26 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 



or nearly to Banning, where the divide is reached. From this point 

 there is a descent through the pass into the Cabeson valley. Immedi- 

 ately from here onward one recognizes that the country and life have 

 changed. Dry, gravelly stretches take the place of the red, alluvial 

 soil on the other side of the summit. Stunted creosote bushes dot 

 the plain, but there is an absence of trees and less hardy kinds of 

 vegetation. Where the pass widens out into the valley the road 

 crosses the White Water river. This considerable and refreshing 

 stream, flowing from the snow peak of Mount San Gorgonio on the 

 north side of the pass, pours itself across the rocky canon, and then 

 turning east onto the sands disappears before it has gone a mile. The 

 descent is still very rapid. Vast deposits of wind-drifted sand impede 

 one's progress and desolate the upper end of the valley. Gradually, 

 however, these disappear, and the soil becomes a fine dark silt, the 

 alluvial floor of an ancient fresh-water lake of wide extent, over which 

 are dotted "montes " or clumps of mesquite, amidst which the Coa- 

 huillas have for generations dug their wells and built their homes. 



n. Underneath the soft deposits of soil that cover the Cabeson 

 valley there is a constant seepage of the waters that, falling upon the 

 desert faces of the mountains, sink into the hot sand of the desert as 

 soon as they emerge from the canons and gorges of the hills. The 

 depth of this subsurface flow varies in different parts of the valley, 

 being greatest at the upper end. Indian Wells, west of Indio, is 

 twenty-five to thirty feet deep, but in the lower parts of the Cabeson, 

 toward the Salton Sink, water is reached at from twelve to sixteen 

 feet below the level of the sand. In his most delightful work, the 

 Discovery of America, Mr. John Fiske, in reviewing the culture of the 

 southwest tribes of the United States, speaks of their irrigating as 

 " mainly an affair of sluices, not of pump or well, which seem to have 

 been alike beyond the ken of aboriginal Americans of whatever 

 grade." 1 The statement is in part disproved by the Coahuillas. For 

 generations they have been well-diggers. Their very occupation of 

 this desert was dependent on their discovery of this art. The whole 

 valley of the Cabeson is dotted with wells, most of them marking sites 

 of homes long ago abandoned, the wells themselves being now only 

 wide pits partly filled with sand, but many dug in the old way still 

 remain, supporting life and giving refreshment miles and miles away 

 from the rocky walls where the streams of the mountains disappear in 

 the sands. These wells are usually great pits with terraced sides 



i FISKE, The Discovery of America, Vol. I, p. 84. 



