relations to the southwest, or of the sweet-scented grass which grows in the neighbourhood, and which they twist or plait together, to the thickness of a man’s finger, and then cover with porcupine quills of various colours.  The first of these is worn indiscriminately by both sexes, the second principally confined to the men, while a string of elk’s tusks is a collar almost peculiar to the women and children.  Another collar worn by the men is a string of round bones like the joints of a fish’s back, but the collar most preferred, because most honourable, is one of the claws of the brown bear.  To kill one of these animals is as distinguished an achievement as to have put to death an enemy, and in fact with their weapons is a more dangerous trial of courage.  These claws are suspended on a thong of dressed leather, and being ornamented with beads, are worn round the neck by the warriors with great pride.  The men also frequently wear the skin of a fox, or a strip of otter skin round the head in the form of a bandeau.

In short, the dress of the Shoshonees is as convenient and decent as that of any Indians we have seen.

They have many more children than might have been expected, considering their precarious means of support and their wandering life.  This inconvenience is however balanced by the wonderful facility with which their females undergo the operations of child-birth.  In the most advanced state of pregnancy they continue their usual occupations, which are scarcely interrupted longer than the mere time of bringing the child into the world.

The old men are few in number and do not appear to be treated with much tenderness or respect.

The tobacco used by the Shoshonees is not cultivated among them, but obtained from the Indians of the Rocky mountains, and from some of the bands of their own nation who live south of them; it is the same plant which is in use among the Minnetarees, Mandans, and Ricaras.

Their chief intercourse with other nations seems to consist in their association with other Snake Indians, and with the Flatheads when they go eastward to hunt buffaloe, and in the occasional visits made by the Flatheads to the waters of the Columbia for the purpose of fishing.  Their intercourse with the Spaniards is much more rare, and it furnishes them with a few articles, such as mules, and some bridles, and other ornaments for horses, which, as well as some of their kitchen utensils, are also furnished by the bands of Snake Indians from the Yellowstone.  The pearl ornaments which they esteem so highly come from other bands, whom they represent as their friends and relations, living to the southwest beyond the barren plains on the other side of the mountains:  these relations they say inhabit a good country, abounding with elk, deer, bear, and antelope, where horses and mules are much more abundant than they are here, or to use their own expression, as numerous as the grass of the plains.