76 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



ment not more misplaced than some that the world 

 of fashion can show. Tobacco pipes were made of 

 clay, but were usually stemless, which suggests that 

 the smoker took his whiff lying down — perhaps 

 an excuse for enhancing the luxury. 



Bows were made of the screwbean mesquit, Pro- 

 sopis pubescens, or of willow, and light hunting ar- 

 rows of arrowweed, Pluchea sericea, or of carrizo, 

 Phragmites communis, with points of mesquit hard- 

 ened by fire. The carrizo also supplied a fibre for 

 bow-strings. War-arrows, of course, were more for- 

 midable, armed with barbed points of bone or ob- 

 sidian that were of excellent craftsmanship. I have 

 seen such arrow-points several inches long and as 

 finely wrought as a piece of jewellery. For clubs 

 used in hunting rabbits or birds the wood of the 

 mountain chamiso, Adenostoma sparsifolia, was pre- 

 ferred. 



The large storage baskets for holding the family 

 stock of acorns, pinon-nuts, and so forth, are usually 

 made of willow withes (sometimes of a species of 

 arrowweed), often in ingenious shapes. They are 

 called may'-a-nut-em (the syllable em is the mark of 

 the plural). 



The cacti, from tiny Mamillaria to giant saguaro, 

 almost all yield food to the Indian, and many of 

 them serve other purposes as well. Water in quan- 

 tity sufficient to sustain life may be taken from the 

 great barrel cactus or "nigger-head," Echinocactus 

 cylindraceus, and the saguaro, Cereus giganteus. The 

 former, hollowed out, has been known to be used 

 as a cooking-vessel, by means of dropping heated 



