The Native Races (Complete 5 Part Edition). Hubert Howe Bancroft

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СКАЧАТЬ Shoshone Family, which forms the fourth and last division of the Californian group, may be said to consist of two great nations, the Snakes, or Shoshones proper, and the Utahs. The former inhabit south-eastern Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, and the northern portions of Utah and Nevada, are subdivided into several small tribes, and include the more considerable nation of the Bannacks. The Utahs occupy nearly the whole of Utah and Nevada, and extend into Arizona and California, on each side of the Colorado. Among the many tribes into which the Utahs are divided may be mentioned the Utahs proper, whose territory covers a great part of Utah and eastern Nevada; the Washoes along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada, between Honey Lake and the west fork of Walker River; the Pah Utes, or, as they are sometimes called, Piutes, in western and central Nevada, stretching into Arizona and south-eastern California; the Pah Vants in the vicinity of Sevier Lake, the Pi Edes south of them, and the Gosh Utes, a mixed tribe of Snakes and Utahs, dwelling in the vicinity of Gosh Ute Lake and Mountains.

The Shoshones608 are below the medium stature; the Utahs, though more powerfully built than the Snakes, are coarser-featured and less agile. All are of a dark bronze-color when free from paint and dirt, and, as usual, beardless. The women are clumsily made, although some of them have good hands and feet.609

On the barren plains of Nevada, where there is no large game, the rabbit furnishes nearly the only clothing. The skins are sewn together in the form of a cloak, which is thrown over the shoulders, or tied about the body with thongs of the same. In warm weather, or when they cannot obtain rabbit-skins, men, women and children are, for the most part, in a state of nudity. The hair is generally allowed to grow long, and to flow loosely over the shoulders; sometimes it is cut straight over the forehead, and among the Utahs of New Mexico it is plaited into two long queues by the men, and worn short by the women. Ornaments are rare; I find mention in two instances610 of a nose-ornament, worn by the Pah Utes, consisting of a slender piece of bone, several inches in length, thrust through the septum of the nose. Tattooing is not practiced but paint of all colors is used unsparingly.611

The Snakes are better dressed than the Utahs, their clothing being made from the skins of larger game, and ornamented with beads, shells, fringes, feathers, and, since their acquaintance with the whites, with pieces of brilliant-colored cloth. A common costume is a shirt, leggins, and moccasins, all of buck-skin, over which is thrown, in cold weather, a heavy robe, generally of buffalo-skin, but sometimes of wolf, deer, elk, or beaver. The dress of the women differs but little from that of the men, except that it is less ornamented and the shirt is longer.612

      DRESS OF THE SNAKES.

      The dress of the Snakes seen by captains Lewis and Clarke was richer than is usually worn by them now; it was composed of a robe, short cloak, shirt, long leggins, and moccasins.

The robe was of buffalo or smaller skins, dressed with the hair on; the collar of the cloak, a strip of skin from the back of the otter, the head being at one end and the tail at the other. From this collar were suspended from one hundred to two hundred and fifty ermine-skins,613 or rather strips from the back of the ermine, including the head and tail; each of these strips was sewn round a cord of twisted silk-grass, which tapered in thickness toward the tail. The seams were concealed with a fringe of ermine-skin; little tassels of white fur were also attached to each tail, to show off its blackness to advantage. The collar was further ornamented with shells of the pearl-oyster; the shirt, made of the dressed hides of various kinds of deer, was loose and reached half-way down the thigh; the sleeves were open on the under side as low as the elbow—the edges being cut into a fringe from the elbow to the wrist—and they fitted close to the arm. The collar was square, and cut into fringe, or adorned with the tails of the animals which furnished the hide; the shirt was garnished with fringes and stained porcupine-quills; the leggins were made each from nearly an entire antelope-skin, and reached from the ankle to the upper part of the thigh. The hind legs of the skin were worn uppermost, and tucked into the girdle; the neck, highly ornamented with fringes and quills, trailed on the ground behind the heel of the wearer; the side seams were fringed, and for this purpose the scalps of fallen enemies were frequently used.

The moccasins were also of dressed hide, without the hair, except in winter, when buffalo-hide, with the hair inside, answered the purpose. They were made with a single seam on the outside edge, and were embellished with quills; sometimes they were covered with the skin of a polecat, the tail of which dragged behind on the ground. Ear-ornaments of beads, necklaces of shells, twisted-grass, elk-tushes, round bones, like joints of a fish's back-bone, and the claws of the brown bear, were all worn. Eagles' feathers stuck in the hair, or a strip of otter-skin tied round the head, seem to have been the only head-dresses in use.614 This, or something similar, was the dress only of the wealthy and prosperous tribes. Like the Utahs, the Snakes paint extensively, especially when intent upon war.615

      DWELLINGS AND FOOD OF THE SHOSHONES.

The Snakes also build better dwellings than the Utahs. Long poles are leaned against each other in a circle, and are then covered with skins, thus forming a conical tent. A hole in the top, which can be closed in bad weather, serves as chimney, and an opening at the bottom three or four feet high, admits the occupants on pushing aside a piece of hide stretched on a stick, which hangs over the aperture as a door. These skin tents, as is necessary to a nomadic people, are struck and pitched with very little labor. When being moved from one place to another, the skins are folded and packed on the ponies, and the poles are hitched to each side of the animal by one end, while the other drags. The habitations of the people of Nevada and the greater part of Utah are very primitive and consist of heaps of brush, under which they crawl, or even of a mere shelter of bushes, semi-circular in shape, roofless, and three or four feet high, which serves only to break the force of the wind. Some of them build absolutely no dwellings, but live in caves and among the rocks, while others burrow like reptiles in the ground. Farnham gives us a very doleful picture of their condition; he says: "When the lizard, and snail, and wild roots are buried in the snows of winter, they are said to retire to the vicinity of timber, dig holes in the form of ovens in the steep sides of the sand-hills, and, having heated them to a certain degree, deposit themselves in them, and sleep and fast till the weather permits them to go abroad again for food. Persons who have visited their haunts after a severe winter, have found the ground around these family ovens strewn with the unburied bodies of the dead, and others crawling among them, who had various degrees of strength, from a bare sufficiency to gasp in death, to those that crawled upon their hands and feet, eating grass like cattle."616 Naturally pusillanimous, weak in development, sunk below the common baser passions of the savage, more improvident than birds, more beastly than beasts, it may be possible to conceive of a lower phase of humanity, but I confess my inability to do so.

Pine-nuts, roots, berries, reptiles, insects, rats, mice, and occasionally rabbits are the only food of the poorer Shoshone tribes. Those living in the vicinity of streams or lakes depend more or less for their subsistence upon fish. The Snakes of Idaho and Oregon, and the tribes occupying the more fertile parts of Utah, having abundance of fish and game, live well the year round, but the miserable root-eating people, partly owing to their inherent improvidence, partly to the scantiness of their food-supply, never store sufficient provision for the winter, and consequently before the arrival of spring they are invariably reduced to extreme destitution. To avoid starvation they will eat dead bodies, and even kill their children for food.617 A rat or a rabbit is prepared for eating by singeing the hair, pressing the СКАЧАТЬ