136 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

without a murmur, knowing it to be the common misfortune attendant an
old age; so that they may be said to wait patiently for the melancholy hour
when, being no longer capable of walking, they are to be left alone, to starve
and perish for want. This, however, shocking and unnatural as it may appear,
is nevertheless so common, that, among those people, one half at least of
the aged persons of both sexes absolutely die in this miserable condition’.

When thus abandoned, the unfortunates sometimes beg themselves to
be speedily delivered of their misery by their own children. J. West records
the case of an old woman who prevailed upon her son to shoot her through
the head*, much in the same way as the Tuskis of Asia deem it quite natural,
yea, considerate, for a dutiful son to put an end to his old mother’s existence,
instead of letting her cumber the earth with her useless presence and burden
her relatives with her unceasing groans?.

Brighter Conditions in the South.

In the less melancholy south better economic conditions prevail because
of a more satisfactory climate. Besides elk and deer, which were plentiful in
the original haunts of the Hupas, these aborigines have salmon and other
fish, without mentioning acorns, which may be said to constitute their staff
of life. As to the southern Dénés proper, I mean the Navahoes and the Apaches,
they were for a long time regular parasites, living at the expense of their
neighbours, the Pueblo Indians and the Mexican settlers. Instead of looking
to the woods or the barren grounds for means of subsistence on which they
could not always depend, they thought it a more sensible, if less honest,
policy, despite the danger thereby incurred, to capture from the strangers
domestic animals which they were always sure to find in time of need. In
this respect both Apaches and Navahoes were, to a late date, on the same
footing: marauders and highway robbers on a large scale.

Late in 1540, a Spanish army hailing from Compostella reached New
Mexico with 5000 sheep and 150 cows, and it seems almost certain that the
Navahoes obtained soon after 1542 their first share in the boon thus brought
to that part of the New World. Since that time, thousands of sheep, goats
and horses were appropriated by the same tribe, which in course of time,
have increased to such an extent that from a nomadic raider the Navaho has
perforce become a peaceful shepherd.

His lands are in the main quite high — from 6.000 to 8.000 feet above
sea level — and generally arid, with no permanent rivers, save the San Juan
and the Little Colorado, the other streams being merely water-courses which
remain dry the greater part of the year, that is, outside of the Spring season

* Op. cit., pp. 345—46.
* “The Substance of a Journal”, p. 125.
* “Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski”, p. 188—89,