity to secure another, for we passed on into the great Canyon of Desolation and saw beaver no more.

Trees Cut by Beavers.

From Morgan's American Beaver.

When at work cutting down a tree they stood on their hind legs, supported also by the tail, two working at one time on the same tree. They began eight or ten inches above the base and cut round and round, making each successive cut wider and deeper, the chips thrown off being some three inches in length by one and one-half wide, and one-quarter thick, each showing the sharp, clean strokes of the teeth, and resembling chips made with an axe. As the trees selected were always soft wood, they were easily gnawed while green. A tree of considerable size would be readily felled in two or three nights. Often they worked in pairs at a number of trees at one time, and nineteen falls, says Morgan, have been counted in a single night between the hours of seven and twelve. Cottonwoods twenty-four inches in diameter were brought down, though the more ordinary size was fourteen to sixteen inches. Father de Smet saw a stump that was thirty inches in diameter.

At first glance a beaver stump looks almost as if it might have been cut by an axe in the hands of an inexperienced chopper. Pine trees were sometimes cut down, but the boughs were not used for food. Food branches were cut up into lengths of one to two feet, for convenience in handling and storing. Sometimes trees that fell with their tops in the deep water were allowed to remain this way till winter, when the branches were cut off under the ice. As the beaver was able to stay below the surface comfortably from five to ten minutes, he could accomplish his work there with ease. Both sexes possessed in two glands of the groin a musky secretion called castoreum, which was used in medicine and also as a bait for the animal itself. When at play they would void some of this musk upon the ground, and their favourite playgrounds were consequently called by the trappers "muskbogs."

Hunters sometimes found trees standing near a stream that were partly cut, and they observed that in these cases the trees would not have fallen into the water, from which they inferred that cutting these trees had been started by young, inexperienced beavers who had finally been stopped in the useless labour by their wise elders. Bradbury, the English naturalist who was in the West with Wilson Price Hunt in 1809, thought he found some substantiation of this theory in trees he carefully examined—at least, none of these trees would have fallen across the neighbouring streams. Inasmuch as these animals, however, were in constant need of food branches, there would seem to have been no good reason for preventing the young beaver from completing the cutting of any tree no matter where it might drop. That the beaver had gone into the study of forestry and was endeavouring to preserve the woods is not likely, nor is it probable that the time of the youthful beaver was valuable. If all stumps in a given locality had been examined, doubtless it would have been found that a considerable number of trees had not fallen across the stream or even in its direction. A more probable explanation of these half-cut trees would be that from time to time some of those engaged in gnawing were interrupted during the operation, perhaps killed, and prevented from resuming, and that the rest, having their attention engaged on other trees or their branches, were not impelled to take up the work. The tree being girdled soon died. Then the fibre of the wood growing dry and hard, the tree would be avoided, because there were always plenty of fresh, juicy ones to cut. The tops of the old dead trees would also be of no use for food. So while the young may have been regularly educated as the trappers believed, this particular illustration of wise guidance does not appear convincing. It was also believed that an old beaver which had once escaped a trap could not again easily be caught, for the reason that thereafter it carried a stick in its mouth with which to test suspicious places and spring any trap that might be in its way.

Nevertheless the trap was fatal to these industrious and ingenious animals, and by the year 1835 they had been reduced in numbers to such a degree that they were no longer the chief lure and gain of the fur hunter. The native, before the opening of the European market, not having much use for such small skins and preferring the meat of other game for food, the beaver for ages had been practically unmolested. But the footsteps of the American trapper sounded his death knell. At the same time they sounded the same knell for every living thing in the whole vast wilderness, and now, a century after, not only is it next to impossible to find a beaver colony in that immense array of mountain and plain, but all wild animals have become more or less of a curiosity, only preserved from absolute extermination by the most rigorous game laws. Killing for fun is even more destructive than killing for profit.

The principal contrivance employed in taking beaver was the common steel trap, a couple of jaws so arranged that they could be spread and set on a trigger which was connected with a treadle in the centre. When the animal stepped on this treadle, the powerful jaws were freed and were brought fiercely together by a spring, clamping the leg of the victim securely. The trap being fastened to a strong chain and this to a stake, the captive could not escape, unless it gnawed its own leg off, and it is said beaver sometimes did this. The trap was set in the line of a runway or trail or near the entrance to a burrow, with a stick leaning over it on the extremity of which was the bait, a small quantity of castoreum, of gum camphor, oil of juniper, cinnamon, or cloves. The last two were dissolved in alcohol and made into a paste. In reaching for the bait, the beaver stepped on the treadle of the trap. The hunter made his rounds regularly to gather in the pelts of the captives, resetting the traps for another catch if the locality was promising, or, if the contrary, taking them up and pushing on in search of better ground. In the very beginning those first in a rich spot of course reaped the best harvest, and it was the desire to obtain large and quick returns that induced trappers constantly to enter farther and farther into the unfathomed places. The move was not always a wise one. Frequently they left comparatively good ground and came to that which was lean, or perhaps entirely devoid of the animal sought.

Beaver Trap.

The Beaver.

Copyright, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co.

Sometimes the trap was set so that the ring attached to the end of the chain, as soon as the captive dived, would slide down to the small end of a pole planted in the water, preventing the ascent of the beaver and consequently drowning it. At the lodge, rows of strong stakes were driven in such a way as to form alleys leading to the entrances through which the members of the family would have to pass to reach the house, the trap being cunningly concealed on the bottom. In winter, as it was easy to discover the lodges because the snow was melted away from above by the rising warm air, the tops were chopped in, and the beaver taken in this way. The store of winter food sticks being placed in a pile beside the lodge, the trappers often staked around it to compel the beaver to enter for food at points where traps were set. When it was driven to its bank burrows, the entrances were closed and then the occupants were dug out from above. The setting of steel traps, however, and visiting them at regular intervals was the easiest and most profitable method, for one man could take care of fifty traps or more, without great difficulty. One peculiarity of the animal was of great service to its pursuers,—it never stepped backwards. Altogether the poor creature was an easy prey to the keen hunter, and the capture of it amounted to wholesale slaughter.

In disposition the beaver was gentle and shy. When caught very young, they became perfectly tame and contented. Native women sometimes nursed young captives as they would a child, till, in a few weeks, they were old enough to eat bark, when they would wean themselves. Their cry resembled that of a human infant, and their affectionate natures made them attractive and satisfactory pets. Full growth was attained at two and one-half years, and they died of old age at about fifteen. A beaver family consisted of the two parents and the several offspring under two years of age, all living in one lodge or burrow. Occasionally a male refused to pair, and then after the second season he was driven from the colony and became an outcast. Their interesting social organisation and general sagacity placed them in the very top rank among animals.

This small creature, then, that offered its life as a bait to entice the white man into the depths of the wilderness, was one of the most remarkable on the continent, and its likeness, as the emblem of the American Republic, would be far more appropriate than the carrion eagle, which has little to commend it, as compared with the beaver, the model of gentleness, industry, ingenuity, and painstaking skill, and which formed a stepping-stone to the power and greatness of the Union of States now spreading from ocean to ocean.

CHAPTER III

A Monarch of the Plains—The Hunchback Cows of Cibola—A Boon to the Frontiersman—Wide Range of the Bison—Marrow Bones for the Epicure—Washington Irving a Buffalo Hunter—The Rushing Run of the Bison Herd—The Sacred White Buffalo Cow Skin—A Calf with a Bull Head—Wolves and White Bears.

Another denizen of the wilderness that performed an important part in its preparation for occupation by the white race was the buffalo or Bison Americanus, a monarch of the plains, huge and fierce in appearance; a monarch with the mien of a lion and the resistance of a sheep; an animal quite the opposite of the interesting beaver in almost every particular but numbers. In this respect, however, it vied with its smaller associate, roaming by millions and millions up and down across the limitless prairie-ocean, apparently as inexhaustible as the vagrant breezes blowing one day here and one day there. But the breezes still waft above the billowy surface, while the bison has vanished like a dream. The farm, the ranch, the town, and the railway now claim his vast grazing grounds. Were it not for a few specimens preserved in private herds and zoölogical gardens, this strange creature would be as unfamiliar to us in the life as are the Dinosaurs of the Jurassic plains.

The Monarch of the Plains.

The Figure a Photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.

They were the "hunchback cows" which Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca first accurately described to the European world, although it is said that Montezuma had one captive in his collection of animals at the time Cortez pillaged the Aztec capital. They were later called "cattle or cows of Cibola" (and Sibolo)[4] by the Spaniards, perhaps because the inhabitants of the first group of native villages of New Mexico encountered by Coronado were supplied with buffalo robes and were in the habit of going to hunt the animals on the plains of the river Pecos, where at that time they were abundant. The name passed into common use and to-day, although there is the correct word Bisónte, the American bison is generally known in Spanish as Cibolo. In his celebrated traverse of the Texas and Kansas prairies in 1540 Coronado saw immense herds that roamed there. The buffalo range was great, especially in a north and south direction, its southernmost limit having been in north-eastern Mexico a little below the lower end of Texas, while its northernmost was the upper shores of Great Slave Lake. It seems, however, that it did not cover this range in latitude at one time, so that in Coronado's day the northern limit was doubtless considerably below Great Slave Lake. The buffalo was not migratory in the sense that herds from the extreme north traversed the entire range and occupied a place on the southern edge, but it was migratory as a whole, swinging back and forth from north to south and south to north like a huge pendulum, the various sub-herds always retaining practically the same relative position to the complete mass. It appears also that in this annual oscillation with the seasons it gradually retired from the extreme southern limit and encroached beyond its northern limit, till the position at the north mentioned was arrived at. This is indicated by the statement of an Amerind of the Athabasca country, who in explaining his age to Mackenzie, said that "he remembered the opposite hills and plains now interspersed with groves of poplars, when they were covered with moss, and without any animal inhabitant but the reindeer. By degrees, he said, the face of the country changed to its present appearance, when the elk came from the east and was followed by the buffalo; the reindeer then retired to ... a considerable distance."[5] It is therefore quite probable that, had not the European arrived to interfere, the buffalo eventually would have gone farther north and would have spread over Alaska. It was perfectly at home in the cold northland so long as the summers permitted grass and herbage to mature. The Saskatchewan country was full of them all winter, though they were forced to paw away the snow to reach the grass. The range east and west was also extensive, though this was not the direction of its annual movement. Its eastern limit was the extent of the Mississippi valley north of the Tennessee; and possibly as far as Lake Champlain. While seemingly not as numerous in this eastern part of its range as farther west, yet there were large numbers, and the hunters of the early days of European settlement often killed them. Albert Gallatin states that while in western Virginia in 1784 he subsisted chiefly on buffalo meat. The city of Buffalo takes its name from this animal, which formerly fed on its site. That they were abundant in this eastern region long before Gallatin's time is established by the large quantities of their bones found around the salt licks of the Ohio valley. At Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, these accumulations are so great as to indicate, beyond question, a very remote date for the beginning of the range of the buffalo in this region. Beneath them the bones of the mastodon are discovered.[6]

It is strange that no bison remains have thus far been found in the ancient mounds of the Mississippi valley; nor are there any images of them on Moundbuilder pipes. It is also strange that, despite the abundance of buffalo throughout the greater part of the West, pictures of it made by the natives should be so rare. The Sioux lived with and on the bison, yet they seldom drew it, while their robes are covered with drawings of horses and other animals.

On the west the limit of the range, at least north of about latitude 41°, up to the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century seems to have been the Rocky Mountains. Lewis and Clark, on their great journey of 1804-06, make no mention of the buffalo on the Pacific side of the mountains, hence it is probable that few had crossed there at that time. This would imply that it was the advance of civilisation which impelled the buffalo in numbers finally to seek passes over the Backbone and spread across the upper valley of Green River, of Bear River, and of the Columbia. The possibility always remains that there may have been other causes at work, perhaps climatic, to induce or assist this movement, and it is also possible that the animal may have crossed earlier, and have temporarily refrained from migrating in that direction, perchance on account of extra deep snow or some such natural interference, although the usual snow did not prevent their crossing in dead of winter. Escalante's party in 1776 found abundant signs of buffalo on White River, near the Green, and killed one there. They named a canyon Arroyo del Cibolo because of the many buffalo trails in it.

But the modern Pai Utes apparently had no knowledge of this animal, so that if it ever was found in any numbers in southern Utah, the period of occupation must have been remote. Dr. Coues believed that it ranged at one time in Arizona, though he could not recall the ground for this belief, simply remembering that it appeared to him sufficient at the time. The only indication that I know of, of the former presence of the buffalo in southern Utah is a rock picture found on the walls of Kanab Canyon (see [page 37]), some eight miles north of latitude 37° and about two west of longitude 112° 30´. This drawing would suggest that some natives captured a buffalo not far from the spot, though it might have been the record of a hunt at some other point. Buffalo would not have been likely to cross the vast depths of the Grand Canyon to the southward, hence they could have arrived at this place easily only by way of the Sevier River, the Escalante Desert, or by turning the western end of the Grand Canyon. At Gunnison on Sevier River a buffalo skull was found in a canyon ten feet below the surface. It is more probable that they would come from the north, yet if they did not cross the mountains there till 1810, a new difficulty is met with, for the present Pai Utes seem not to have made any rock pictures. These were done by the pottery-making, house-building Amerinds, who, as far as can be determined, had vanished from the region long before 1810.

Picture of Buffalo on Cliff Wall, Southern Utah.

Pecked Drawing Copied by B. L. Young.

I do not remember any reference to buffalo on Espejo's trip to Zuñi and west in 1583, nor on the journey Juan de Oñate made across Arizona and back in 1604-05; it is likely that if this animal ranged there it was before the time of Coronado. The south-western limit at that period appears to have been the first mountain range west of the Rio Pecos. North of latitude 57° they never crossed the Rocky Mountains. In 1820, according to Long, they had not yet entirely crossed in the central portion, that is to Green River and the Columbia, yet in 1824 they were ranging the Green, Columbia, and Bear River valleys in vast numbers. Up to 1823 they existed in great herds in the new State of Missouri, and their crossing to the Pacific slope thus appears about coincident with their retiring from this eastern ground. In their western range they extended as far as the Blue Mountains of Oregon, and even to the foot of the Sierra Nevada in the region farther south. Fossil remains have been found, according to Coues, within the limits of its range, east of the Rocky Mountains. There were two kinds of buffalo in the opinion of the frontiersmen, the wood buffalo and the prairie type. Apparently there was not sufficient differentiation in these to warrant the separation. They were practically the same, the variation being merely one of habitat, and individual change, like the occasional development of an extra rib. The buffalo inhabiting the woods usually grew to a larger size than that of the plains, but this was probably the result of a less active life and more abundant food. All buffalo at maturity were large animals, the male weighing 1000 to 1500 pounds or more, and the female from 800 to 1200. In size the adult male measured about 9 feet from muzzle to root of tail, and 13 feet 6 inches to end of tail including the hairs, which were about 15 inches long. In similar measurement the adult female was about 6 feet 6 inches to root of tail and 9 feet to the extreme end, the hairs being about 10 inches long. The male at the highest part was 5½ to 6 feet and the female about 5 feet; at the hips both sexes were around 4½ feet. The horns of the male were short and very thick at the base, with a quick taper to a sharp point. Those of the female were smaller at the base, but about the same in length and curve as those of the male. In winter the colour of the woolly hair was a blackish brown, but it became lighter in summer and so varied somewhat with season and locality. The hair was moulted in early spring except that on the shoulders, which with age became tawny—a yellowish brown.

The earliest published drawing of the American bison is supposed to be that which appeared in 1558 in Thevet's book,[7] sixteen years after the return to Mexico of Coronado, but it would seem that some illustration of an animal that was considered so remarkable must have been printed before that. Since then it has been drawn and painted unnumbered times. It figured largely, as a matter of course, in Catlin's celebrated illustrations of aboriginal life in the Far West, and forms the subject for about the best picture Albert Bierstadt ever painted, Buffalo Hunting on Laramie Plains.[8]

The Grand Teton from Jackson's Hole.

The Buffalo Reached this Valley by 1824.

Photograph by W. H. Jackson, U. S. Geol. Survey.

But it was not as material for picture making that the bison became of greatest value, it was as a meat supply to the trapper, the trader, and the traveller generally upon the bosom of that wide expanse of rolling prairie that so resembled the great salt ocean itself. As Butler[9] describes it,

"the unending vision of sky and grass, the dim, distant, and ever shifting horizon; the ridges that seem to be rolled upon one another in motionless torpor; the effect of sunrise and sunset, of night narrowing the vision to nothing, and morning only expanding it to a shapeless blank, ... and above all the sense of lonely, unending distance which comes to the Voyageur when day after day has gone by, night has closed, and morning dawned upon his onward progress under the same ever-moving horizon of grass and sky."

No wonder the moment buffalo were first sighted by the anxious caravan, a joyful cry went up, equivalent, as Irving says, to the cry of, "A sail, a sail!" at sea. All was commotion on the instant, and everybody prepared for the hunt. Thenceforward, as long as buffalo were near, hunger held no terrors on that boundless plain that now our limited express so contemptuously spurns beneath its throbbing steel, as the ennuied lady sits wearisome at the window gazing with disdain on those blood-bathed reaches of country, so full of thrilling story and history, a bill of fare in her hand that would have driven the old voyageur to distraction.

Canyon of Lodore—Green River.

Canyons of this Character were almost Continuous from a few Miles below the Union Pacific Railway Crossing.

Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.

Yet buffalo meat could not have been less delicious to the appetite of the plains traveller. It not only furnished food for the moment, but dried, or dried and pounded and mixed with the rendered tallow, sometimes including berries, it made pemmican,[10] which could be kept a long time, and which formed the basis of the supplies for long expeditions and for winter consumption. The meat from old bulls was often tough, but that from a fat cow was always delicious, and the marrow!—well, that was a dish fit to set before a king. The Hon. Grantley F. Berkley[11] of England was not exactly a king, unless we elevate him as far above the Americans as he thought himself to be, but he appreciated marrow in 1859 when he honoured the great plains by his presence.

"No man [he exclaims] can guess what marrow amounts to until he has been to the Far West.... The bone was brought to table in its full length, and they had some way of hitting it with an axe which opened one side only, like the lid of a box. The bone then, when this lid was removed, exposed in its entire length a regular white roll of unbroken marrow, beautifully done. When hot, as the lid had kept it, and put on thin toast, it was perfection."

Another part that was particularly delicious was the hump or rather the hump-ribs; and so too was the tongue. Still another tidbit was the meat along either side of the loin, so that altogether living was high on the rolling prairie as long as buffalo held out. Frequently the traveller became so pampered by these luxuries that he spurned all but the daintiest parts and thought nothing of killing a cow simply for the marrow or for the tongue.

The poor beast deserved better treatment than it got; indeed, the only treatment was a dose of lead on sight, even when no meat was needed. The Amerinds often killed the bison recklessly before the arrival of the European, yet the herds would have resisted all such inroads. But when the white man came he quickly gave the native points in the game of useless destruction. The buffalo range immediately was transformed into a vast slaughter-house, and the carcasses were left to rot and dry under the western sun. And the more civilised the hunter—that is, the more unaccustomed to the frontier—the greater the waste of bison life at his hands. More than sixteen thousand were shot for sport alone, on the plains of Kansas and Colorado, in 1871. The sportsmen killed all sizes and ages, pell-mell, just to kill and to ride away at headlong speed like escaped madmen, never stopping a moment even for the tongues. Everywhere the carcasses of wantonly slain buffalo in disgusting masses of putrefaction were lying over hill and dale.[12] They enjoyed the bison's terror and agony, and with the improved breech-loader death was dealt in a steady stream, easily and at little cost. It was grand sport!

"Some of our bullets are telling; you can hear them crack on his hide. There is a red spot now, not bigger than the point of one's finger, opposite a lung, and drops of blood trickle with the saliva from his jaws.... He is bleeding internally.... Now he stands sullen glaring at us. The wounds look like little points of red paint, put deftly on his shaggy hide.... The large eyes roll and swell with pain and fury.... See him blow the blood from his nostrils. The drops scatter like red-hot shot around him, seeming to hiss in globules of fury, as they spatter upon the dry grass."[13]

Head of Bison Bull.

Specimen Shot by Theodore Roosevelt. Dec. 17, 1883.

(From Roosevelt's Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.)

When finally the railways began to push across the plains, passengers would amuse themselves by shooting buffalo from the windows. The animals had a habit of trying to cross the track ahead of the engine, and sometimes would rush beside the train a long distance, for in the early days trains had to run slowly, thus giving passengers the opportunity. If the train did not stop, the herd would perhaps butt up against it, so the engineers learned to stand still, and, with due respect, wait for the bison to pass. When wounded, they became dangerous, especially the vigorous bulls, and the novice then had to look sharp for his own life, like the matador in the bull-ring.

The advance of one of the enormous herds was a terrific sight. Great clouds of dust rolled up, there was bellowing and bawling, and the thunder of the thousand hoof-beats on the hard ground. The herd came as one animal, sweeping everything before it as an avalanche descends some precipice in the Alps. "Their lion-like fronts and dangling beards—their open mouths and hanging tongues—as they come puffing like a locomotive engine at every bound do at first make the blood settle a little heavy about the heart." Woe to the caravan or horseman who failed to evade this resistless approach! The forward animals were borne ahead by the pressure from behind, and the mass swept on like some tremendous flood. Should a river or other obstacle come in the way there was no halt. Whole herds were sometimes dashed to death over some precipice, or drowned in a river where quicksand prevented fording or swimming. Four thousand once crossed the Platte when it was a foot or two deep and full of quicksand. The animals in the lead mired, but those behind prevented their return, and rushing on over the ones already entangled in the fatal sands, themselves fell in, till finally the bed of the stream, nearly half a mile wide, was covered with dead and dying buffalo, two thousand, at least, having been killed in the attempt to cross. Gregg[14] asserts that any herd was easily turned aside, but others give a different opinion, and judging from all the data, it seems that Gregg's experience in this particular must have been unusual.

Buffalo Chase.

After Catlin.
From Smithsonian Report, 1885.

Hunting was done by several methods; first, following along the outskirts of a herd on a trained and fleet horse and "cutting out" an animal to shoot; or, by "still" hunting—that is, creeping up to a herd unobserved and picking animals off while feeding; or by the surround; or the drive. The natives were expert in all methods. In the surround they closed in large numbers on a herd and at a given signal all began to shoot. They used the bow and arrow and the spear, and also firearms when they finally acquired them. They were astonishingly expert with the bow, singling out their animal while riding full speed and sending an arrow entirely through the victim. Sometimes the arrow would also kill a calf or another buffalo before ceasing its flight. The spear was skilfully used, and it is said an Amerind would ride alongside a cow allowing his spear to rest on its back till it became accustomed to it and then he would thrust the weapon into the vitals and deftly withdraw it, all without even slackening his horse's speed, the horse being trained to guide by the movement of his rider. Large numbers were captured by building a sort of corral with wing-like sides of bushes fifty feet apart and a mile or two long, or more, leading to the entrance. The hunters closed in gradually on a herd and drove them into the corral, other men being stationed behind the bushes to frighten the buffalo. Hind describes vividly his visit to one of these scenes[15]:

"A sight most horrible and disgusting broke upon us as we ascended a sand dune overhanging the little dell in which the pound was built. Within a circular fence 120 feet broad, constructed of the trunks of trees, laced with withes together and braced by outside supports, lay tossed in every conceivable position, over two hundred dead buffalo. From old bulls to calves of three months old, animals of every age were huddled together in all the forced attitudes of violent death. Some lay on their backs, with eyes starting from their heads, and tongue thrust out through clotted gore. Others were impaled on the horns of the old and strong bulls. Others again, which had been tossed, were lying with broken backs two and three deep. One little calf hung suspended on the horns of a bull which had impaled it in the wild race round and round the pound. The Indians looked upon the dreadful and sickening scene with evident delight."

This seems like great slaughter, and so it was, but compared with the white man out after tongues and hides it was as a raindrop to Shoshone Falls.

Character of Buffalo Range in Green River Valley.

Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.

Another way was to take advantage of the blind impetuosity of the charge of a herd and lead it over the brink of a precipice. A man holding upon himself a buffalo skin with head and horns, and running before the herd toward the precipice, thus induced the buffalo to follow, as they took him to be one of themselves. At the brink the man secured himself in some safe nook, while the herd, forced by the rush from behind, fell over the cliff and were dashed to death. The hunters then took what they wished and left the rest to the wolves.

The fur companies about 1835, when the beaver began to fail and they found their next mainstay in buffalo robes, annually sent to market about a hundred thousand. Add to this a greater number killed by all parties for various purposes, and it is reasonable to estimate the number yearly destroyed at not less than a quarter of a million. When the value of robes fell off, the buffalo was killed for hides and tallow. Eventually the price of hides fell to no more than one dollar apiece, delivered in Leavenworth. Made into leather, the bison hides could not compare with those of domestic cattle. It was soft and spongy and not adapted for shoe, for sole, or for harness leather. Large quantities were at one time finished by American tanners, but were chiefly used for making horse collars. A good deal was exported to Great Britain. The process of tanning was the same as for ordinary leather. But no method of tanning robes with the hair on could equal that of the natives, and this was admitted by the best American tanners, who turned out few robes for this reason. The Amerind method was first to scrape off the superfluous flesh with a sort of bone adze, the skin being either stretched on a frame or pegged out on the ground. When dry the surface was rubbed and scraped again and then covered with the brains and rolled up flesh side in for three or four days, the brains of the animal being sufficient for its own hide. Then it was soaked in water and softened by working and rubbing, thoroughly smoked over a fire of rotten wood, and finally rubbed down to a finish. A large hide was often split in two for convenience in dressing and then sewed together after completion of the tanning process.

One hardly thinks of Washington Irving as a sportsman and buffalo hunter, yet he was out on the plains in 1832 gaily charging after buffalo with pistols of the old priming-pan pattern, for breech-loaders were not yet in use, and many of the early trappers had only the old flint-lock. It was the breech-loading repeater and canned goods that finished the buffalo.

"There is a mixture of the awful and the comic [says Irving] in the look of these huge animals as they bear their great bulk forwards with an up-and-down motion of the unwieldy head and shoulders; their tail cocked up like the cue of Pantaloon in a pantomime, the end whisking about in a fierce yet whimsical style, and their eyes glaring venomously with an expression of fright and fury."

Borrowing a companion's double-barrelled gun which had one shot remaining in it, Irving took after the fleeing herd and succeeded in bringing one down.

"Dismounting, I now fettered my horse to prevent his straying and advanced to contemplate my victim. I am nothing of a sportsman; I had been prompted to this unwonted exploit by the magnitude of the game, and the excitement of an adventurous chase. Now that the excitement was over I could not but look with commiseration upon the poor animal that lay struggling and bleeding at my feet. His very size and importance, which had before inspired me with eagerness, now increased my compunction."[16]

The scurrying herds sometimes ran close to a caravan and mules, horses, and oxen have been known to run away with them. The buffalo often seemed to consider the domestic animals part of their own herd and the cattle appeared to hold the same opinion of the buffalo. Indeed, there was little difference except in appearance between a herd of domestic cattle and one of buffalo. The mingling was prevented by firing into the buffalo and killing several, which served to turn a small herd, though frequently their headway was so great they could not be swerved and the animals were stampeded with them. Then hours of hard work became necessary to rescue the tame animals, and some never were regained. The season had much to do with the manageability of a herd, as at some periods the bulls were extremely fierce.

In summer the bulls would find wet places in the prairie and soon by ploughing and wallowing would create a considerable puddle, wherein they would lave themselves and finally emerge coated with mud. Others would follow till a great depression was the result. These depressions were called wallows and the plains were covered with them. When filled up eventually by the washings of the rains they induced, by superior fertility, a rank growth which distinguished them for a long distance.

Canyon of Desolation—Green River.

A Barrier to the Buffalo's Westward Movement.

Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.

The Osages and other tribes at one time wove blankets of buffalo wool in the same manner that the Navajos to-day weave blankets of sheep's wool. Many tribes lived by and with the buffalo, having no other source of food, shelter, or raiment, and this animal became to them the most important being in creation. It entered into their ceremonials and into almost every act of their daily life. When no buffalo had been secured for a time and the camp was growing hungry, the Buffalo Dance was performed and, as Catlin says, it never failed to bring the buffalo, because it was invariably continued till buffalo came in sight—a happy event signalled by a lookout "throwing" his robe. All then rushed to the hunt. If a white buffalo cow were taken,—and there were occasionally white buffalo,—the skin was preserved as a sacred object by the Dakota tribes. It was sheltered under a special sacred tent and carried about from camp to camp with the greatest reverence.

Mandan Buffalo Dance.

After Catlin. From Smithsonian Report, 1885.

The buffalo was easily domesticated, but the Amerind never seems to have attempted to tame it, although Gomara states that a certain tribe living in north-western Mexico about latitude 40°—wherever that might have been—had herds of tame bison. In the north-west counties of Virginia early in the nineteenth century a mixed breed was common, and in the first settlement of the North-west there was also crossing with European cattle. The cows of this mixed breed that were considered best for milking were the half bloods down to the quarter or even eighth of buffalo blood. But it may be assumed that had there been any considerable gain by the cross the experiment would have been continued. It seems probable in view of the physique of each animal that the cross had heavier forequarters and lighter hindquarters than either parent, and a lighter milk yield, hence it would not be found advantageous.

Buffalo Swimming Missouri River.

After Catlin. From Smithsonian Report, 1885.

The calf, Catlin asserts,[17] could be made to follow a horseman simply by holding the hand over its eyes and breathing into its nostrils a few strong breaths. In this way he collected about a dozen, which were fed at the fort on milk and finally sent down the river to St. Louis as a present to Choteau. All but one died on the journey. The breathing operation was not unattended with danger for the calves were vigorous butters and not lightly to be trifled with. The trapper Pattie, when crossing the prairies, shot a cow and concluded to take the little calf alive to camp. So he laid aside his equipment in order the more easily to catch it, expecting a hot chase. But when he approached the prospective captive it also approached him, and with the speed and vigour of a battering ram. Mr. Pattie found himself stretched on the ground, with the further misfortune of being knocked back again every time he attempted to rise. He began to suspect that his final hour had come, when he succeeded in catching the calf by one of its legs, and killed it with his sheath knife, which was still in his belt.

The pursuit of the buffalo was full of excitement and within reason was a legitimate sport. Catlin exclaims: "I have always counted myself a prudent man, yet I have waked (as it were) out of the delirium of the chase, into which I had fallen as into an agitated sleep, and through which I had passed as through a delightful dream, where to have died would have been but to have remained riding on without a struggle or a pang."

The herds of buffalo were always followed by large numbers of wolves, both the small coyote variety and the huge grey wolf. There were also on the prairies in great numbers what the early frontiersmen called "white bears." These were grizzlies. They were very bold and many a man was sent to the Happy Hunting Grounds by their ferocious power. No animal in the world perhaps, taken all in all, was so dangerous. Besides these there were numerous antelope, elk, deer, sheep, prairie hens, turkeys, quail, rabbits, and other small game, more or less familiar to the reader, and, therefore, not requiring an extended description here. The beaver and the buffalo were the animals of the greatest importance; and the buffalo deserves a place in our national emblem along with the beaver, for the bones of the bison may be said to form one of the corner-stones of the Union.

CHAPTER IV

The People of the Wilderness—Men without Rights—Killing by Alcohol—Change in the Character of the Native—Growth of the War Spirit—Classification by Language—Dwellers in Tents and Builders of Houses—Farmers and Hunters—Irrigation Works—The Coming of the Horse.

Of more than equal interest with the magnificent wilderness and its animal occupants was the human dweller within its broad limits, the Amerind,[18] commonly called the Indian. Still another name for him was Red Man, yet he was neither an Indian nor was he red, except when he painted himself with ochre and vermilion. His real colour was various shades of brown or bronze, rather yellowish than red where protected from the sun. We are not surprised that roses of different hue grow in a garden, but there has always been unwarranted amazement that different shades of men should be found in the garden of the universe. There appears to be no reason why men should not vary in colour as well as all other animals and plants. But though races of mankind may vary in colour they never, so far as now determined, have varied in any other essential; or at least only slightly in fundamental characteristics. In general physical composition all men to-day are identical, and there is no certain evidence that they have ever differed more than they now do.[19] Man is everywhere the same as far back in the ages as he can be traced. Some may be stronger, or larger, or shorter, than others, with brains more or less developed, but they are all practically alike, even to their emotions.

A Village of the Plains.

This form of tipi was readily taken down and as readily set up again.

Photograph by U. S. Government.

Races, as a whole, differ from each other, in their ability to make machines, in their ability to secure comfort, in language, and in their social regulations; differences of degree. These qualities are begun and fostered more by stimulating circumstances than by particular superiority of race. For example, the Europeans forged ahead mainly because they were possessed of animals easily domesticated that would supply their needs. The Amerind had no such animals in North America except the bison and the dog. The latter he utilised to the full as a draught and pack animal, as a wool producer, and as a supply of animal food. Why he did not domesticate the bison is a problem. Perhaps it was because there were too many of them. The store of animal food was usually over-abundant with all Amerinds living in the range of the buffalo, so there was no spur to economy. We may imagine that if the buffalo from time to time had appeared in comparatively small numbers in the thickly populated country of the Aztecs where animal food was so scarce that an elaborate system of human sacrifices developed to supply this deficiency, the latter eventually would have been abandoned and captive buffalo substituted for captive man. Domestication, to guard the supply, would then have been an easy step. But the buffalo was permitted to roam at will, and the dog remained the sole domestic animal in possession of the people of North America before the arrival of the white race.[20]

The Amerind was not a savage. He was a barbarian with a rather well ordered society. He possessed a high quality of intellect, and he differed from his white antagonist more in external complexion than in any other particular except his social organisation, which was one the white man had passed through and left behind in centuries far past. But the Amerind had the same emotions. He loved his home, his family,—as constituted by his social regulations,—and his children. As to honesty and dishonesty, the balance was certainly not far from even, average for average; if anything, the Amerind had more respect for the ideals of his race than was the case with the white man with reference to his. Of course he had abundant vices like all the rest of humanity. He was often horribly cruel to his enemies. But on the whole he was not worse than the European who brought him degradation; who frequently soaked him with cheap rum and alcohol, in order more easily to exchange nothing for valuable furs: who engrafted upon him more and worse vices, who shot him needlessly, and who reviled him as he sank helpless under the heavy tide of imposition. Love of home and defence of country are ever extolled as of the highest merit in the white race; in the American native they were crimes. From the beginning of the contact the Amerind began to change for the worse.

A Pai Ute Family at Home.

Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.

A Ute Mountain Home.

Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.

The white man blamed all Amerinds for every crime and the Amerind blamed the white man similarly. Each visited retribution on the other without discrimination. The antagonism grew and grew. Tribes which at first received the whites most kindly and were continually cheated were apt to become bitterest enemies. On the Missouri in 1810 Wilson Price Hunt asked some Amerinds why they killed white men, to which they answered, "because they kill us—that man—" pointing to Carson—"killed one of our brothers last summer." This statement was true. Carson while with the Arikara had shot, probably for amusement, across the river at a war party of Sioux. The latter then retaliated by killing three whites. In this way the mutual antagonism multiplied as the years passed, just as a snowball increases when it rolls down hill. The native soon discovered that he must apply himself to his protection, and from being comparatively peaceful he became intensely warlike, emulating the example of the Iroquois and Apache. Had he possessed the power of organising, the story of white encroachment on his domain would have read differently. As it is, it may be considered a great loss to history that we have so little of the story from his point of view.

Village of the Puebloan Type. View in the Moki Town of Mishongnavi, Arizona.

Photograph by U. S. Bu. Eth.

Before the nineteenth century was half over, the country east of the Mississippi was entirely appropriated by the whites. The various tribes that had lived there were absorbed, exterminated, or crowded out; the same process was to be repeated in the Wilderness. The Iroquois held their ground in New York and succeeded in exchanging their former holdings for small reservations; and here was another story of the white man's perfidy. The Seminole, the Creek, and the Sac-and-Fox tribes were finally crushed and their remnants removed, with others, beyond the Mississippi. The general government as a rule tried to deal justly by the Amerind, yet it has been much censured. Its task was an impossibility as long as so many white men who came in contact with the natives were willing to set aside every principle of fair dealing and treat them with no more consideration than they did the beaver and the buffalo. They wanted their furs and anything else of commercial value that they possessed, and no subterfuge was too dishonourable to practise on them. The matter for surprise is not that the Amerind was occasionally on the war-path, but that he was not always there. He received daily lessons in cupidity, cruelty, and dishonour.

Thus far the most exact basis for the classification of these interesting people has been language. It was some time after the early intercourse with the natives of the East before the wide divergence in language was appreciated and all attempts to classify them fell into confusion. Finally, in 1836, Albert Gallatin began an arrangement by language which, reorganised by Powell, in 1885-86, has been generally adopted by ethnologists, and to-day, while not entirely approved, it is the only method that is satisfactory.

By this system all tribes whose language roots are the same are classed together no matter how widely separated geographically they might have been. Notwithstanding the remarkable homogeneity of all the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent in customs, habits, and organisation, yet more than sixty separate stock languages were discovered in North America. Each one of these is taken to represent a "stock" group to which is given a title derived from Gallatin's first designation or from the leading tribe in that particular stock, with the addition of "an" or "ian," and all tribes having similar language roots are classed with this group or stock. Thus in the Siouan stock, the title is taken from the leading tribe, the Sioux, and all affiliated languages are brought under the same heading, as Dakota, Crow, Hidatsa, Iowa, Mandan, etc., and in the Athapascan the title is taken from the Athapascas of the far north, while the Apaches and Navajos of the south are classed under the same heading, as they speak related languages.[21]

Umatilla Tipi of Rush Mats on Columbia River.

From Lewis & Clark by O. D. Wheeler.

Amerind Linguistic Map.

[View larger image]

After Bu. of Eth. Seventh An. Rep.

It so happened that the Wilderness possessed a greater variety of these stock groups than any other part of the continent, one portion, that lying west of the Sierra Nevada, containing an astonishing number of small groups living contiguously, yet each speaking a totally distinct language. It was therefore often difficult for the early invaders to make themselves understood, as well as to understand. Among the Amerinds themselves a "sign" language existed which was of remote origin and which was convenient and expressive for intercourse between tribes speaking radically different tongues. Sometimes a third language served to convey ideas between tribes or between them and white men, this third language being one belonging to some widely diffused stock of the region. Still another language was one which grew up spontaneously, composed of words from two or more languages as well as of a lot of words which in one way or another originated themselves, a mongrel language perfectly understandable but made up of flotsam and jetsam. Of this class the most widely used and best known was that called Chinook jargon, originating in the Columbia river region and composed of words from many different languages, including those of the white man, as well as words that never existed anywhere else.

Taking language as a basis, we find the Wilderness divided mainly between two great families, or stocks, which had grown numerous and were able to spread over a vast extent of country, though each contained a large number of separate tribes often at war with each other, at least after the arrival of the whites. These two stocks were the Siouan and the Shoshonean. Of the first, some leading members were mentioned above; of the second, the Shoshone, Comanche, Ute, and Moki (or Shinumo) were representative, in fact comprised almost the entire stock. The Siouan division, or family, ranged from the banks of the Mississippi westward, with its lower border stretching diagonally from south-eastern Arkansas as far as our present Yellowstone Park, north to the upper boundary of the United States and beyond. They were flanked above by tribes of another stock, widespread and powerful, north to Hudson Bay and east of the Mississippi, the Algonquian, represented by the Blackfeet,[22] Chippewa, Knisteneau (or Cree), and others. South of the Siouan range came that of the Caddoan, in south-western Arkansas, the eastern half of Texas, and in Louisiana with a central group in the midst of the Siouan range, in southern Nebraska, and a northern one also surrounded by the Siouan people, in North Dakota. The northern was the Arikara (or Ree), the middle the several sub-tribes of Pawnee, and the southern the Caddo, Wichita, Kichai, and others. Adjacent to the central Caddoan group, on the west, was another section of Algonquian stock, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and just north of this came the Kiowan, represented by the tribe from which the stock name comes, the Kiowa. This tribe was intimately associated with the Comanche, and there was a strong similarity in language.

A Puebloan Farmhouse.

Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.

Plenty-Horses, a Cheyenne.

Photograph by J. K Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.

West of all these ranged the Shoshonean stock from the middle line of Texas north-westward almost to the State of Washington, west to the Sierra Nevada, and south-westward like an inverted U around other stocks in New Mexico and Arizona, sending a slender arm entirely across California to the sea. This stock occupied a large part of the territory once claimed by Spain and Mexico, while the Siouan covered the major part of what was the Louisiana wilderness. Immediately south of the country of the Shoshonean tribes lay that of some branches of another numerous people already mentioned, the Athapascan, whose main body was far to the north, spreading across the whole extreme north-western part of the continent through Alaska, almost to the coast, which was occupied by a narrow fringe of Eskimauan people. These southern Athapascans, known as Apache and Navajo, were thus a long way from any relatives, but no people on the continent were better able to look out for themselves, both being warlike from the first, though this tendency was aggravated by the impositions of the early whites. The Navajo appear to have been considerably changed by an admixture of other blood, which may be termed Puebloan,[23] the term in this case being used not to designate people with similar language, but with similar culture and social organisation. The Apache, by his swiftness of action, his mobility, and his general skill as a predatory warrior, kept the more peaceful tribes in a state of constant turmoil and terror. At the same time he seems originally to have received the whites fairly well. In some ways he resembled the Iroquois, yet he had no approach to their masterly organisation.

Below the Athapascan group of the present New Mexico and Arizona was the Piman, a peaceful agricultural people, whose main range was in Mexico; and lying between the Piman and the Shoshonean was the northern part of the Yuman country, their southern range being the peninsula of Lower California.

Scattered irregularly through the Athapascan district were the villages of the sedentary Puebloans, a group made up of tribes speaking different languages but more or less affiliated by their similarity of habit. They were often at war with each other. They were house-builders, though that may be stated with regard to many of the tribes of other stocks. Their houses, however, were erected, with a view to greater permanency than any others, of adobe clay, or of stone, for their country was deficient in game and in forest, and they relied largely, chiefly indeed, upon their crops of maize. These groups are now well known, particularly the seven villages of the Moki, that of Zuñi, of Taos, and a number of others along the Rio Grande. The Moki (or Moquis) as stated above are classed as Shoshonean.[24] The Zuñi are designated Zuñian, and others fall under Keresan, from Keres (or Queres), and Tañoan. When considered otherwise than linguistically, the general term, Puebloan (really villagers) is useful for reasons explained above. The tribes of this group, remnants of a once far more numerous people, are some of the most interesting of all the Amerinds within our borders.

A Pai Ute Modernised.

Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.