SOUTHERN OREGON. 255 



putting up a button at twenty yards distance, which one of them hit 

 three times out of five : the successful marksman was rewarded with 

 it and a small piece of tobacco. They use these bows with such dex- 

 terity as to kill fish, and lanch their arrows with such force, that one 

 of the gentlemen remarks he would as leave be shot at with a musket 

 at the distance of one hundred yards, as by one of these Indians with 

 his bow and arrow. Their bows and arrows are beautifully made : 

 the former are of yew and about three feet long; they are flat, and 

 an inch and a half to two inches wide : these are backed very neatly 

 with sinew, and painted. The arrows are upwards of thirty inches 

 long ; some of them were made of a close-grained wood, a species of 

 spiraea, while others were of reed ; they were feathered for a length of 

 from five to eight inches, and the barbed heads were beautifully 

 wrought from obsidian : the head is inserted in a grooved piece, from 

 three to five inches long, and is attached to the shaft by a socket ; 

 this, when it penetrates, is left in the wound when the shaft is with- 

 drawn ; a very shallow blood-channel is sometimes cut in the shaft. 

 In shooting the arrow, the bow is held horizontally, braced by the 

 thumb of the left hand, and drawn by the thumb and three first 

 fingers of the right hand. To obviate the disadvantage of drawing 



DO DO 



to the breast, the chest is thrown backwards ; on discharging the 

 arrow, they throw out the right leg and stand on the left. Their 

 quivers are made of deer, raccoon, or wild-cat skin ; these skins 

 are generally whole, being left open at the tail end. 



A disease was observed among them which had the appearance of 

 the leprosy, although the doctor did not recognise it as such, one of 

 the six had wasted away to almost a skeleton from its effects. 



The old man was pointed out as the father-in-law of Michel La 

 Framboise, who, as I have said before, has a wife in every tribe. 



As to dress, they can scarcely be said to wear any except a mantle 

 of deer or wolf skin. A few of them had deer-skins belted around 

 their waists with a highly ornamented girdle. 



On the 3d, they continued their route up the plain, and soon 

 reached its termination, after which they entered the forest on the 

 slopes of the Shaste Range ; the path was rendered very broken and 

 uneven by the knolls of trachyte which were seen in every direc- 

 tion. On arriving at the top of the ridge, they had a magnificent 

 view of the snowy peak of Shaste, with a nearer and intermediate 

 one destitute of snow, with tall pines growing nearly to its top. 

 "Where the surface could be seen, it appeared as though it was 



