Some Of These Ancient Gardens Are Still
Cultivated By Indians, Descendants Of Cliff-Dwellers, Who Raise Corn,
Squashes, Melons, Potatoes, Etc., To Reinforce The Produce Of The Many
Wild Food-Furnishing Plants - Nuts, Beans, Berries, Yucca And Cactus
Fruits, Grass And Sunflower Seeds, Etc.
- And the flesh of animals - deer, rabbits, lizards, etc.
The canyon Indians I have met here seem
to be living much as did their ancestors, though not now driven into
rock-dens. They are able, erect men, with commanding eyes, which
nothing that they wish to see can escape. They are never in a hurry,
have a strikingly measured, deliberate, bearish manner of moving the
limbs and turning the head, are capable of enduring weather, thirst,
hunger, and over-abundance, and are blessed with stomachs which
triumph over everything the wilderness may offer. Evidently their
lives are not bitter.
The largest of the canyon animals one is likely to see is the wild
sheep, or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a most admirable beast, with limbs
that never fail, at home on the most nerve-trying precipices,
acquainted with all the springs and passes and broken-down jumpable
places in the sheer ribbon cliffs, bounding from crag to crag in easy
grace and confidence of strength, his great horns held high above his
shoulders, wild red blood beating and hissing through every fiber of
him like the wind through a quivering mountain pine.
Deer also are occasionally met in the canyon, making their way to the
river when the wells of the plateau are dry.
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