FEL ee AR Oe a ae te A AL Re ee SAREAT 
1878. ] Notes on Indian Manners and Customs, 311 
their house tops at night and to give instructions to the people 
regarding the labors of the following day. The night before we 
left the town of Uriba, one of these harangues was made, and we 
were informed that the governor had instructed his people to go 
out early in the morning and kill off the jack rabbits, which 
would otherwise eat up all their corn. Early next morning all 
the men turned out, accompanied by the women, whose business 
it was to take care of the game. Rabbits are an important article 
of food with these Indians, and the skins cut up into strips are 
made into cloaks and beds. The implement used in capturing 
them is the boomerang, which is shied at the legs of the animal. 
The captain of the same town once ordered the people out to 
capture the rats in the corn-field. 
The Governor of Uriba invited Mr. Colyer, Lieut. Krouse, and 
myself, to dine with him in his three-story house. He received 
us cordially, showing us a silver headed ebony cane, the gift of 
President Lincoln. Dinner being announced, a blanket was spread 
on the floor, and upon it were arranged dishes of dried peaches, a 
good supply of mutton, and a large basket of corn-cakes as blue 
as indigo, made from the meal of the blue corn. There were 
also some dishes filled with a sweet liquid made by dissolving the © 
roasted center of the agave plant in water; coffee completed the 
bill of fare. There were neither plates, knives, forks, spoons, or 
napkins, but the dinner looked clean, and so did everything else 
about the house. The bread answers for both plate and spoon. 
You take a small piece, lay a fragment of mutton and some 
peaches upon it, or a little of the sweet liquid and bolt the mass, 
spoon and all. This dinner, though prepared and cooked by In- 
dians, tasted better than many a meal eaten by us in border settle- 
ments, cooked by whites. After dinner we took leave of the 
Governor with many thanks. 
Eating customsin several tribes.—The Cocopah Indians of Arizona 
will not eat pork, though they have acquired a taste for salt beef. 
They are very fond of fish and will eat them at any time. They 
will not eat shell-fish of any kind. The Mono Lake Indians of 
California, eat soup made of angle-worms thickened with grass- 
seed flour. They also gather bats from caves and roast them in 
hot ashes without removing either feathers or entrails. Wasp 
nests are roasted and eaten; the more young they contain the 
better are they relished. The young Indians, in order to find the — < 
