Photograph by J. B. Lippincott, U. S. Geol. Survey.
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.