26 BULLETIN 56, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Between the San Bernardino and Santa Cruz rivers many Yaqui 

 Indians were seen, mostly in the employ of Mexicans or Americans, 

 about ranches, vinaterias, mines, stores, or on the railroad. They 

 are faithful and reliable men — an improvement on the Americans and 

 Mexicans who served in similar capacities. From the Santa Cruz 

 to the Sonoj^ta River we were in the home of the Papago, who are 

 devoted to agriculture and placer mining for gold. Their crops are 

 uncertain owing to the scant and irregular rainfall; but when there 

 are no rains they subsist by Avashing out gold dust in the mountains 

 or selling horses and cattle along the Southern Pacific Railroad. 

 The fruit of the giant cactus (" sahuara "), the " pitaya," " sinita," 

 " segura," and other large cacti are preserved and stored for food 

 on the roofs of their huts. In the Pozo Verde Mountains were seen 

 clusters of tombs in which the Papago dead are deposited. These 

 stone sepulchers are built with infinitely greater pains than the huts 

 in which the occupants resided during their lives. On the Colorado 

 River were found the Yuma, Cocopah, and Diegeho Indians. The 

 Yuma Indians are a cheerful, smiling people, the men being remark- 

 able for their tall stature and splendid proportions. They are great 

 runners and possessed of wonderful endurance. Having always been 

 foot Indians their pedal extremities are more developed than those of 

 other Indian tribes, though relatively not larger than those of the 

 Avhites. The Yuma were filled with undisguised admiration of the 

 huge feet of some of the negro soldiers of the Twenty- fourth In- 

 fantry belonging to the survey escort. The most striking charac- 

 teristic of the Yuma is their sweetness of disposition ; when not 

 !L-.miling they are almost sure to be laughing musically. The dis- 

 parity in the height of the sexes is also remarkable, the women 

 being short and of heavy build, while the men are tall and have 

 superb figures. Their uniform custom of cremating their dead, and 

 the immediate belongings of the deceased, is excellent from a sanitary 

 point of view and worthy of our imitation. Across the Colorado 

 Desert we again found Indians in the mountains of the Coast Range. 

 Probably no human beings are so dependent on the kind offices of birds 

 as are these Indians of the Coast Range of southern California, for 

 when the mountains are deeply covered with snow in winter the 

 Indians are obliged to subsist almost wholly upon the acorns which 

 the more provident woodpeckers {Melanerpes hairdi) have stored in 

 the bark of the pine trees. 



From the Rio Grande to the Pajaritos mountains evidences of the 

 former existence of the now extinct Cliff Dwellers are abundant. 

 The whole region is strewn with fragments of broken pottery, with 

 stone implements here and there. Their cave-like dwellings were 

 found on the Rio Grande, and a few natural cavities in the cliff's of 



