OCR Text |
Show 376 CARSON VALLEY AGENCY. him and from the graves of his ancestors, 'the once mighty but now wretched, whose name we are all proud to own, (the true American,) and naturally and inevitably exasperates him to acts of crime and bar-barity. It is a well known fact, that the loss of life on the Humboldt river for years past both to the whites and the Indians has been most lamenta-ble. The Humboldt Indians see by the experience of other tribes that roads are the harbingers of civilization, and the certain sign of their own subjugation and final extirpation. All they ask is something to I eat. And here lies the true secret of most of the Indian depredations upon this great line of travel. The encroachments of the emigrant have driven away the game upon which they depend for a subsistence. They cannot hunt upon the territories of neighboring tribes, except at the risk of their lives. They mnst, therefore, steal or starve. Every few miles, too, on this great thoroughfare, both on the Humboldt and Carson rivers, can be found a whisky shop, the proprietors of which have the presumption to call " trading posts." Some of these inhu-man venders of poisonous liquor to the poor ignorant Indian, mill take the last "badger or rabbit" skin fromhim. Afew joined together, as a woman would patch a quilt, being his only dependence for a covering to protect him from the bitter cold and deep snows of this inclement wilderness. The poverty I saw last fall amongst the "Sho-sho-ne" nation, is not a circumstance compared with this winter, and the snf-ferings and destitute condition of the poor "Pah-ute" and " Wa-sho." The snow in the valleys here now averages six inches deep. The only shelter these poor houseless wanderers have is to lay about in the arte-mesia or sage brush; and their sole dependence for subsistence this winter is alittle "grass seed." The rivers are frozen over, which pre-vents them from fishing, and the "pine nuts," another of their main dependences for food, have failed. There is scarcely an hour that passes 1 in a day but what brings some sad picture of wretchedness to my door begging for a sufficiency to sustain life. Afew days ago a " Wa-show died from actual starvation and exposure in the vicinity of " Lake Big-other was found dead at the base of those mountains yesterday, from the same cause. I ler," which is situated in the Sierra Nevada mountains. And an- ; Many a weary day went by, While wretohed and worn he begged for bread ; Tired of life, and longing to lie Peacefully down with the silent dead. 1 Hunger and cold, and scorn and pain, i Had wasted his form and mared his brain ; At last, on a bed of frozen ground, In the " Sierra Nevada" wan the outcast found. 2Jo mourner lingered wit11 tears or sighs, But the stars looked down with pitying eyes ; And the chill winds passed, with a wailing sound, O'er the foot ofthe mountain where the form wan found But One! when eveiy human door Is closed to children, accursed and poor; Who opens the heavenly porrals wide- Ah! God was near when the outcast died. . . |