“Well, they put the sage into a big basket and filled the basket with water, then put in hot stones till it was cooked.”
“Did they put in nothing but sage—no meat?”
“Sometimes—s’pose you ketch um—put in some piece rabbit or pish” (fish).
“As you had no spoons, how did you eat the soup—drink it out of the basket?”
“No. All got round basket and dip up with hands.”
“Was it good?”
“Yes; good all same hay for cow,” said Juan making a wry face.
Juan then explained that in former times when there was a failure of the pine-nut crop and no game could be found, the whole tribe was obliged to subsist on white sage.
The white sage differs from the common sage-brush of the country, which few animals can eat, owing to its extreme bitterness. It sends up a great number of white shoots which become quite tender and nutritious after the fall frosts, when cattle greedily feed and rapidly fatten upon them.
In Nevada this white sage is the principal food of vast herds of cattle that cover not alone a thousand but ten thousand hills—the white sage and the bunch-grass. The bunch-grass is considered to be as good for horses as barley, as it bears a heavy crop of seed. This seed somewhat resembles millet, and is much used as an article of food by the Indians. It is ground on a flat stone, with the seeds of the wild sunflower and other oleaginous seeds, and cakes are made of the meal thus produced. I have seen patches of bunch-grass many acres in extent, that had been cut, bound up in sheaves, and set up in shocks, the same as wheat in a field. This work is done by the squaws, who also sometimes strip the heads of the grass off between two sticks, tied together in the shape of a pair of scissors, throwing the seed over their heads into a large basket carried on their backs.