ETHNOLOGY. 451 



tion of the reservation prevents bad white men from visiting it to any 

 extent; on the other hand, the few whites owning hay-ranches along 

 the Truckee set them a poor example of thrift and in*5ustry, and, as 

 usual in the vicinity of reservations, are ready to prejudice them against 

 the agent and his subordinates. The enormous amount of sawdust 

 formerly thrown into the Upper Truckee was destructive to the fish ; 

 and, on the other hand, the citizens complained that the agent, or the 

 Indians, by his permission, built fish-dams in the river, which totally 

 prevented the fish from ascending from the lake to points where they 

 would be accessible to the settlers. The irrigating appliances have not 

 been managed well ; a number of ditches have been constructed or 

 attempted at various times, which began too low down to give the water 

 sufficient elevation to irrigate any considerable amount of territory. 

 Consequently the amount of cereals produced (no vegetables are raised) 

 has been small, and the supply precarious ; and the Indians have had 

 to replenish their larders largely from their own resources — from their 

 earnings in the fisheries or from aboriginal products. I judge that not 

 more than half of their yearly consumption has been produced on the 

 reservation. 



Many of these Indians labor willingly for the whites, and they fre- 

 quently solicit and obtain permission to go off the reserve and hire 

 themselves to the ranchmen about Reno and in Carson Valley, or to work 

 in the lumber-mills and chutes, for which they receive from $1 to $2 or 

 $2.50 a day, according to the season and the emergency. Indeed, a very 

 large proportion of the very small amount of agricultural labor done in 

 Nevada is performed by the Piutes. In the towns and mining camps 

 many are employed in washing clothes or washing dishes. A Piute 

 man dislikes to wash clothes, but he will wash dishes quite readily. 



The disposition of the whites toward these unfortunate people is 

 generally friendly. Indeed, with the indiscriminate generosity charac- 

 teristic of the Pacific Coast, there is too much readiness to give them 

 cast-off clothing and fragmentp^ry victuals from hotels and restaurants, 

 instead of furnishing them an opportunity of turning an honest penny 

 by labor. Consequently, numbers of them are seen about the streets 

 of most towns in Western Nevada, in a condition of filth and ragged- 

 ness, incessantly playing cards — a nuisance and an eyesore. 



Hard by, in the suburbs of the town, they have their wretched habita- 

 tions, consisting chiefly of sage-brush piled up in a circle, and from 

 these they come to town early in the morning, and return at nightfall. 



From Pyramid Lake I returned to the railroad, went to Reno, and 

 thence to Susan ville, Lassen County, California, arriving there October 

 6th. There are only a few Indians around this town, and all these belong 

 to Big Meadows and Indian Valley, the aboriginal inhabitants of Honey 

 Lake Valley being now extinct. The line between the Piutes and the 

 California Indians was near the north end of Honey Lake ; nowadays 

 the Californians range freely wherever they will, but no Piute dares 



