82 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE CO AH VILLA INDIANS 



upon culture, and throw light upon the reason for the origin of the 

 indigenous civilization of the Nile valley or the deserts of Turkestan. 



The desert stops the roving, migratory life, and compels settled 

 habitation by natural or artificial sources of water supply, which is the 

 prerequisite of cultural progress. 



The culture of the Coahuillas was a developing barbarism, and it 

 is folTy to insist that- rt wcuild have made, of itself, no further advances. 

 - 1 have been particularly incited to record these memoranda of 

 human jiattshce, toil, and endurance, because the Indian himself will 

 soon be gone, and the wide wastes, which he alone appreciated and 

 utilized, will be left untenanted. 



The decline in this population is extremely rapid. They have been 

 steadily decreasing for several generations, and the end now seems 

 almost in sight. Villages, which ten years ago, when I first visited 

 them, seemed reasonably well inhabited, now number scarcely half as 

 many souls. On every side stand abandoned jacales or crumbling lit 

 tle adobe huts destitute of occupants. A sombre stillness broods over 

 these little communities. Occasionally a woman s figure, bent under 

 her food basket, appears returning over the hills, or a horseman rides 

 in and out among the cattle that continue to browse where jacales and 

 granaries once stood, but there is no evidence of active life or of a 

 population holding its own. 



Many of the trails once trodden in quest of food are now aban 

 doned ; great stones filled with mortar holes remain along the pine 

 ridges and in the canons of oaks, where no Indians ever come now to 

 gather and grind their seeds. The trails that connect valley and 

 desert are seldom trodden, and as numbers decrease the Indians less 

 often assemble for summer feast or religious celebration. 



So perishes a tribe that once controlled southern California from 

 the Colorado river westward to the Pacific sea. 



