| OCR Text |
Show HINTS AND EXPLANATIONS. 25 Hunting and fishing gave the Indians a great variety of animal foods. Turtles, lizards, snakes, and many insects were eaten; in the arid regions of America grasshoppers furnished a staple article of diet. Vegetable and animal foods were prepared in various ways. Seeds were roasted and ground into meal; insects were usually treated in like manner, and various stews, mushes, and breads were made The student will find this an interesting theme for investigation, and he will find names for a variety of food materials and dishes. § 7.- COLORS. Many other distinctions of color than those given in the list may be observed, and many arrangements of color noticed, as in spots, stripes, checks, & c, all of which should be recorded. Intermediate tints should be asked for, and frequently it will be found that words used for designating such are compounds of names understood by the Indians to indicate distinct colors. Thus, in the Ute language, Hn- kaf is red, t6- kar is black, and brown is dn~ t6- kar. § 8.- NUMERALS. Any intelligent Indian can easily count' a hundred, and repeat this for as many hundreds as may be desired. When counting abstractly a common termination for the numeral will sometimes be used, signifying in count, in number, or something equivalent. If set to count a series of objects, he may repeat the name of the object each time. No difficulty will be experienced in obtaining the cardinal numbers, but much patience is required to obtain the ordinals and other categories of numbers. In some Indian languages there is more than one set of cardinal numbers. Animate objects may be counted with one set, inanimate with another. They may have a particular set for counting fish, or for counting skins; perhaps a set for counting standing objects, and another set for counting sitting objects, & c. When these different sets are used the words may simply have different terminations, or other incorporated particles, or the different sets may be composed of very distinct words. Occasionally an extra set of numerals may be found, the name of each number being a long phrase or sentence descriptive of the method of counting by fingers and toes. |
