THE LAST ^YILD TEIBE OF CALIFORNIA 



239 



ISHI AT THE PliESENX TiJIE. 



covery in visiting a cabin, took as much food as they possibly could, to 

 lessen the chances of having to make another trip, and ran away. 

 They usually made a systematic collection of everything eatable, down 

 to the last scrap, and carried it off. While the mountaineer has liberal 

 notions of hospitality, they do not extend to this. The visits of the 

 Indians were bitterly resented. They left their unwilling host in most 

 cases, on his return, no resource but to walk back to civilization, empty 

 within and without. 



Such food-gathering expeditions were conducted with true Indian 

 slyness. In spite of the fact that such "robberies" were fairly fre- 

 quent, and extended over a period of thirty years, the Indians -^v'ere 

 never seen. Not only that, but no one ever found so much as a track 

 or footprint. Often the only trace the Indians left of their presence 

 was a total disappearance of everything edible. On one occasion a white 

 mother returned to her homestead from berry-picking with two small 

 children, to find nothing in her larder but two cold boiled potatoes. On 

 another occasion, two mountaineers, who left in their camp two months' 

 provisions, found on their return only part of a sack of barley. On 

 other occasions the Indians took from camps even the barley that was 

 intended for horse feed. Many of these robberies might have been 

 blamed to white men, except for the fact that stufE was taken whicii 

 a white man would not bother with; for example, the barley just men- 

 tioned. Wliile useless to a white, it was readily usable by starving 

 Indians who were accustomed to making food out of acorns and grass 



