The Mystic Mid-Region Part 2

The maguey furnishes the native Indian with both food and clothing.

From the fibers of the leaves he weaves coa.r.s.e cloth, and the inner leaves, when stripped and cooked in the earth ovens by surrounding them with stones heated on coals, are considered a delicacy.

Snake-weed is the name given a low-growing plant with a pulpy leaf, because when the leaves are crushed and applied to the wound, in case of snake-bite, they serve as an antidote to the poison.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE DESERT BLOOMERS From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

Pectis, or creosote bush, is another desert plant, with odor not unlike the essence of lemon. It is prized by the Indians for its medicinal properties.

There are a number of other varieties of plants--mostly of the cactus family--which contribute to the sustenance of the Indians of the desert, but it is in the fibrous tissues of the giant cactus and the yuccas that they find their material for the weaving of garments, plaiting ropes, and making baskets and other articles of use and ornament. Of late years the squaws of the several desert tribes have found the making of baskets and other trinkets for sale to curio hunters a very profitable undertaking. One squaw of the Mojave Indians received more than three thousand dollars in a single year for work of that sort.

And the desert, which flaunts the banner of death in the face of the stranger, hands out its treasures to its children, and they live and thrive and love it.

There is a little flower found growing in certain portions of California's deserts, which fulfills the poet's statement embodied in the couplet:

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

The little yellow blossom has, so far as the writer knows, no name in the text-books on botany. It is a tiny blossom, growing very close to the ground, and it opens only at night. Then, whoso chances to pa.s.s through a patch of these flowers is treated to incense such as never exhaled from the most redolent orange orchard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A YELLOW DIAMOND-BACK RATTLER From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

The perfume is given off in vast quant.i.ties, and is sweet beyond the power of language to describe, yet it is not the sickening, overpowering perfume of some plants.

One does not need to lift the flower to the face to get the fragrance,--the air is fairly saturated with the sweet odor. The daylight, however, puts an end to both blossom and perfume. There is not a sign of the blossom to be found when the morning sun lights up the desert plain. It is only the night traveler who is favored with the sweet experience arising from an acquaintance with this strange plant.

CHAPTER IV

STRANGE DWELLERS OF THE DESERT

The representatives of the animal kingdom in the desert are fully as strange and curious as are the specimens of vegetable life. It may seem strange that animal life should exist at all in this region of death and desolation, but several forms of creatures seem to find this dread region congenial.

In keeping with its surroundings is the _crotalus cerastes_, one of the most deadly of the rattlesnake family. It is known to the frequenters of the desert region as the "sidewinder," because of its alleged propensity for springing sidewise at the object of its wrath, and because it travels with a sidelong motion. The bite of this creature is considered to be certain death, and it is a saying in the West, when some unusually frightful catastrophe overtakes one: "It was a regular sidewinder."

The sidewinder is of a grayish color, mottled with dark blotches. It is found in the very heart of the desert, miles and miles from any known supply of water, and it is believed by many to be able to exist without that fluid.

Near the borders of the desert the great yellow diamond-back rattler, _crotalus horridus_, is found, as well as a species of constrictor known as the "bull snake." The latter grows to a length of ten or twelve feet and, while formidable to look upon, is perfectly harmless.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DESERT LIZARD, CHUCAWALLA, CLOSELY AKIN TO THE GILA MONSTER]

Such innocence is not claimed for the Gila monster, _heloderina horridum_, which is found in the southern portion of the Colorado Desert. This huge lizard is like the chameleon in one respect: it changes its color to conform to its surroundings. It is in the main of a yellow hue, with dark markings which change to a gray or to a reddish tint according to the character of the soil about its abiding-place.

When it lies quietly upon the earth it is very difficult to detect it because of this resemblance to the soil.

The Gila monster attains a length of nearly two feet. It is covered with h.o.r.n.y protuberances and scales similar to the horned toad, so called. When angry it makes a hissing noise not unlike that made by a serpent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HORNED TOAD]

The horned toad--which is not a toad, but the lizard _phrynosoma_--is an innocent little fellow, attaining a length of six or eight inches at the most. There was a time when his reputation for evil was second only to that of the Gila monster. Now that he is better known he has become a plaything of children and a pet in many a household.

A common creature in the portions of the desert in which cacti abound is the cactus rat, a small rodent about midway in size between the mouse and the ordinary rat. He is provided with a bushy tail which he carries over his back, squirrel fas.h.i.+on. He lives upon the barrel cactus, a plant so protected by spines as to seem unapproachable by man or animal. The cunning rat, however, has found a way of attacking this formidable vegetable. He burrows in the earth at the foot of the plant and comes at it from beneath. One specimen of the matured plant will keep a colony of the rats several months. They gnaw at its vitals till nothing but the empty sh.e.l.l remains, then they emigrate to some other plant and there set up housekeeping for another six or eight months.

Living so far from a habitable country, the rat finds few enemies to molest it. The rattler is about the only creature which preys upon it, therefore it thrives and multiplies in the midst of the fearful region it has chosen for its home.

It is astonis.h.i.+ng to the desert traveler, after he has crossed half a hundred miles of parched and barren territory, to find about the spring of an oasis tortoises basking in the sun or swimming in the waters of the desert well.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TARANTULA]

The desert tortoise differs from the ordinary tortoise in several respects. It never exceeds in length over fifteen or sixteen inches, but in form and other characteristics it more nearly resembles the sea turtle than it does the tortoise. This leads to the belief that the desert specimen is the descendant of a sea turtle that throve in the waters of the gulf when it extended over the now desert country. Change of conditions from sea to land--and most forbidding land at that--is supposed to have dwarfed the original species till a new one is the outcome of the change.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CENTIPEDE]

If one familiarizes himself with the desert, he will find that the rattler and the Gila monster are not the only representatives of the "poison people" in that region. The scorpion, the tarantula, and the centipede make their home there and add to the dangers and terrors of desert travel. There are also animals found here and there in the desert and along its borders, which cannot be cla.s.sed as typical desert animals. Bands of wild horses and wild burros are known to roam the formidable region, migrating from oasis to oasis, cropping the gra.s.ses at one place till they are exhausted, then moving across the burning sands, guided by unerring instinct, to the next green spot in the desert, twenty, forty, or perhaps fifty miles away. The coyote, too, finds his way to nearly all portions of the desert, and even in the midst of the great desolate waste his uncanny cry goes up in the night-time, making the darkness still more lonely for the chance traveler who pitches his tent in the land of terror.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCORPION]

Few birds are seen in the desert after one has left the border-lands behind, but there is one inhabitant of the air which is never absent.

Hovering ever over the region of death is the vulture, ready to settle down to his grewsome feast the moment thirst and heat shall have robbed his victim of life. One may scan the heavens with never a sight of one of these birds while all goes well with himself and his beast, but let one of his horses or burros fall by the way, and lo! from the heavens descend numbers of the birds, and, should a traveler pa.s.s that way a few hours later, he would find but the whitening bones of the animal and a few fragments of the hide. And were he to look aloft, he, too, would discern not a speck against the blue canopy above him.

CHAPTER V

HUMANITY IN THE DESERT

Why human beings should have chosen such a place as the desert for their habitation is a mystery without a solution. Possibly the forefathers of the present dwellers of the region fled thither to escape the oppression of tribes more powerful and war-like than their own. Be that as it may, there dwell in the Great Mojave and in the Colorado deserts several tribes of men who, according to their traditions, have made their home there many centuries.

Up in the Death Valley region is a tribe known as the Panamint Indians.

They live in rude huts built of sticks and mud, and they subsist upon the most disgusting of foods. At a certain season of the year Owen's Lake and several smaller saline lakes in that region abound with a white grub--the larva of a two-winged fly, _ephydra Californica_--called by the Indians "Koochabee." The Indians visit the lakes at the season of the year when the grub is most plentiful, and from the sh.o.r.es of the lakes they gather them where the waves throw them up in windrows several inches deep. The grubs are dried and are then pulverized in rude stone mortars. The powder is used in making a sort of bread which is highly prized as an article of food.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CHEMEHUEVI INDIAN AND COYOTE From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

Snakes and lizards are also cooked and eaten by the Panamints, and their vegetable diet consists chiefly of leaves and buds of cactus plants and other wild herbs. They are not agriculturists and are but indifferent hunters. They seem contented with their lot and evince no desire to leave the desert for a more habitable region.

The Seri Indians are found at the extreme southern portion of the desert. At one time there were considerable numbers of them in the Colorado Desert, but in 1779 the Mexican Government, then in possession of the territory, removed them to the island of Tiburon, where the greater number now live. A few families are to be found, however, in the vicinity of the "Volcanoes" in the Colorado Desert.

The Seri Indians are unreasoning, treacherous, and indolent. The women of the tribe command great respect from the men, and the family relations.h.i.+p is always traced through the mother. In the language or dialect of the tribe there is no equivalent to the word "father,"

although there is for "mother." Little attention is paid to the death of a male member of the tribe, but when a woman dies the funeral ceremonies are elaborate.

The Cocopahs are another banished tribe, now occupying the desert region south of the boundary line between the United States and Mexico.

Not many years ago their chief village was a few miles from Yuma, which town was their trading-post. Smallpox broke out in the Indian village, but the Indians continued to visit Yuma and soon carried the disease thither. When the authorities learned the source of the infection they forbade the Indians to come to the town, and to insure obedience to the command, a mounted guard was placed about the Indian village. Two Indians one day eluded the guards and walked into Yuma. Then the edict of banishment went forth. The Indians were driven from their homes and across the border into Mexico, and the village and all effects left behind became food for the flames.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CHEMEHUEVI DWELLING From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

The Cocopahs, as a rule, are of fine physique, hardy, and nimble, but like all desert tribes they are unprogressive.