The red civilization of the East was fairly constant. Between the highest and the lowest of the tribes there was but little difference; the Delawares of the Lakes, the Hurons, the Senecas, the Potomacs, and all the rest of the innumerable tribes which inhabited the country east of the Alleghanies, as well as those dwelling in the Mississippi Valley, showed but little variation of civilization. In the West, however, it was widely different. It is true that there were on the plains many great tribes, such as the Sioux, the Pawnees, the Utahs, the Apaches, and others too numerous to specify, whose general status in the roll of civilization was of very slightly varying average; but there were also tribes which touched the highest and lowest points of Amerind culture. As an example of the latter, mention need be made only of the Pi-Utes, or "Digger" Indians, a tribe as degraded as the Australian aborigines themselves. The Pi-Utes were the most abject and wretched of all American Indians; they lived chiefly on roots--whence their common name among the whites--and sometimes on offal. Yet even among these degraded people there existed, even up to a comparatively late period, a spirit of tribal devotion, at least if the story be true that is related of them, and which, as it deals with women, is here reproduced without pronouncement upon its entire credibility. It is--or was--said that, as the products of the chase were of great importance to this people, it was necessary that they should be armed with the most effective weapons in their reach, and so they contrived a peculiarly deadly poison with which to tip their small arrows. This poison was so noxious that its distillation from the plant which furnished it a plant of which the secret was known only to the "Diggers"--always resulted in the death of the person preparing the decoction. It would naturally be thought that the position of the individual who was to prepare the yearly stock of poison for the tribe was one that would be shunned; but, on the contrary, there was an annual contest between the oldest squaws for the honor of becoming the sacrifice for the welfare of the tribe, and the successful competitor proudly gave her life that the rest might live.