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Show 178 an eye for d e t a i l , recorded the menu of t h i s unusal f e a s t . His meal consisted of two large mountain r a t s , one mouse, five l a r g e l i z a r d s , one horned toad, and four large r a t t l e s n a k e s . With the exception of the mouse, which was eaten raw, the entire dinner was buried in the hot embers of the campfire and roasted. All of these items were consumed whole-bones, s c a l e s , and entrails-with the exception of the r a t t l e s n a k e fangs which he broke off on a rock. Martineau recalled that the "four snakes were puffed t o double t h e i r natural s i z e ." He...commenced e a t i n g a t the head, continuing in the same way t o the t a i l , the o i l streaming down h i s jaws. It was a most disgusting s i g h t , and made some of our company s i c k who saw him. His h o r r i f i e d feast continued until he had finished everything, and yet he must have known t h a t when we l e f t him he would be p e r f e c t l y d e s t i t u t e of food. 19 During the night, the hapless Indian disappeared i n t o the desert and was not seen again. Almost without exception, a l l of the explorers of the i n t e r i o r Great Basin have been appalled a t the degraded l e v e l of c i v i l i z a t i o n these Indians bad a t tained. Jedediah Smith wrote in 1827, a f t e r his epic journey across the Basin, that these Indians "appeared the most miserable of the human race having no- ..20 thing to subsist on,(nor any c l o t h i n g ) except grass seed, Grass-hoppers &c. Fremont said in h i s Report of 1845 t h a t "from a l l t h a t I heard and saw, I should say that humanity here appeared i n i t s lowest form, and in i t s most elementry s t a t e . " 2 1 And i n 1859 Captain James H. Simpson remarked t h a t "these Indians 22 appear worse in condition than the meanest of the animal c r e a t i o n ." These desert Indians were often called Diggers, c o l l e c t i v e l y , because of their habits of digging roots and foraging for i n s e c t s and other small e d i b l e s. The natives are a c t u a l l y divided i n t o two language groups. The Western Shoshoni and the Southern P a i u t e . The l a t t e r occupied the southern portions |