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Show 299. the landscape," and was glad to see them fade out of sight. Later, however, he saw them in their own home, gathering wild rye by Mono Lake. He couldn't help catching the humanity of the scene, the women "coming through the rye." He thought "their incessant laugh and chatter expressed their heedless joy." He realized they were youthful and hopeful people, unlike the European Americans who had been worn out by excess industry. He concluded his thoughts about the Mono Indians in 1874 by stating simply, "I never believed the doctrine of deserts, whether applied to mountains or men." When he reconsidered the subject in 1888, he knew more about Indians, from his travels in Alaska. The Mono Indians had acquired an infamous reputation among whites, because they ate with relish the larvae of flies which bred on Mono Lake. Muir observed that they also ate a caterpillar which grew on the yellow pines on the south shore of the lake. They gathered caterpillars and pine nuts, thus acquiring meat and bread from the same tree. For the Indian, the "gray, ashy wilderness" was "a paradise full of all the good things in life." Muir had apparently developed this perspective by conversing with an Indian who worked in Yosemite Valley as a hotel servant. In the Valley he "enjoyed all the white man's good things in abundance," but nevertheless vacationed every year in the Mono desert. The Indian explained his taste, and drew "a picture of royal abundance that from his point of view surpassed everything else the world had to offer." This is the most suggestive of Muir's writings on Indians. |