The hair on the heads of the chiefs is all drawn up, and tied in a knot on the top of the head, and ornamented with feathers. The squaws’ heads look like pitchmops; the hair is very thick, coarse, and black, and cut square round the head. No part of the forehead is visible; the hair falls to the eye-brows. They have jet-black eyes; and some of them have a decidedly pleasant expression with the eye. The little babies are beauties. Their mothers learn them to swim, as soon as an old duck does her{153} young. They build little pens at the brink of the river, so that the current cannot carry them down stream, put them in, and keep them there half the time. They are really amphibious. They have a cruel custom of piercing the ears of their infants, and inserting sticks the size of the little finger. During the process of thus beautifying their infants, the whole side of the head and face is terribly swollen, and the child must suffer inconceivably; but better for them to die in the operation than to live in opposition to the prevailing mode. The longevity of the race is proverbial. We saw some who looked more like mummies than living beings. They bring them out of the huts, and set them in the sun, days; and there we saw them sitting, their eyelids drooping so you could not perceive the eyeball, limbs perfectly motionless, and so shrivelled and black as to be absolutely repulsive to the sight. Some of their limbs are affected with a loathsome cutaneous disease. When one of their number dies, they consume the body by fire, grind the bones to ashes; then the near relations mix these ashes with pitch, and daub their heads and faces with it, as a badge of mourning. During this process, and for several consecutive days and nights, they keep up a loud{154} hooting and howling, and render night hideous with their mournful lamentations. They have large gatherings sometimes at their rancherias, to celebrate some event; then dancing and singing, loud shouting and howling, is continued without intermission the whole night. During these orgies, the noise made by them is such as to prevent sleep, although a quarter of a mile distant. Their council-chamber is of sufficient capacity to accommodate three hundred persons; the entrance to which is an aperture of just sufficient size to admit a man’s body when bent double. In the centre of the roof is another small aperture; and, except by these two openings, no air or light can be admitted. They perform their singular dances in this place. Often Americans go there to witness these sports; but a few moments’ confinement in such a close place generally suffices. From their burrowing propensities, these Indians have derived the name of “Diggers.”