meat is afterward cut in slices and dried; the bones are bruised and their grease extracted. The dogs also receive their portion of the feast, and devour the remains on the arena of the pen. Two days after the hunt not a vestige of the carnage remained. Before separating, the Indians pass several days in dancing and mirth. One of your Keysers or Verbceckhovens should assist at one of these spirited, picturesque scenes of the Great Desert; he would find a new subject for a painting.
The old proverb says, " One half of the world knows not how the other half lives." The American Indians, who live on the spontaneous products of the soil, may say as much the countless herds of bison that roam over the vast plains, serve as daily bread to the numerous tribes of the Great Desert.
The Soshocos are the most degraded of the races of this vast continent. The Americans call them " Poor Devils," and the French and Canadian voyageurs denominated them
" les dignes de pitie." They roam over the desert and barren districts of Utah and California, and that portion of the Rocky Mountains which branches into Oregon. In my missions and journeys I have sometimes met with families of
these wretched Soshocos ; they are really worthy of pity. I was so happy as to baptize several of their sick children just before they died.
While the Indians of the plains, who live on the flesh of animals, are tall, robust, active and generally well-clad with skins, the Soshoco, who subsists chiefly on grasshoppers and ants, is miserable, lean, weak and badly clothed; he inspires sentiments of compassion in the minds of those who traverse the unproductive region which he occupies.
After having described to you the inclosure hunt, as practiced by the Assiniboins, I will show you the reverse of the picture, by describing the great grasshopper hunt' practiced among the Soshocos. This hunt deserves mention, I think, especially as a contrast to the other.
9 Fr. la grande chasse aux sauterelles : " the grasshopper surround.