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Show THE GREAT BASIN OF UTAH. 49 could not understand them. This tribe is frequently confounded with the Pah- utes, with which they show only a distant affinity. The Washoes, according to Major Dodge, numbered in 1859 about nine hundred souls, and inhabit the country along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, from Honey Lake, on the north, to the Clara, the west branch of Walker's River, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. They are not inclined to agricultural pursuits, nor any other advancement toward civiliza-tion. They are destitute of all the necessaries to make life even desirable. In 1859 there was not one horse, pony, or mule in the nation. They are peaceable, but indolent. In the summer they wander around the shores of Lake Bigler, in the Sierra Nevada, princi-pally subsisting on fish. In the winter they lie around in the artemisia ( wild sage) of their different localities, subsisting on a little grass- seed. The In-dian vocabulary appended to Captain Simpson's re-port shows that they are a distinct tribe, and in no way assimilate with the Utes, Sho- sho- nes, or Py- utes. The Indians all along Captain Simpson's routes, from Great Salt Lake to Carson River, are of the very lowest type of mankind, and forcibly illustrate the truth which the great physicist of our country, Professor Arnold Guyot, of the College of New Jersey, has brought out so significantly in his admirable work, " The Earth and Man," to wit, that the contour, relief, and relative position of the crust of the earth are intimately connected with the development of man. These Indians live in a barren, and in winter, on account of its altitude, a cold, climate; and the consequence is that 4 |
