FOREST AND STREAM 
891 
INDIAN FARMING IN IDAHO. 
I N the southeastern part of Idaho Territory, there is a 
reservation for certain tribes of Shoshonee and Bannock 
Indians, called the Fort Hall Reservation, and including 
about a thousand persons, where farming has been intro¬ 
duced and is carried on to a considerable extent. They 
are rather good Indians, none too good to do any sort of 
mischief if they dared, but more prepossessing in appear¬ 
ance, and less troublesome in small matters than the 
majority of red-skins I have seen. 
The Shoshonee family of Indians embraces two leading 
tribes, the Bannocks and the Utahs. The country of the 
former, before they were disturbed by civilization, in¬ 
cluded southeastern Oregon, Idaho, Western Montana and 
the northern portion of Utah and Nevada ; the Utahs 
occupied Utah, Nevada, and the Upper Colorado Valley. 
The Bannocks were a homogeneous division, but the 
UtahB are divided into many sub-tribes : U tails proper, 
inhabiting Utah and Eastern Nevada ; Washoes, at the 
Eastern base of the Sierra Nevada, between Honey Lake 
and the West Fork of Walkers River; Pah-Utes (or Pi- 
Utes, the word meaning “ water Utes ”) in Western and 
Central Nevada, Northern Arizona and Southwestern 
Utah; Pah-Vants, in the vicinity of Sevier Lake ; Pi-Edes, 
South of the preceding; and the Gosh-Utes, about the 
Gosh-Ute Mountains in Utah. The Northern tribes are 
far more intelligent, energetic, strong and wealthy than 
the Southern bands. They are in better homes, dress 
better, are cleaner and more courageous, 
The word Shoshonee, (accented on the second vowel) 
means “ snake, - ’ and the Snake tribe are the Shoshonees 
proper. Then habitat was this Southern half of Idaho. 
They are fine looking Indians, not so tall as the Sioux, 
whose men are the best built in the West; nor are the 
women so handsome as the light faced girls one meets and 
is tempted by dowii on the Gila and Colorado Rivers ; but 
all have a healthy appearance, and seem to be pretty well 
oil in worldly goods. They are exceptionally skillful in 
handicraft, and out of the raw materials furnished by the 
Government, and the skins of the animals they kill, they 
make a great variety of utensils and ornamental clothing. 
The bead-work of the Shoshonee Bquaws is renowned for 
its excellence. 
Their faces show the oval outlines, flat front-face, pro¬ 
truding cheek-bones, and dark, copper-colored skin char¬ 
acteristic of the race ; yet one may find some heads with a 
facial angle nearer the perfect type than many an Eastern 
coinmunity could show. It is the chief of a band of these 
Snakes having their homes at Camp Brown, Wyoming, 
who is celebrated as the finest looking Indian in the Rocky 
Mountains. This is old Washakie, whose education, sa¬ 
gacity and good nature, friendliness toward the white 
people, and firmness of government, have won the respect 
even of these frontiersmen, who really consider it little 
more harm to kill an Indian than a coyote,'denying him 
the possession of any soul or hope of immortality, at least 
any future which they care to share with him. 
Washakie’s band go westward every summer in the great 
Gros Ventre Hills and Green River Valley to hunt, and are 
met by the Snakes from here; but the Bannock’s rarely go 
over there, standing in too much awe of the Eastern 
Shoshonee’s, I am told, to make campanionship pleasant. 
On these long hunting expeditions in summer the In¬ 
dians take their families with them, but travel with light 
luggage, expecting to be heavily laden with dried meat 
and hides on their return. Wherever they camp, and 
this ordinarily is among the willows along the margins of 
the streams, they build for themselves rude huts of 
boughs, by simply binding together the tops of adjacent 
bushes, or by standing up toward a converging centre 
over head a number of leafy saplings, whose sharpened 
butts are stuck in the ground in a circular shape. Inside 
are put their rude home-made saddles, with a pile of 
robes and heavy blankets, and their home is complete. 
The furniture of such a vHck-y-up partakes so much 
now-a-days of the appurtenances of civilization that it 
takes the interest which attachesjto the outfit of the sav¬ 
age purest simple. Even Cooper would have seen small 
romance in “U. S. I. D.” black blankets, and long strips 
of greasy flannel or poor calico ; in piles of battered tin 
cups and plates ; in buke-ovens and frying panB ; Sheffield 
knives and New York axes; boots from Massachusetts, 
and sombreros from California. Yet all these are taking 
the place of the ancient implements of the Indian, and do 
little to better him. For with the new labor-saving con¬ 
veniences he finds left on his hands more time to be lazy 
in than formerly, and everyone knows “• the devil finds 
some mischief still for idle hands to do." 
Their houses on the reservation are more permanent 
abodes, and exhibit a more substantial wealth. Yet 
these fixed homes are nothing but conical tents, known as 
lodges or tepees, twenty feet high and twelve or fifteen in 
diameter, on the ground, the poles protruding in a bunch 
at the top, where as muoh of the smoke from the lodge 
fire as is able finds exit in a bewildered cloud—what 
can’t get out there staying within, or creeping out at the 
low opening in the side which serves as a door to 
the lodge. This smoke begrimes the apex of the tent, 
and the sooty-brown tint extends downward, softening 
to the'whit».„of the b tse, and furnishing a beautiful gra¬ 
dation of color. But the unfortunate side of this artistic 
effect is, that the smoke rots the cloth of which the 
lodges are now : a-days made, until the first heavy squall 
tears it into ribbons, and leaves Mr. Indian tentless. The 
wide spread of thalmic troubles also, among the Indians, 
is due to this arrangement—or want of it—for smoke. 
Often the lodges are made of bundles of osiers set up in 
tiers, and thatched with sage-brush ; or of young trees, 
untrimmed, leaning together at the top, and thatched 
with straw and brush. There are also arbors of boughs 
and small wick-y-ups always clustered round the central 
dwelling. 
The dress of these Indians is of that nondescript char¬ 
acter worn by all reservation Indians : seatless breeches of 
buckskin or blanket, with fringes along the outer seam ; 
a hickory shirt worn outside ; a blanket dragged across 
one shoulder and hitched under the other arm ; and two 
great braids of straight hair, heavy with ornaments of 
shell or German silver, and plaited with strips of otter's 
skin. Their faces are painted thickly with vermilion, 
their hair is banged in front, and from their ears depend 
huge coils of brass wire or pieces of oyster, or haliotis 
shell, three inches square, procured, through a succession 
of barterings, from the Pacific Coast. Many of their 
blankets are imitations of the far-famed Navajo robes, 
striped, red, white and black, or worn in zig-zag patterns 
of these colors with blue and green. Let one, dressed in 
such a clown costume as this, with his parbarous accou¬ 
trements slung about him, his gun in one hand and triple- 
thonged whip in the other, dash up to you on the plains 
at the fullest speed his crazy pony can command, and 
you will either be frightened or think how picturesquehe 
is. Watch a group of young squaws, too, as with gay, 
uncouth dresses of red and blue and white flannel, or 
Dolly Varden calico,as they race up and down hill, playing 
shinny, their coal-black hair tossing about their swarthy 
faces, and their gleeful laughter echoing like the hilarity 
of a flock of blackbirds, and you will say this also is very 
picturesque. 
But the artistic, romantic aspect of these 
Ind i ans is rapidly losing. They are becoming farm¬ 
ers, and their natural dirt is increased by the sweat 
of toil and the mud of irrigation ditches. Wehre told it 
is civilizing them, and that it is best, but —quien sabe 9 I 
suspect that, as a class, they are totally unable to sur¬ 
vive civilization. 
When, three years ago, the present manager, William 
H. Danielson, took charge of this agency for a second 
time, four families made some pretence of cultivating 
the ground. The next year twenty-four families were 
tilling, and this year seventy households, representing 
450 Indians, are farmers. Their main crop is wheat, two 
hundred acres being devoted to this grain, while potatoes 
and other vegetables occupy fifty acres more. On his 
field last year more than one Indian raised from one hun¬ 
dred to one hundred and forty bushels of wheat, which 
was ground at the Government mill, and kept him in 
flour all winter. But the most fortunate ones last year 
are poverty-stricken this, for the grasshoppers came down 
“ like the wolf on the fold,” and utterly ruined a large 
portion of the young grain, clipping it close to the ground. 
All this is their own work, the Government furnishing 
implements, seeds and advice, but no labor. The agency 
itself runs a farm of forty acres by hired Indian labor. 
After fencing this patch the Indians concluded to fence 
their great farm, and did it rudely, but effectually, by 
cooperative labor, hau l i n g the posts and poles for rails 
more than eighteen miles, and lashing them together 
with split willow-withes. 
There is no trouble in getting the Indians to work in 
this way for themselves, if only they could get tools. 
Few agricultural implements have as yet been provided ; 
but with the extra appropriation for this purpose lately 
granted, Mr. Danielson hopes next year to have twice 
seventy famileB raising their winter’s subsistence. The 
supply of food and annuity goods furnished the Agency 
is totally inadequate to keep all the 1,500 Indians during 
winter and summer; and in the distribution the Agent 
gives the advantage always to those members of the 
tribe who stay at home and farm, thus adding great in¬ 
ducements against roving. How willing they are to work, 
and how advantageous it is to use them, is shown by the 
fact that last fall Mr. Danielson hired them to cut, haul, 
and pile 125 cords of wood from the mountains, and the 
cost to the Government was only $90. I have forgotten 
to state that twenty-five miles away, on Bannock Creek, 
twenty-six families of Indians are residing permanently, 
and cultivating farms in contentment. 
Nevertheless, this does only a little toward civilizing 
the Indians, not to say Christianizing them. They still 
live in their rude and dirty teepees, worship then- sav¬ 
age deities with superstitious regard, and cling to their 
ancient customs with inbred tenacity, The squaws, es¬ 
pecially, it does not seem to effect, and their persistent 
opposition or restlessness will often impel an Indian to 
leave his half-grown crop and go off on some idle ramble 
or useless hunt. Even the children seem to gain nothing, 
wandering naked through their father's wheat fields 
with tiny bow and arrow, shooting the blackbirds as Un¬ 
concerned for A B C «a though no Methodist Church 
beckoned them to its fold — corral, they’d call it here 1 
Really, the only way you can make a white man out of 
an Indian, the only way, I say, is, to take the pappooses 
away from their mothers and keep them away : then get 
these young Indians to inter-marry, and start life on this 
high plane. You! may educate an Indian girl until (un¬ 
der your eye) she is perfect in household accomplish¬ 
ments ; but let her go back to her people, and she will 
drop into the slatternly mann e rs and slavish attitudes of 
her untutored sisters in sixty days. You may graduate an 
Indian boy at a Princeton or Harvard; send him to his 
tribe, and he will only become an ambitious chief (and a 
renegade one at that) using his knowledge^ against his 
teachers. Socrates said a chip basket was ‘•good," in 
that it would carry chips; and I suppose an Indian is 
good to keep Government rations from spoiling, but for 
little else. But that is not at all the working theory of 
the Agent at Fort Hall, who takes pride in the progress 
of bis Indians, and trusts that the boys’ and girls' board¬ 
ing-school he is going to establish next year will bear 
noble fruit. Ernest Ingeesoll. 
GAME PROTECTION. 
MIGRATORY QUAIL. 
I HAVE looked in your paper for some months past for 
information of an encouraging nature with respect 
to the migratory quail, as I wish to make an importation 
for this neighborhood, especially as we are just on the 
edge of the great Northern Forest, where so many migra¬ 
tory birds arrive for the breeding season. I am sorry to 
sav your columns have been very bare of news on this 
subject. Somebody has ventured to state that one or two 
nests of eggs have’been destroyed by grass mowers, and 
I think one distinguished gentleman ventures to predict 
that migratory quail will become as numerous in America 
as it is in Europe ; but none of the dog hunters write 
about training their young dogs over the bevies, neither 
do the shooters ever mention killing (accidentally) any of 
these birds. In fact, I write for migratory quail news. 
Quebec, Canada, Dec. Is t. ’ W. R. 
We are very greatly pleased to learn that Mr. 
Horace P. Tobey, of Boston, by whose aid a large num¬ 
ber of the migratory quail were imported into this coun¬ 
try last year, proposes to introduce another batch if he 
receives sufficient orders from sportsmen to encourage 
the undertaking. 
The total importation thus far has been about 6,000 
birds, of which more than half came last year. The num¬ 
ber thus far is rather small to stock such a country as 
ours, although even 6,000 of such tough, hardy, little fel¬ 
lows will in time make a showing, widely distributed a 
they are. But 6,000 more will diminish by one-half the 
time within which they will become plenty. It is to be 
hoped that the prices may be kept down, but advices are 
not very encouraging upon this point. The large English 
and French demand for birds, and the war of the Sicilian 
sportsmen against the exportation, united with the in¬ 
creased charges for licenses for catching the buds, all 
tend to increase the cost of them. High prices would be 
a misfortune, as the lower the rates the larger doubtless 
would be the importation. Below we print a letter 
giving a description of these birds, which will be read 
with interest:— 
Boston, mu. 29th. 
Dear Sie— As many sportsmen in the North are on the watch 
to detect the presence of the migratory quail, and as, doubtless, 
many of our Southern fraternity also have their eyes open to 
see If this new citizen of the United States in its migrations 
touches upon their territory, it may not be amiss to givo some 
facts which may assist in its identification, -when only brief 
glimpses ean he obtained of it in its rapid flight, or before its 
quick disappearance into the protecting obscurity of the slmib- 
Dery or tall grass through which it is, pevhaps, running when first 
seen. As it is not a trait in the quail's eharaeter to allow itself 
to be picked up and examined feather by feather, a description 
of its general appearance and more striking peculiarities will he 
more useful to the sportsman than a detailed scientific descrip¬ 
tion of its anatomy and plumage. 
To begin with, then, the first time anyone soos this bird run¬ 
ning, standing, sitting orflying, ho will know it is a quail. There 
won’t be any doubt in his mind on that point. The form and 
actions of the bird are too familiar to admit of any question, and 
the first thought is simply, “There is a quail.” But continuing 
to look at it, the observer, if within say fifteen or twenty yards, 
is suddenly struck with the idea that it is an odd kind of a quail 
—that he never saw a quaillike that before. Itisiufact a faded 
quail—a washed out quail. It lacks the vivid colors of the native 
quail. The dark feathers are too light, the light feathurs too 
dark; the colors ran together; there are no strong contrasts; 
the prevailing tint is slate color, varying in shade from light slate 
or ash color to dark slate. The spotless white or yellow burs 
upon the sides of the head of our native quail (male and female) 
are to he seen upon this bird only indistinctly aa an ashen tint, a 
shade or two fighter than the surrounding slate colors. The breast 
isthe eolorof eigar ashes, with often a yellowish cast, amVis more or 
less marked with dark spots, like thospots upon the breast of the 
partridge woodpecker, hut not so dark nor so regular in form 
and distribution. Around thefront of the neokis a collar vary¬ 
ing with the age of the bird from ash color to almost blacl- in 
some specimens this collar is hardly visible, in others not risible 
at all. In some works upon natural history I find it stated that 
tho sex of the bird is marked by the presence or absence of this 
collar. It is, however, in some cases so faintly marked that it is 
difficult, to decide wbethertherc is or is not a collar. I trust the 
birds themselves have other methods of determining’ their re¬ 
spective sexes, otherwise very embarassring mistakes must some¬ 
times occur. 
There is a peculiarity in the flight of the migratory quail which, 
wlienitisseea,appears to me to givean unmistakable means of 
identification. The birdhas two kind of flight—one which it uses 
