The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas

by Frederick Marryat

  CHAPTER IV.

  The Shoshones, or Snake Indians, are a brave and numerous people,occupying a large and beautiful tract of country, 540 miles from east towest, and nearly 300 miles from north to south. It lies betwixt 38 deg. and43 deg. north latitude, and from longitude 116 deg. west of Greenwich to theshores of the Pacific Ocean, which there extend themselves to nearly theparallel of 125 deg. west longitude. The land is rich and fertile,especially by the sides of numerous streams, where the soil is sometimesof a deep red colour, and at others entirely black. The aspect of thisregion is well diversified, and though the greatest part of it must beclassified under the denomination of rolling prairies, yet woods arevery abundant, principally near the rivers and in the low flat bottoms:while the general landscape is agreeably relieved from the monotony oftoo great uniformity by numerous mountains of fantastical shapes andappearance, entirely unconnected with each other, and all varying in theprimitive matter of their conformation.

  Masses of native copper are found at almost every step, and betwixt twomountains which spread from east to west in the parallel of the riversBuona Ventura and Calumet, there are rich beds of galena, even at two orthree feet under ground; sulphur and magnesia appear plentiful in thenorthern districts; while in the sand, of the creeks to the south golddust is occasionally collected by the Indians. The land is admirablywatered by three noble streams--the Buona Ventura, the Calumet, and theNu eleje sha wako, or River of the Strangers, while twenty rivers ofinferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, untilthey enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentinecourses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thickfoliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gentlyundulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures ofmoskito-grass, blue grass, and clover, in which innumerable herds ofbuffaloes, and mustangs, or wild horses, graze, except during thehunting season, in undisturbed security.

  The Shoshones[6] are indubitably a very ancient people. It would beimpossible to say how long they may have been settled on this portion ofthe continent. Their cast of features proves them to be of Asiaticorigin, and their phraseology, elegant and full of metaphors, assumesall the graceful variety of the brightest pages of Saadi.

  [Footnote 6: The American travellers (even Mr. Catlin, who is generallycorrect) have entirely mistaken the country inhabited by the Shoshones.One of them represents this tribe as "the Indians who inhabit that partof the Rocky Mountains which lies on the Grand and Green River branchesof the Colorado of the West, the valley of Great Bear River, and thehospitable shores of the Great Salt Lakes." It is a great error. Thatthe Shoshones may have been seen in the above-mentioned places is likelyenough, as they are a great nation, and often send expeditions very farfrom their homes; but their own country lies, as I have said, betwixtthe Pacific Ocean and the 116th degree of west longitude. As to the"hospitable" shores of the Great Salt Lake. I don't know what it means,unless it be a modern Yankee expression for a tract of horrid swampswith deadly effluvia, tenanted by millions of snakes and other "suchhospitable reptiles." The lake is situated on the western country of theCrows, and I doubt if it has ever been visited by any Shoshone.]

  A proof of their antiquity and foreign extraction is, that but few oftheir records and traditions are local; they refer to countries on theother side of the sea, countries where the summer is perpetual, thepopulation numberless, and the cities composed of great palaces, likethe Hindoo traditions, "built by the good genii, long before thecreation of man."

  There is no doubt, indeed it is admitted by the other tribes that theShoshone is the parent tribe of the Comanches, Arrapahoes, andApaches--the Bedouins of the Mexican deserts. They all speak the samebeautiful and harmonious language, have the same traditions; and indeedso recent have been their subdivisions, that they point out the exactperiods by connecting them with the various events of Spanish inlandconquest in the northern portion of Sonora.

  It is not my intention to dwell long upon speculative theory, but I mustobserve, that if any tradition is to be received with confidence it mustproceed from nations, or tribes, who have long been stationary. That thenorthern continent of America was first peopled from Asia, there can belittle doubt, and if so, it is but natural to suppose that those whofirst came over would settle upon the nearest and most suitableterritory. The emigrants who, upon their landing, found themselves insuch a climate and such a country as California, were not very likely toquit it in search of a better.

  That such was the case with the Shoshones, and that they are descendantsfrom the earliest emigrants, and that they have never quitted thesettlement made by their ancestors, I have no doubt, for all theirtraditions confirm it.

  We must be cautious how we put faith in the remarks of missionaries andtravellers upon a race of people little known. They seldom come intocontact with the better and higher classes, who have all the informationand knowledge; and it is only by becoming one of them, not one of theirtribes, but one of their chiefs, and received into their aristocracy,that any correct intelligence can be gained.

  Allow that a stranger was to arrive at Wapping, or elsewhere, in GreatBritain, and question those he met in such a locality as to thereligion, laws, and history of the English, how unsatisfactory would betheir implies; yet missionaries and travellers among these nationsseldom obtain farther access. It is therefore among the better classesof the Indians that we must search for records, traditions, and laws. Asfor their religion, no stranger will ever obtain possession of itstenets, unless he is cast among them in early life and becomes oneof them.

  Let missionaries say what they please in their reports to theirsocieties, they make no converts to their faith, except the pretendedones of vagrant and vagabond drunkards, who are outcasts fromtheir tribes.

  The traditions of the Shoshones fully bear out my opinion that they wereamong the earliest of the Asiatic emigrants; they contain histories ofsubsequent emigrations, in which they had to fight hard to retain theirlands; of the dispersion of the new emigrants to the north and south; ofthe increase of numbers, and breaking up of portions of the tribes, whotravelled away to seek subsistence in the East.

  We find, as might be expected, that the traditions of the Easterntribes, collected as they have occasionally been previous to theirextinction, are trifling and absurd; and why so? because, driven away tothe east, and finding other tribes of Indians, who had been driven therebefore them, already settled there, they have immediately commenced alife of continual hostility and change of domicile. When people havethus been occupied for generations in continual warfare and change, itis but natural to suppose that in such a life of constant action theyhave had no time to transmit then traditions, and that ultimately theyhave been lost to the tribe.

  We must then look for records in those quarters where the population hasremained stationary for ages. It must be in the south-west of Oregon,and in the northern parts of Upper California and Sonora, that thephilosopher must obtain the eventful history of vast warlike nations, oftheir rise and of their fall. The western Apaches or the Shoshones, withtheir antiquities and ruins of departed glory, will unfold to thestudent's mind long pages of a thrilling interest, while in theirmetaphors and rich phraseology, the linguist, learned in Asiatic lore,will easily detect their ancient origin.

  It is remarkable to observe, how generally traditions and records willspread and be transmitted among nations destitute of the benefits of theart of printing. In Europe, the mass were certainly better acquaintedwith their ancient history before this great discovery that they are inour days, as traditions were then handed down from family to family--itwas a duty, a sacred one, for a father to transmit them to his son,unadulterated, such, in fact, as he had received them from hisancestors. It is the same case with the Indians, who have remainedstationary for a long period. It is in the long evenings of February,during the hunting seasons that the elders of the tribe will reveal tothe young warriors all the records of their history; and were a learnedEuropean to assist at o
ne of these "lectures upon antiquity," he wouldadmit that, in harmony, eloquence, strength of argument, and deduction,the red-coloured orator could not easily be surpassed.

  The Shoshones have a clear and lucid recollection of the far countrieswhence they have emigrated. They do not allude to any particular period,but they must have been among the first comers, for they relate withgreat topographical accuracy all the bloody struggles they had tosustain against newer emigrants. Often beaten, they were neverconquered, and have always occupied the ground which they had selectedfrom the beginning.

  Unlike the great families of the Dahcotahs and Algonquins, who yetretain the predominant characteristics of the wandering nations ofSouth-west Asia, the Shoshones seem to have been in all ages a nationwarlike, though stationary. It is evident that they never were a wealthypeople, nor possessed any great knowledge of the arts and sciences.Their records of a former country speak of rich mountainous districts,with balmy breezes, and trees covered with sweet and beautiful fruits;but when they mention large cities, palaces, temples, and gardens, it isalways in reference to other nations, with whom they were constantly atwar; and these traditions would induce us to believe that they aredescendants of the Mancheoux Tartars.

  They have in their territory on both sides of the Buona Ventura rivermany magnificent remains of devastated cities; but although connectedwith a former period of their history, they were not erected by theShoshones.

  The fountains, aqueducts, the heavy domes, and the long gracefulobelisks, rising at the feet of massive pyramids, show indubitably thelong presence of a highly civilized people; and the Shoshones' accountsof these mysterious relics may serve to philosophers as a key to theremarkable facts of thousands of similar ruins found everywhere upon thecontinent of America. The following is a description of events at a veryremote period, which was related by an old Shoshone sage, in theirevening encampment in the prairies, during the hunting season:--

  "It is a long, long while! when the wild horses were unknown in thecountry[7], and when the buffalo alone ranged the vast prairies thenhuge and horrid monsters existed. The approaches of the mountains andforests were guarded by the evil spirits[8], while the seashore,tenanted by immense lizards,[9] was often the scene of awful conflictsbetween man, the eldest son of light, and the mighty children of gloomand darkness. Then, too, the land we now live in had another form;brilliant stones were found in the streams; the mountains had not yetvomited their burning bowels, and the great Master of Life was not angrywith his red children.

  [Footnote 7: Horses were unknown until the arrival of the Spaniards.]

  [Footnote 8: Skeletons of the mammoth are often found whole at the footof the Grand Serpent, a long rugged mountain which runs for 360 milesunder the parallel of 40 degrees north latitude. It extends from thecentre of the Shoshone territory to the very country of the Crows, thatis to say, from the 119th to the 113th degree west longitude. It ispossible that this race may not have been yet quite extinct in themiddle of the 17th century; for, indeed, in their family records, agedwarriors will often speak of awful encounters, in which theirgreat-great-grandfathers had fought against the monster. Some of themhave still in their possession, among other trophies of days gone by,teeth and bones highly polished, which belong indubitably to thisanimal, of which so little is known. Mr. Ross Cox, in the relation ofhis travels across the Rocky Mountains, says, "that the Upper Crees, atribe who inhabit the country in the vicinity of the Athabasca river,have a curious tradition with respect to these animals They allege 'thatthese animals were of frightful magnitude, that they formerly lived inthe plains, a great distance in the south, where they had destroyed allthe game, after which they retired to the mountains. They killedeverything, and if their agility had been equal to their size andferocity, they would have destroyed all the Indians. One man assertedthat his great-grandfather told him he saw one of those animals in amountain pass, where he was hunting, and that on hearing its roar, whichhe compared to loud thunder, the sight almost left his eyes, and hisheart became as small as that of a child's.'"]

  [Footnote 9: A few miles from the Pacific Ocean, and at the foot of amountain called by the Shoshones the Dwelling of the Monster, were foundthe remains of an immense lizard belonging to an extinct family of thesaurian species. Within a few inches of the surface, and buried in a bedof shells and petrified fish, our old missionary, Padre Antonio, diggedup fifty-one vertebrae quite whole and well preserved. They were mostlyfrom twelve to eighteen inches in length and from eight to fourteeninches in diameter, measuring in all more than fifteen feet in length.Of the tail and neck but few vertebrae were found, but there were manyfragments of the ribs and of the leg-bones. All the vertebrae werediscovered in a continuous line, nearly joined together. The head, tocorrespond with other parts of the animal, must have been twelve orfourteen feet long, which would have given to the monster the almostincredible length of eighty feet.

  The Prince Seravalle, while digging, in the fall of the year 1834, foran ammunition store on the western banks of the Buona Ventura, picked upa beautiful curved ivory tusk, three feet long, which, had it not beenfor its jet black colour, would have been amazingly alike to that of alarge elephant.

  Some pieces of it (for unhappily it was sawn into several parts) are nowin the possession of the governor of Monterey and Mr. Lagrange, aCanadian trader, who visited the territory in 1840.]

  "One summer, and it was a dreadful one, the moon (_i.e._ the sun)remained stationary for a long time; it was of a red blood colour, andgave neither night nor days. Takwantona, the spirit of evil, hadconquered Nature, and the sages of the Shoshones foresaw many direcalamities. The great _Medecines_ declared that the country would soonbe drowned in the blood of their nation. They prayed in vain, andoffered, without any success, two hundred of their fairest virgins insacrifice on the altars of Takwantona. The evil spirit laughed, andanswered to them with his destructive thunders. The earth was shaken andrent asunder; the waters ceased to flow in the rivers, and large streamsof fire and burning sulphur rolled down from the mountains, bringingwith them terror and death. How long it lasted none is living to say;and who could? There stood the bleeding moon; 'twas neither light norobscurity; how could man divide the time and the seasons? It may havebeen only the life of a worm; it may have been the long age of a snake.

  "The struggle was fearful, but at last the good Master of Life broke hisbonds. The sun shone again. It was too late! the Shoshones had beencrushed and their heart had become small; they were poor and had nodwellings; they were like the deer of the prairies, hunted by thehungry panther.

  "And a strange and numerous people landed on the shores of the sea: theywere rich and strong; they made the Shoshones their slaves, and builtlarge cities, where they passed all their time. Ages passed: theShoshones were squaws; they hunted for the mighty strangers; they werebeasts, for they dragged wood and water to their great wigwams; theyfished for them, and they themselves starved in the midst of plenty.Ages again passed: the Shoshones could bear no more; they ran away tothe woods, to the mountains, and to the borders of the sea; and, lo! thegreat Father of Life smiled again upon them; the evil genii were alldestroyed, and the monsters buried in the sands.

  "They soon became strong, and great warriors; they attacked thestrangers, destroyed their cities, and drove them like buffaloes, far inthe south, where the sun is always burning, and from whence they didnever return.

  "Since that time, the Shoshones have been a great people. Many, manytimes strangers arrived again; but being poor and few, they were easilycompelled to go to the east and to the north, in the countries of theCrows, Flat-heads, Wallah Wallahs, and Jal Alla Pujees (theCalapooses)."

  I have selected this tradition out of many, as, allowing for metaphor,it appears to be a very correct epitome of the history of the Shoshonesin former times. The very circumstance of their acknowledging that theywere, for a certain period, slaves to that race of people who built thecities, the ruins of which still attest their magnificence, is a strongproof of the outli
ne being correct. To the modern Shoshones, and theirmanners and customs, I shall refer in a future portion of my narrative.