Breaking the Wilderness : $b 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 TradersDellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel
History
Breaking the Wilderness : $b 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
Dellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel
West (U.S.) -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- History
[22] There was also a Dakota sub-tribe called Blackfeet. In their
own language they were Sihasapa—a branch of the Tetons.
[23] Throughout the South-west, in the Colorado and Rio Grande
River basins, certain tribes of similar culture and village habits
once lived. These seem to have been of different stocks, exactly
as the village building tribes of to-day are. Some were probably
Shoshonean, some Piman, others were allied to the Tañoan and
Keresan, while still others were of stocks now extinct. For all
these the term Puebloan is convenient.
[24] North of the Colorado River are innumerable house ruins
ascribed by the present Pai Utes (Shoshonean) to the _Shinumo_.
They also call the Mokis, _Shinumo_, hence Powell applied this term
to the whole group. The probability is that the Shinumo were all
Shoshonean.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V
Three Conditions of Wilderness Life—Farming in the
Driest Country—The _Cache_—The Clan, the Unit of the
Tribe—Hospitality—Totems and Totem Marks—Dress—An Aboriginal
Geographer—The Winter Life—The War-path, the Scalp-lock, and the
Scalp-dance—Mourning the Lost Braves—Drifting.
The daily life of these natives of the Wilderness was regulated chiefly
by the food quest. With reference to this quest they existed in three
general states or conditions: hunter, fisher, farmer. Sometimes two,
sometimes all, these conditions were combined at one time. But no
matter which condition a tribe might be living in, nor what language
it might speak, its customs and social organisation were surprisingly
similar to those of all the other tribes. So that we have the picture
of numerous tribes dwelling in houses of widely varying construction,
subsisting on food obtained in radically different ways, and speaking
distinctly different languages, with general habits, customs, and
ceremonials almost identical, yet with the details of the daily routine
regulated largely by the kind of food most easily obtained in their
particular locality. Those in the higher mountains and on the plains
were mostly hunters. The tribes of the plains subsisted principally
on the buffalo, though some few cultivated maize, beans, and squashes
along the Arkansas, the Platte, and the Missouri river bottoms. To these
people of the prairies the horse was the greatest prize. Those living
mainly by fishing were tribes of the Pacific Coast and along the Pacific
river-valleys, like the Columbia, where the salmon run. Most of this
class had small use for the horse; many had for him no use whatever,
doing their entire travelling by canoe, and handling this craft with
unsurpassed dexterity.
[Illustration: Moki Woman Modelling a Clay Jug.
Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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