176 NEW TEACKS IN NOETH AMEBIC A. < 



own flocks and herds in considerable quantities, ■ and ttey m 



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keep large droyes of horses, or ratter ponies. It is pro- 

 bable that a number of their villages, especially those 

 supplied only by artificial tanks, are uninhabitable from 

 want of Tvater for a great part of the year, so that they li 

 are obliged to migrate, to support themselves and their ^ 

 stock during the droughts. Be that as it may, they have I 

 become the greatest traders and the most industrious people 

 to be found in the country. When the time for leaviag 

 their little patches of cultivated ground around the villages 

 has arrived, some pack their merchandise, consisting chiefly ot 

 baskets and pottery similar to those made by the Pimas, on 

 their ponies, and go down to Sonora to trade with the Mexi- 

 cans, driving their stock A^ith them to pasture in the compara- 

 tively fertile valleys to the southward. Others travel immense 

 distances over the great Sonora Desert to the Gulf of Cali- 

 fornia, and particularly to some salt lakes about a hundred 

 miles west of Altar, where they lay in a stock of salt and sea- 

 shells, and then return to trade with the Indians on the Colo- 

 rado, or the Pimas on the Gila ; or to sell the salt to the 

 Mexicans on the eastern side of their country. Others, vto 

 have no merchandise to sell or ponies to trade with, go to the 

 settlements and ranches from Tucson southward, and wiLliiigly 

 hire themselves out as field labourers or miners. They work 

 well for the Americans, and receive usually a dollar a day 

 which is certainly not bad wages. Then, when the time for 

 planting comes round, they all return again to their own homes 

 in the desert. 



The Pimas resisted sternly all attempts made by the Jesuit^' 

 or Franciscans to conveii; them, and are now so diffident on 

 religion? subjects, that they will not discuss them, or gi^ 

 any information respecting their belief. The Papagos, how- 



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