244 LAHONTAN. 



of which nay interpreters could give me no idea," he remarks, " as 

 being themselves altogether unacquainted with such things. The 

 government was despotic, they said, and lodged in the hands of one 

 great chief, to whom the rest paid a trembling submission. The people 

 upon the lake referred to called themselves Tahuglauk, and were as 

 numerous as the leaves of trees. The Mozeemlek people supply the 

 cities and towns of the Tahuglauk with a great number of small animals, 

 of the size of a calf, which they catch on the mountains. The Tahug- 

 lauk make use of these small animals for several purposes: they not 

 only eat their flesh, but bring them up to labour, and make clothes, 

 boots, and so on, of their skins." The people among whom Lahontaii 

 met with these four captives are called by him Gnacsitares. The cap- 

 tives said they had been taken prisoners by the Gnacsitares in a war,, 

 which had now lasted eighteen years, between that people and the 

 Mozeemlek; but that they hoped a peace would be speedily concluded,, 

 upon which the prisoners would be exchanged, pursuant to custom. 

 They boasted that the Mozeemlek possessed a greater measure of reason 

 than the Gnacsitares could pretend to ; that the Mozeemlek confessed. 

 in the Gnacsitares only human form; otherwise they regarded them as 

 brute beasts. "To say my mind," Lahontan observes, ''their notion 

 upon this head is not so very extravagant; for I observed so much 

 honour and politeness in the conversation of these four captives, that I 

 thought I had to do with Europeans. But after all, I must confess," 

 he says, " the Gnacsitares are the most tractable 1 met with among all' 

 the savages." After describing some pieces of wrought copper which 

 they had in their possession, he proceeds to say : " I could pump 

 nothing further out of them in relation to the country, commerce and 

 customs of that remote nation. All they could say was, that the Great 

 River of that nation runs all along westward, and that the Salt Lake 

 into which it falls is three hundred leagues in circumference and thirty 

 in width, its mouth stretching a great way to the southward. I would 

 fain have satisfied my curiosity in being an eye-witness of the manners 

 and customs of the Tahuglauk; but that being impracticable, I was 

 forced to be instructed at second-hand by these Mozeemlek captives, 

 who assured me, upon the faith of a savage, that the Tahuglauk wear 

 their beards two finger-breadths long; that their garments reached down 

 to their knees ; that they cover their heads with a sharp-pointed cap; 

 that they always carry a long stick or cane in their hands ; that they 

 wear a sort of boots, that reached up to the knee ; that their wives are 



