50 SADDLE AND CAMP 



fort of the white man's habitation over the In- 

 dian's tepee, but incidentally to induce him to 

 remain permanently in one spot and till the 

 land after the manner of civilized folk, and thus 

 advance him in the human scale. But the 

 Paiutes were well aware that their health and 

 existence demanded open air living. Their 

 lungs were not suited to the more or less dead 

 atmosphere of closed rooms. From ancestors 

 who had only known and lived in the open they 

 had inherited a physical apparatus that de- 

 manded a similar mode of life, and so sudden 

 a change of habits would doubtless have proved 

 fatal to them. Perhaps they did not reason the 

 question out in this way, but their conclusion 

 was sound and to the point. 



They looked the cottages over, pronounced 

 them "No good for Indian; good for horse," 

 pitched their tepees alongside the cottages, 

 stabled their horses in the cottages, and them- 

 selves continued to live in the tepees. They 

 never did move into the cottages, it is said, 

 thereby showing that they knew much more 

 about hygienic living, for Indians at least, than 

 did the paternal government. This paternal 

 government has labored always under the delu- 

 sion that it could raise the red man in one gen- 

 eration from the barbaric state to that of a 



