BRANDING COLTS. ot 
| despite the rain, and found this old creature, seventy years old, 
and suffering with the liver complaint, stretched near the fire, 
upon a bundle of skins and old blankets, with no shelter but 
the overhanging eaves. It had been his habit from infancy to 
sleep in the open air, and he said he could not sleep in a house. 
The doctor offered him medical aid for his complaint, but he — 
declined, being either too stingy or too superstitious to avail 
himself of it. He said, “No, no—our man he do dat—he 
good ’nough;” meaning their medicine man, to whom they 
still adhere. 
One morning we heard a great commotion in the stock yard, 
a ~, £ 34 4 Ye 4 
ove 7 J iB Colts 
We witnessed the process done in true Indian style, the ani- 
mal being first lassoed and choked until powerless, then 
thrown, the branding iron applied, and an inch of the tail eut 
off, to make it lighter and more under control of the colt to 
brush off insects. It is then liberated, frightened half to 
death, and, I have no doubt, injured by the brutal manner in 
which it has been handled. 
They pursued this process of branding with all their stock 
except their hogs. The hogs roamed in the woods, and lived 
on Mast,* or starved to death if that failed; no care was 
taken to improve the breed, and those met with, were a long- 
nosed, long-legged, slab-sided species, black in color, and 
evidently descendants of the wild hog, or peccary. This old 
man had about one thousand head in his range, and seemed 
* Mast is the nut of the oak and beach trees. 
4% 
