ETHNOLOGY. 453 



Pine-nuts rank second in importance. Every tribe has its own pine- 

 nut district, on which it is unlawful for another to encroach ; for in- 

 stance, the Carson River Piutes are entitled to all the pine-nuts on 

 Corao Hills ; those on Lower Walker River to the product of Pine-nut 

 Valley, &c. They frequently cache their supplies in the gravel of a 

 high knoll or hill ; it rains so little in Nevada that they receive no detri- 

 ment. 



In the winter and spring they dwell on the high gravelly headlands or 

 the mesas to escape the flooding of the streams and the gnats and mos- 

 quitoes; but toward autumn they are accustomed to remove down to 

 the lowlands and make their rude wickiups of brushwood among the 

 shading willows and cottonwoods. 



As I said above, the Piute women are accounted comparatively vir- 

 tuous. Theft also is not so common as among the California Indians. 

 Frontiersmen relate that if they happened to come upon a white man's 

 camp during his absence they would sit down and patiently await his 

 return, lest, if anything should chance to be missing, their tracks might 

 accuse them and briug them to grief, though innocent. 



Returning from Walker River to Virginia City and Carson, on the 

 25th I left the latter for Lone Pine, in Inyo County, California, On the 

 27th I reached Independence and remained two days. All the Indians 

 in Owen's River Valley belong to the Piute nation distinctly, though 

 there never was any solidarity or community of feeling in this nation, and 

 the different sections or tribes were sometimes at bitter feud with each 

 other. They have the same general habits as the Piutes of Walker and 

 Pyramid Lakes, but are perhaps somewhat lower in the scale of intelli- 

 gence and morality. In the case of the Washoes we have a tribe who 

 have crossed the summit of the Sierra Nevada, migrating eastward ; 

 but here we find that the Piutes of Inyo County, locally called Monos, 

 (or by the California Indians Monachees,) have crossed the sierra in the 

 opposite direction, and pushed their invasion of California nearly down 

 to the edge of the great San Joaquin plains. 



Among the articles composing their food-supply are the edible worms 

 or larvae found on the shores of Owen's Lake, and which spring from 

 the eggs of a fly belonging to the genus Ephydra, but whose species 

 does not seem to have been yet determined. Some are eaten raw, and 

 are of a rank and oleaginous taste ; others are made into soup. Among 

 other things it is said that these Indians formerly ate a kind of mush or 

 panada made from the seeds of the jimson weed, (Datura meteloides,) 

 from which the poison was extracted by long steaming under ground. 

 They also ate snakes of different kinds. The reptile was, while yet 

 alive, impaled lengthwise on a stick and held writhing over the fire 

 until broiled. 



I collected here a few fragments of pottery made by a prehistoric 

 race ; and there are several inscriptions at different points from Bishop 

 Creek to Owen's Lake, and in the caiions east of this lake, reaching 



