400 
THE SAGE PLAINS OF OREGON 
as the dry summer begins and this transient forage supply is 
exhausted, the stock is driven higher upon the ])lateaus or the 
mountain slopes, where they find an abundance of bunch grass. 
Then, as the cold weather of autumn sets in and the snows begin, 
the cattle are brought down again to the marsh lands, and when 
the swamps are frozen over and the ice is sufficiently thick they 
are driven out upon it and there eat the air-dried sugar grass 
and cane grass and tules. Finally, forewarned of the opening 
spring by a warm chinook from the southwest, the Mexican 
vaqueros, or buccaroos, as the}' are more commonly called in 
the language of the Oregonians, clear the cattle off the ice before 
it finally breaks U[). Every summer an immense amount of hay 
is secured from these great meadows, about three thousand tons 
being annually cut and stacked for winter use on this particular 
ranch. During the storms of winter the cattle on the ranch are, 
as far as possilde, fed and sheltered, but heavy losses from freez- 
ing and starvation frequently occur. 
In 1889-’9U occurred one of those long, hard winters which 
are expected in eastern Oregon perhaps once in ten years. Snow 
began to fall earlier than usual and continued almost incessantly 
throughout the winter. 'Fhe stock caught out U})on the range 
were wholly inaccessible and could not be brought into the cor- 
rals. 'fhe cattle that were under shelter at the time the condi- 
tions became serious were fed as long as the supply of hay lasted, 
and then, the spring not breaking at its accustomed season, the 
animals slowly starved. The loss by starvation in the entire 
region varied from 30 to 70 and even 90 per cent. Those stock- 
raisers who ’were well prej^ared for such an emergency esca])ed 
with a set-hack of a year or two in profits, but those who were 
taken in the worst condition were in many cases ruined. 
The Indians who once lived upon these plains found, through 
centuries of slowly-gathered experience, not only that they 
could exist, but that they could live in comfort, building them- 
selves shelters of tules and of juniper brush, and easily obtain- 
ing an abundant supply of game and rich, nutritious food with 
all the articles necessary to the manufacture of their various 
implements, their clothing, their cooking utensils, and in fact 
all the other necessaries of an out-door existence and the lux- 
uries of savage life. 
Perha])s no Indians in the far northwest have been guided by 
better councils from their chiefs, have shown a greater desire to 
assume the conditions of civilized life, or have proved them- 
