. An Indian who had lost a son
in battle took me into his family, and from that time forth I was told
to consider him as my father, and his squaw as my mother. But although
thus made one of themselves, the Indians did not fail to treat me with
considerable harshness, and I was compelled to do some of the severe
drudgery usually imposed on women.

The Snakes at that time hunted in Iowa, but in about a year after my
joining them they had repeated quarrels with other tribes, and with
the whites. For a few months they remained in Missouri, but eventually
packed up and struck the trail for the west side of the Rocky
Mountains. Our tribe hunted through Utah for a while, but quarreled
with the tribes already in that country, and therefore we once more
pushed west, and crossing the mountains that divided us from
California, entered that country. Here we lived, for about five years,
generally at peace, but having occasional skirmishes with the Digger
Indians.

These Indians are a wretched and degenerate race, cowardly,
treacherous, filthy and indolent. Instead of living by hunting, as was
the case with our tribe, and nearly all the others east of the
California Mountains, these obtained a scanty subsistence by digging
for roots. The women do the digging whilst the men stay in the lodges
or are playing at some game. I have seen hundreds of the women at a
time out in this employment. They carry on their backs heavy baskets
of the shape of old fashioned straw beehives, and in their hands long
sticks with which to dig the roots. Early in the morning they go out
and keep at work until evening, when they return with their baskets
full of roots. Sometimes they procure enough not only for their
present eating, but to lay up for winter use.

The men among the Digger Indians wear very long hair, but that of the
women is cut short. Both are nearly naked, and filthy in the extreme.
Most of them are tatooed, the women especially displaying in general a
large number of designs on their person. They do this merely for
ornament, and not for the purpose of showing a difference in rank as
is the case in most tribes where the custom exists.

Their houses or lodges are very simple. In the summer they put a
number of bushes together in the shape of a cone, and into this they
creep for shelter from the sun by day, and to sleep by night. These
lodges or tents are more designed to keep off the rays of the sun than
for shelter from inclement weathe