ls of maguey fiber and descended from their own
territory among the mountains "to eat calabash and other fruits" that
grew beside the Colorado River. They were described as "very dirty on
account of the much mescal they eat." Others speak of them as "very
filthy in their habits. To overcome vermin they coat their heads with
mud with which they also paint their bodies. On a hot day it is by no
means unusual to see them wallowing in the mud like pigs." They were
"exceedingly poor, having no animals except foxes of which they had
a few skins. The dress of the women in summer was a shirt and a bark
skirt. The men appear to have been practically unclothed during this
season. The practice of selling children seems to have been common.
Their sustenance was fish, fruits, vegetables, and seeds of grass,
and many of the tribes were said to have been dreadfully scorbutic."
A little to the east of these degraded savages the much more advanced
Mohave tribe had its home on the lower Colorado River. The contrast
between these neighboring tribes throws much light on the reason for the
low estate of the California Indians. "No better example of the power
of environment to better man's condition can be found than that shown
as the lower Colorado is reached. Here are tribes of the same family (as
those of Lower California) remarkable not only for their fine physical
development, but living in settled villages with well-defined tribal
lines, practising a rude, but effective, agriculture, and well advanced
in many primitive Indian arts. The usual Indian staples were raised
except tobacco, these tribes preferring a wild tobacco of their region
to the cultivated." *

* Hodge, "Handbook of American Indians."

This quotation is highly significant. With it should be compared the
fact that there is no evidence that corn or anything else was cultivated
in California west of the Rio Colorado Valley. California is a region
famous throughout America for its agriculture, but its crops are
European in origin. Even in the case of fruits, such as the grape,
which have American counterparts, the varieties actually cultivated were
brought from Europe. Wheat and barley, the chief foodstuffs for which
California and similar subtropical regions are noted, were unknown
in the New World before the coming of the white man. In pre-Columbian
America corn was the only cultivated cereal. The other great staples
of early American agriculture were beans and p